Most Eyebrow-Raising Headline of the Week

"Google Fixes Bug In Online Tool After It Started Translating 'Russian Federation' To 'Mordor'" - Consumerist


HT to The Snake's Mommy

Massive Truck Bomb Attack in Kabul Escapes Notice

Photo from Reddit

Consumer Notice: This post is certified 100% free of Matters of Official Concern that are not referenced from publicly available sources of information.

Did the Taliban attack a U.S. Embassy Kabul convoy of security contractors on Monday, January 4, as they departed their quarters at Camp Sullivan en route to the Embassy? And did they do so using one of the largest vehicle-borne bombs employed in a terrorist attack in recent history?

I didn't see anything about it in the WaPo. It's like the tree that falls in the forest with no one there to hear the crash. In fact, if Diplopundit hadn't posted about it I would have doubted it even happened.

Some news media did report it, although most reports described it as an attack on the airport in Kabul vice a U.S. Mission facility and personnel. Also, there were three separate Taliban attacks in Kabul on that same day, so the Embassy angle could get lost, I suppose.

So far, Embassy Kabul has had almost nothing to say about this incident. Deafening silence, as some have noticed.

NBC News had something:

A convoy of U.S. embassy guards who live at Camp Sullivan was targeted in the second attack [of the day], the official said, but none of the guards were injured. The Ministry of Public Health said 19 civilians in the area were injured and taken to various hospitals, but there were no indications they are Americans.

The official added that the attacker missed the convoy and detonated the explosives at the gate that leads to Camp Sullivan, a residential compound for civilian contractors attached to Camp Baron.

"The car bomb detonated at the gate of Camp Baron on the military side of Kabul airport," a spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior Sediq Sediqqi confirmed.

The Wall Street Journal had some more:

The attacks, one of which struck near the gates of a compound used by U.S. government contractors, highlight the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan as its government struggles to hold parts of the country against an advancing Taliban.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the powerful evening blast which officials said was likely caused by a truck bomb. Witnesses at the scene said the crater was easily 20 feet deep. Body parts were found at the scene and the shock wave had flattened one of the compound’s walls and buildings inside.

Officials declined to give details on the number of international casualties, but Western security sources said buildings inside Camp Sullivan, one of the compounds along the route, had collapsed and casualties were feared.

An emergency operation to rescue those wounded by debris in the compounds was under way and being handled by the U.S. embassy.

The New York Times mentioned the other, failed, vehicle bomb attack of the same day near Kabul's airport:

Earlier in the day, a suicide bomber detonated his vest near the entrance to the airport, but the vehicle he was driving in, also laden with explosives, did not blow up, security officials said. There were no other casualties.

Stars and Stripes had some description of the bomb's impact:

Several people at a U.S. Embassy compound in Kabul were among the injured in Monday’s massive truck bomb attack, an embassy spokesman said.

Two Afghans were killed in the blast and more than 30 wounded, said Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi.

The blast from the bomb, which contained an estimated 3,000 pounds of explosives, could be felt miles away. Photos by witnesses showed heavily fortified walls obliterated, damaged buildings and a gaping crater in the road. The bomb damaged buildings and shattered glass far from the blast site.

-- snip --

No Americans were killed in the blast, said the embassy spokesman, who did not specify the nationalities of the injured. The Taliban claimed credit for the attack.

There are three compounds close to each other in the area, which is near a major foreign military base. There was confusion initially about exactly what buildings were hit by the bomb. Even a day later, media were kept hundreds of yards away from the blast site by Afghan police, who said foreign troops had ordered them to keep reporters away.

Who, exactly, made that estimate of the bomb's size? The Afghan Interior Ministry, I assume. I further assume the estimate was based on nothing but the size of the crater. My own unscientific guess, based on comparison of that crater to the ones left by the 2008 Marriott bombing in Islamabad and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Dhahran, is that the bomb might have been even larger than 3,000 pounds.

The best information came from one of the U.S. Government contractors who survived the attack. His first-hand account is on Reddit and was linked by Diplopundit (here).

The contractor, who worked as an Air Traffic Controller at Kabul Airport, related details that tell us something about the bomb's impact:

My entire room imploded around me in a surreal blur of glass and brick. If I had been standing instead of lying in bed, I wouldn't be typing this ... It rendered our compound pretty much useless ... My room was the closest room to it from our building. Probably about 200 feet.

Photo from Freerange International

Here's a photo of Camp Sullivan's quarters when they were new. Prefab trailer-type accommodations, certainly not made of brick.

