Syria has released footage it says is of U.S. helicopters on their way to an attack inside Syrian on Sunday.

The post headline is taken from NBC's Richard Engel in Baghdad, describing special forces crossing the border into Syria on Sunday, the first time U.S. forces have invaded Syrian territory in all these years occupying Iraq. The U.S. military, in an officially unofficial leak to the AP, are claiming hot pursuit of Al Qaeda fighters out of Iraq and have said little else about it other than that the U.S. is "taking matters into its own hands". Syrian eyewitnesses are claiming that US forces shot and killed seven men and a woman, perhaps even abducting two, while the Syrian government are taking it a step further and alleging children died too. So far, though, the only funerals that have been held were for the seven dead men, which locals and the Syrian authorities say were simply construction workers (and which Fox News' Mike Tobin, pulling faux facts unsupported by evidence or even official U.S. statements out of his ass, says were known Al Qaeda operatives).

What is certain among the conflicting reports is that U.S. forces have now ignored international laws and trespassed on sovereign territory in Pakistan and Syria in pursuit of dodgy intelligence, in both cases with reasonably credible reports of civilians wrongly slain. Technically, these are acts of war and only U.S. military might prevents them becoming so. We know that Bush has ordered that he must personally approve any incursion into Pakistan, and it seems that he must have done so for this Syrian trespass too, one that is unique in all the time that the U.S. has occupied neighbouring Iraq.

So why? Why now? Well:

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The folks at WhirledView have a bit of a scoop. Career diplomat Victor Tomseth was one of the 50 Americans held hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979. It's thus particularly significant that he should be one of over 300 former diplomats who have backed Barack Obama, and that he should have written an op-ed for the Register-Guard of Oregon and for WhirledView specifically backing Obama's Iran policy of negotiation.

As McCain’s friend Sen. Lindsey Graham, when asked by Goldberg to name something unusual about McCain, put it: McCain believes that “some political problems have military solutions.”

...Obama’s comments demonstrate a more sophisticated understanding of Iran’s relative power than the McCain view that Iran poses an existential threat. According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook, in 2006 Iran spent approximately $7.35 billion on defense... Even tiny Israel has a military budget more than half again as large as Iran’s.

Granted, the possession of nuclear weapons is a qualitative advance in military capacity (provided it is accompanied by a capability to deliver such weapons). At the moment, however, it is highly doubtful that Iran possesses either a nuclear weapon or the capacity to deliver one against even Israel, let alone the United States.

Could that change? Obviously it might at some point. However, it does not appear that day has arrived or that it soon will (see the November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate key judgments, “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities.”

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Gordon Brown answers questions on the future of the economy, bankers bonuses and global co-operation

The UK prime minister, Gordon Brown, has rediscovered his "small-s" socialist roots during the current financial crisis he helped create by forgetting them and thus allowing US-style unregulated risk-taking in UK financial markets. It hasn't hurt Brown in the polls either - where once he had trailed so badly that everyone had written him off, now he's ahead of his Conservative Party rival by 11 points.

His credibility on the international stage is high too. He was the most successful treasurer of a Western nation since WW2, with 13 straight years in the black, and is the architect of the current international plan to restore liquidity to the world economy by having governments take equity stakes in banks and other institutions. It's a process known as "nationalisation" but somehow the U.S. media doesn't want to use that word or remind voters that the conservative Bush administration has been forced to socialist policy by its own maladministration.

Now, Brown has an op-ed in the Washington Post setting out the next stage of fiscal recovery - international laws to regulate the financial sector. He's even using the words "new Bretton Woods".

We must deal with more than the symptoms of the current crisis. We have to tackle the root causes. So the next stage is to rebuild our fractured international financial system.

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Amy Goodman talks with Nir Rosen about his Taliban embed.

Nir Rosen imbedded with the Taliban for his latest report on Afghanistan, out now in Rolling Stone. His experiences included almost being executed by a fanatical Taliban local warlord, but he came away with the conclusion that adding more troops to Afghanistan won’t work, and that we should prepare an exit strategy.

Simply put, it is too late for Bush's "quiet surge" — or even for Barack Obama's plan for a more robust reinforcement — to work in Afghanistan. More soldiers on the ground will only lead to more contact with the enemy, and more air support for troops will only lead to more civilian casualties that will alienate even more Afghans. Sooner or later, the American government will be forced to the negotiating table, just as the Soviets were before them.

