american officials

We're already fighting wars in Iraq, Afghanistan/Pakistan and Syria, but now it appears the U.S. has entered a fourth theater:

The Obama administration has intensified the American covert war in Yemen, exploiting a growing power vacuum in the country to strike at militant suspects with armed drones and fighter jets, according to American officials.

The acceleration of the American campaign in recent weeks comes amid a violent conflict in Yemen that has left the government in Sana, a United States ally, struggling to cling to power. Yemeni troops that had been battling militants linked to Al Qaeda in the south have been pulled back to the capital, and American officials see the strikes as one of the few options to keep the militants from consolidating power.

On Friday, American jets killed Abu Ali al-Harithi, a midlevel Qaeda operative, and several other militant suspects in a strike in southern Yemen. According to witnesses, four civilians were also killed in the airstrike. Weeks earlier, drone aircraft fired missiles aimed at Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American-born cleric who the United States government has tried to kill for more than a year. Mr. Awlaki survived.

How many wars can our country stomach, both financially and mentally? We're already talking about the enormous federal deficit, but we don't have any problem launching air strikes in other countries. These strikes cost hundreds of millions of dollars and is money we never get back, unlike bailing out the auto industry.

When you ignore Afghanistan for 7 years then you never get stories like this:

The Taliban’s top military commander was captured several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces, according to American government officials.

The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started more than eight years ago. He ranks second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mullah Baradar has been in Pakistani custody for several days, with American and Pakistani intelligence officials both taking part in interrogations, according to the officials.

This is a great accomplishment for the military and administration, but for some reason I feel Dick Cheney will consider it a major failure.

The news of the day hands down is the news that Iran has been working on a second nuclear plant. This comes as a surprise to the world, but not the world leaders and intelligence communities:

American officials said that they had been tracking the covert project for years, but that Mr. Obama decided to make public the American findings after Iran discovered, in recent weeks, that Western intelligence agencies had breached the secrecy surrounding the project. On Monday, Iran wrote a brief, cryptic letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency, saying that it now had a “pilot plant” under construction, whose existence it had never before revealed.

Of course this covert project that has been underway for several years is going to somehow become the fault of President Obama, and evidence of that lie has already started on Drudge:

The construction of this plant started and mostly occurred while George Bush was in the White House and has been no secret to the government, yet Drudge wants us to think that Iran pulled a quickie on the administration. If this is a surprise to Obama then it should be a down right shocker to Bush.

The New York Times: 

The insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, connivance by corrupt Islamic charities and other crimes that the Iraqi government and its American patrons have been largely unable to prevent, a classified United States government report has concluded.

The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups responsible for many insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. It says $25 million to $100 million of that comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry, aided by "corrupt and complicit" Iraqi officials.

As much as $36 million a year comes from ransoms paid for hundreds of kidnap victims, the report says. It estimates that unnamed foreign governments - previously identified by American officials as including France and Italy - paid $30 million in ransom last year.

Remember when the talking heads would try and lead you to believe the insurgency was the equivalent to farmers with pitchforks? How about when Rumsfeld said they didn't predict a robust insurgency? Now that they are self-sustaining the problems have just grown. No longer do we have the scapegoats of Syria or Iran - the problem is totally within Iraq and we have no plan to cure it. This is the product of piss-poor planning by our administration and this will be a major downfall for us in Iraq.

It looks like the Iraqi government just may tell us to get the hell out of their country before long:

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki lashed out at the American military on Thursday, denouncing what he characterized as habitual attacks by troops against Iraqi civilians.

As outrage over reports that American marines killed 24 Iraqis in the town of Haditha last year continued to shake the new government, the country's senior leaders said that they would demand that American officials turn over their investigative files on the killings and that the Iraqi government would conduct its own inquiry.

In his comments, Mr. Maliki said violence against civilians had become a "daily phenomenon" by many troops in the American-led coalition who "do not respect the Iraqi people."

"They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion," he said. "This is completely unacceptable." Attacks on civilians will play a role in future decisions on how long to ask American forces to remain in Iraq, the prime minister added.

As Aravosis points out, this guy is our puppet. He is the replacement Prime Minister when the first choice was someone Bush did not like.

This is a sure indication that things are going to be far more dangerous for our troops stationed in Iraq. I guess it is a prevention of a civil war when we force all of Iraq to join forces and fight against us.