So, where did the flying brick come from? From Camp Sullivan's perimeter wall, that's where.

Photo from BBC Producer's Twitter feed

That perimeter wall is thoroughly breached. Like, completely destroyed and turned into those high velocity chunks that struck the contractor's living quarters 200 feet away with lethal force.

It's a good thing the Taliban were aiming that bomb at a moving convoy and not launching a dedicated attack on Camp Sullivan itself, or else they could have followed up with a ground attack and or further bombs inside the compound. Merely the one bomb was sufficient - reportedly - to render useless buildings that the U.S. Embassy relies on for support.

A couple obvious takeaways. First, the huge size of the bomb indicates the Taliban have acquired a high level of technical capability. Second, the fact that they can execute multiple coordinated attacks at more or less the same time and place - even though one of them failed - shows a high level of operational expertise.

None of this is the least bit reassuring as we enter the end stage of our long involvement in Afghanistan, and the Taliban ramps up its efforts to persuade us to leave.
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Tracking Visa Overstays (Where There's No Will, There's No Way)

Here's a good question for our elected representatives in the U.S. Congress. Why is it that, in this day when visas, refugees, and security screening of travelers are political hot buttons, they continue to ignore the failure of multiple administrations, both Democrat and Republican, to implement the laws and deadlines they have repeatedly passed requiring an entry and exit tracking system for foreign visitors?

I'm tempted to call that question in to the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee hotline, but then, the fault belongs to them most of all. Who oversees the overseers?

It's an old issue, but the New York Times revisited it last week, U.S. Doesn’t Know How Many Foreign Visitors Overstay Visas:

Nearly 20 years ago, Congress passed a law requiring the federal government to develop a system to track people who overstayed their visas. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, an entry and exit tracking system was seen as a vital national security and counterterrorism tool, and the 9/11 Commission recommended that the Department of Homeland Security complete a system “as soon as possible.” Two of the 9/11 hijackers, Satam al-Suqami and Nawaf al-Hazmi, had overstayed their visas.

-- snip --

In 2004, lawmakers passed legislation that required Homeland Security officials to accelerate their efforts to create an automated biometric entry and exit data system. [TSB Note: see this GAO Report from 2004]

Congress repeated its demand for a biometric exit system in 2007 and set a deadline for 2009. But the deadline passed, with the department putting into place only a handful of pilot programs.

-- snip --

Despite the call by some lawmakers for an exit system, airports and the airline industry have balked because it would cost airlines $3 billion, according to a 2013 Homeland Security estimate. The Department of Homeland Security issued regulations in 2008 requiring airports to collect biometric exit information, but carriers have largely ignored the regulation, and there have been no sanctions.

Why has practically everyone in all branches of government blown off this matter of national security? Certainly, it would be costly and difficult to reconfigure thousands of airports to place passenger bottlenecks at the departure end of traffic flows, but that's a practical kind of problem and is solvable should we actually want to solve it. 

I'm going to take a wild guess here and suggest that travel and tourism trade groups, hospitality and janitorial services, food processors, big agriculture interests, universities, and the IT industry among others all work to keep their Congressmen and Senators complaisant on this matter. Security is our Number 1 priority, of course of course, BUT, they need low-wage workers.

Our elected representatives like to posture one way during hearings on this matter, but I suspect they talk another way when meeting with lobbyists and donors.

Most Eyebrow-Raising Headline of the Week

He got it to 88 mph but was too lazy to build a time machine first

"Man trying to time travel plows car into Florida businesses" - KOMO News Pensacola

Ka-Ching, Ka-Ching! Bill Clinton Does Abu Dhabi

Ah, an influence peddling story from Hillary's term as SecState. That's something we'll see a lot more of as Election Year 2016 rolls on and the news media absorbs all those Clinton private server e-mails and correlates Hillary's official actions with those of the Clinton Foundation and its principles principals.

The Wall Street Journal described how Speaking Fees Meet Politics For Clintons, noting that after HRC's confirmation as Secretary of State "more than two dozen companies and groups and one foreign government paid former President Bill Clinton a total of more than $8 million to give speeches around the time they also had matters before Mrs. Clinton’s State Department, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis ... Fifteen of them also donated a total of between $5 million and $15 million to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the family’s charity, according to foundation disclosures."

Despite all that, "The Journal found no evidence that speaking fees were paid to the former president in exchange for any action by Mrs. Clinton, now the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination."