"The rise of the Taliban insurgency is not likely to be reversed," says Abdulkader Sinno, a Middle East scholar and the author of Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond. "It will only get stronger. Many local leaders who are sitting on the fence right now — or are even nominally allied with the government — are likely to shift their support to the Taliban in the coming years. What's more, the direct U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan is now likely to spill over into Pakistan. It may be tempting to attack the safe havens of the Taliban and Al Qaeda across the border, but that will only produce a worst-case scenario for the United States. Attacks by the U.S. would attract the support of hundreds of millions of Muslims in South Asia. It would also break up Pakistan, leading to a civil war, the collapse of its military and the possible unleashing of its nuclear arsenal."

In the same speech in which he promised a surge, Bush vowed that he would never allow the Taliban to return to power in Afghanistan. But they have already returned, and only negotiation with them can bring any hope of stability.

John McCain's strategy - following the Bush administration in handing policymaking to General Petraeus - isn't going to work any better. Talking our way to an exit from the doomed adventure in Afghanistan really is the only way out of that grim trap.

Spencer Ackerman calls Rosen's report an instant classic of war reporting and I totally agree. Just read it, ok?

Crossposted from Newshoggers

I posted yesterday that nuke-armed Pakistan is only a month away from bankruptcy. Now tiny Iceland looks like it might get there first.

Iceland has formidable international reach because of an outsized banking sector that set out with Viking confidence to conquer swaths of the British economy — from fashion retailers to top soccer teams.

The strategy gave Icelanders one of the world's highest per capita incomes. But now they are watching helplessly as their economy implodes — their currency losing almost half its value, and their heavily exposed banks collapsing under the weight of debts incurred by lending in the boom times.

... A full-blown collapse of Iceland's financial system would send shock waves across Europe, given the heavy investment by Icelandic banks and companies across the continent.

Iceland right now is apparently in a state of shock and gives a snapshot of what a depression with the Great in it will look like everywhere - "cafes were half-empty, real estate agents sat idle, and retailers reported few sales" says the AP.

And, just as Pakistan has begged the West for $100 billion to stave off economic collapse, Iceland has had to go cap-in-hand to a bigger power too. Only they've chosen the Russians - asking for a 5.4 billion loan to shore up the nation's finances.

That must be giving NATO planners conniptions. Loans like that, in the present climate, aren't going to come without strings and Iceland is the keystone in NATO's maritime defenses in the North West Atlantic, designed to keep Russian warships and subs containable in their home waters should the need arise.

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Demonstrators outside the Islamabad Stock Exchange in July

The UK's Daily Telegraph reports that Pakistan may be the first nation to go bankrupt as a result of the continuing global financial meltdown.

Officially, the central bank holds $8.14 billion (£4.65 billion) of foreign currency, but if forward liabilities are included, the real reserves may be only $3 billion - enough to buy about 30 days of imports like oil and food.

Nine months ago, Pakistan had $16 bn in the coffers.

The government is engulfed by crises left behind by Pervez Musharraf, the military ruler who resigned the presidency in August. High oil prices have combined with endemic corruption and mismanagement to inflict huge damage on the economy.

Given the country's standing as a frontline state in the US-led "war on terrorism", the economic crisis has profound consequences. Pakistan already faces worsening security as the army clashes with militants in the lawless Tribal Areas on the north-west frontier with Afghanistan.

... Mr Zardari told the Wall Street Journal that Pakistan needed a bail out worth $100 billion from the international community.

"If I can't pay my own oil bill, how am I going to increase my police?" he asked. "The oil companies are asking me to pay $135 [per barrel] of oil and at the same time they want me to keep the world peaceful and Pakistan peaceful."

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On Friday, a car bomb blew up three civilians and eight Russian soldiers, including a senior officer, in the disputed South Ossetia region of Georgia. Russia blames the Georgian secret service for the blast, saying they are trying to destabilize the fragile ceasefire while the Georgians (rather less believably) say the explosion was a false flag operation - that Russia blew up its own peacekeeping troops in order to blame Saakashvili's government and to give an excuse for delaying an expected pullback of Russian troops. However, the Georgian interior ministry spokesman who made the counter-allegation offered no evidence that the Russians had any actual plans to delay their pullback.

