Robert Steele: NYT Finally Gets It Right – Ghani Transformed Plus Fareed Zakaria on Iran and Maliki Not Signing BSA in Iraq — as Abdulllah will not sign if fraudulently “elected” in Afghanistan

Better late than never.  Ghani won the election — now we need to see if the US Government will stand by our principles and help assure a legitimate count. See also the second headline, for an understanding of how Iran controlled the non-signing of the BSA in Iraq to create this situation. If Abdullah is …

EXTRA: Video of Bergdahl Handed Over to Contractors or CIA — Patted Down Next to Helicopter Not Before

Evidently the US military did not feel it could or should be responsible for the direct recovery of Bergdahn, whether he is a returning deserter or a freed prisoner. A more professional exchange would have dropped off the receiving team, which would have a) taken the time to engage and b) called in for lift-off …

Robert Steele & Anonymous: Most Analysis Software Sucks — And Story of How Steele Correctly Called BSA Not Being Signed in Afghanistan

ROBERT STEELE: I have been re-kicking the tires on the obvious aspiring analytic software packages, and find all of them unworthy for multiple reasons ranging from an inability to ingest data to an obscene amount of training being required to extract data to a general uselessness at making intuitive leaps. I asked one of the …

Ashraf Ghani on Reversing History (2008) with Clare Lockhart Plus 2014 News & Books & Preliminary PBI Call on Run-Off and BSA NOT Being Signed

Phi Beta Iota: Our preliminary view, pending some additional inquiries, is that Ghani will win the run-off quite easily (60-40 or better), and that he will NOT sign the Bi-Lateral Security Agreement (BSA). The roles of Abdullah and Barshadost remain to be defined. We have no doubt that everyone EXCEPT the Americans is deep into …

Chuck Spinney: Guy Taylor on Afghanistan and US $100 Billion Hold — Not Ready to Govern? Or US Not Competent at Focused Aid?

EXCLUSIVE: Confidential U.S. assessments show Afghanistan not ready to govern on own State Department tries to hide risks of corruption Read the full story. Confidential U.S. assessments, which the State Department tried to hide from the public, show nearly all Afghan Cabinet ministries are woefully ill-prepared to govern after the U.S. withdraws its troops, often describing …

Chuck Spinney: Amateur Hour? Or Corrupt Idiots in Power in Washington?

This essay (also attached below, argues that Syrian civil war places the contradictions in US/UK foreign policy into sharp relief. While the author, Peter Oborn, does not say so, the proximate cause of these contradictions is a fatally-flawed grand strategic appreciation of the threats and interests implicit in the Syrian civil war (the criteria for evolving a …