It's a messy incident, one that shows the Caucusus conflict is far from finished creating tensions both in the region and globally, and also offers more opportunity for observers to question just how trustworthy and truthful Saakashvili's regime is being. The original midnight all-out attack on his own region's capital which started the whole current confrontation might be reason enough for some - Colin Powell certainly seems to be in that camp - but now Georgian opposition members are also calling attention back to last years elections and widespread abuses of both opposition members and the press.

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I've some bad news for progressives - Iran isn't going to stop enriching uranium to reactor fuel standards. Both Iran's UN Envoy, Ali Asghar Soltanieh and Foreign Minister Mottaki have now said earlier reports that Iran would consider a halt to domestic enrichment if a "legally-binding instrument for assurance of supply" was available were based upon a misunderstanding. Talking to Iran's FARS news agency, Soltanieh said he had only talked about how, in the past, other nations broke their promises to supply Iran with enriched uranium. He said he rejects "whatever is reflected otherwise."

That's a blow to progressives who had hoped that exactly such an incentive could be used in diplomatic negotiations by an Obama administration, but isn't at all surprising. As Soltanieh pointed out, America and France both reneged on promises to supply Iran with nuclear fuel in the past. Russia, too, has temporarily suspended then restarted fuel supplies recently, playing the by now familiar game of great power energy politics and reminding Iran of just how dependent it is on Russian largess at the UNSC.

If George W. Bush were president of Iran, he certainly wouldn't suspend enrichment for any reason. Neither would John McCain or Barack Obama. All have backed the concept of domestic energy independence from the whims of other nations, from vagaries of resource availability and from intentional use of energy resources as leverage over America's actions. Why should Iran be any different?

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Seven years ago the Bush administration brought neoconservatives into a position of power with a dream of everlasting American hegemony, a unipolar superpower who would dictate military, economic and cultural terms to the world. The end of history in many neocon minds came with a momentous date - 9/11.

Seven years later, the Bush administration's mismanagement of the nation has ensured that that the neoconservative dream is crushed.

Russia is looking forward to, and recruiting allies for, a multipolar future -invoking 9/11 as the reason to do so.

"The solidarity of the international community fostered on the wave of struggle against terrorism turned out to be somehow `privatized'... It has become crystal clear that the solidarity expressed by all of us after 9/11 should be revived (without double standards) when we fight against any infringements upon the international law," [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov] said.

Lavrov called for a new "solidarity" of the international community and a strengthened United Nations, saying only in the post-Cold War world can the organization "fully realize its potential" as a global center "for open and frank debate and coordination of the world policies on a just and equitable basis free from double standards."

"This is an essential requirement, if the world is to regain its equilibrium," he said.

Russia hasn't exactly been guiltless about double standards - I'm thinking about Chechnya and internal dissent as well as an over-response to Georgian aggression in South Ossetia - but Lavrov has a point. After 9/11, even Iranian leaders were proclaiming solidarity with the US. What happened was that the outpouring of genuine concern that could have shaped a new co-operative world was harnessed to give the neocon adventure a temporary Coalition of the Willing instead. Their lust for Empire burned up all the political capital America had on the world stage - and now even if McCain was elected to continue the neoconservative fever he wouldn't be able to, the world is just too resistant to it.

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Remember how over the weekend Hank Paulson was on all the bobblehead shows saying that the bailout should extend to foreign firms trading in the US and how he was going to put together a Coalition Of The Bankrupt with other major nations for his bailout plans?

Europe's not interested in buying toxic debt from sinking companies.

Ulrich Wilhelm, spokesman for Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said there was no need for “a measure along the lines of what has been decided in the US”. Peer Steinbrück, the German finance minister, also made clear after a telephone conference with his contemporaries in the G7 group of leading nations that Berlin did not need to set up a rescue package.

...The French government also said it did not plan to set up a toxic asset fund or contribute to the US scheme. British officials said they had already instigated a special liquidity scheme, but like France and Germany they did not intend to pursue a toxic asset fund.

The European Commission made clear it was not planning any emergency measures.

That's a wee bit of a problem for Paulson's plan, and signals exactly how much confidence European governments have in it. And the reason they have so little confidence in Hanks plan is simple - it won't solve the underlying problem which is that too many banks have sailed too close to the wind and are now insolvent. Solving that problem would require recapitalizing those banks and getting credit flows unfrozen again - which would cost yet more untold hundreds of billions and would again reward bad actors for their sins but at least would help people other than the fat-cats at those major banks.

Without such a recapitalization, though, the light at the end of the tunnel is still the oncoming train of recession.

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