No evidence? That's a very odd statement, since the rest of the article is filled with detailed circumstantial evidence of exactly that kind of quid pro quo. The WSJ is confusing direct evidence with circumstantial evidence, which argues that a series of facts, by reason and experience, is so persuasive that accusations may be proved by inference alone. Courts convict defendants based on circumstantial evidence alone every day. What other kind of evidence would you expect to find of influence peddling, anyway?

Look at one particular pattern of facts the WSJ presented concerning the approval of a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) passenger preclearance operation in Abu Dhabi. Preclearance in Abu Dhabi benefits the UAE's Etihad national airline because it will attract U.S.-bound customers who would otherwise have transited through a regional hub such as Dubai. It cannot benefit any U.S. airline because none operate out of Abu Dhabi. On the contrary, it takes customers away from U.S, airlines, which is why U.S. airline trade groups and unions opposed the operation and lobbied against it in Congress.

A Congressional Research Service report on international air service controversies has this summary of the opposition:

On a separate but related note, there has been debate over a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) preclearance facility that began operation in January 2014 at Abu Dhabi International Airport in the UAE. The presence of a preclearance facility makes an airport more attractive to U.S.-bound travelers, as they are not delayed by the need to pass through immigration and customs controls upon arrival in the United States. The Abu Dhabi facility was strongly opposed by some U.S. air carriers, labor unions, and Members of Congress because Etihad Airways, owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, is the only airline that operates nonstop flights from Abu Dhabi to the United States. Opponents were concerned that U.S. carriers, which rely on code-sharing partners to serve Abu Dhabi via connections in Europe, would be competitively disadvantaged because their passengers are not eligible for preclearance.

With all those reasons to oppose the preclearance operation, why was it nevertheless approved? Consider this pattern of facts the WSJ documented:

The State Department got involved in the Abu Dhabi matter after the capital of the United Arab Emirates asked for a facility to clear travelers for U.S. entry before they boarded planes so they could avoid delays when arriving in the U.S. Only five countries in the world at the time had such an arrangement: Canada, Ireland and three Caribbean countries.

-- snip --

While Mrs. Clinton’s State Department and the Department of Homeland Security were working out a “letter of intent” with Abu Dhabi for the facility, Mr. Clinton sought permission to give a paid speech in Abu Dhabi. The invitation came from the Abu Dhabi Global Environmental Data Initiative, a group created by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates and emir of Abu Dhabi, according to Mr. Clinton’s request to the State Department.

-- snip --

On Dec. 6, 2011, U.S. officials signed the letter of intent. One week later, Mr. Clinton gave a 20-minute talk on climate change to the Abu Dhabi government environmental gathering. He collected $500,000, his wife’s disclosure report shows.

In December 2012, Mr. Clinton sought approval for another speech in Abu Dhabi before the World Travel and Tourism Council, State Department emails show. The request said the speech was sponsored by three Abu Dhabi tourism agencies, all owned by the government. A conference sponsor was Etihad Airways, the chief beneficiary of the inspection facility, the group’s promotional materials said. An Etihad spokeswoman referred questions about the facility to the government of Abu Dhabi.

Mr. Clinton gave a keynote address on the value of tourism. He was paid $500,000, his wife’s disclosure filings say.

One week later, the U.S. and Abu Dhabi signed the final agreement for the facility. Etihad Airways operated its first flight from it last year.

Consider as well that the U.S. Federal government is sending a former Governor of Virginia to prison for accepting $15,000 and some gifts "with corrupt intent" even though it did not even allege he performed any official act in exchange, and even though the gifts were legal under Virginia state law.

Are the U.S. Justice Department and U.S. Attorneys investigating the apparent corrupt intentions of Bill and Hillary Clinton, as they did those of the Republican former Governor of Virginia? That's just a rhetorical question, of course. But if they did, or if a future DOJ should do so, circumstantial evidence alone would be quite enough to convict them.  

    

From The National Mall

My wishes for a Merry Christmas to all my fellow citizens.

And, because it's a Friday, one Eyebrow-Raising Headline of the Week with a faintly Christmas-y, or at least a Santa-ish, theme:


"Gazprom Executives Killed by Reindeer Herdsmen" - Upstream Online

Friday Document Dump

Okay, technically it's a Thursday, but today is a Federal Friday by Executive Order, so this qualifies as a Friday document dump.

The Director of National Intelligence has made a 'proactive disclosure' of assorted Benghazi-related documents, none of them particularly interesting. You can read them here.

New Freedom of Information Act Request Documents Released by ODNI

December 24, 2015

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is one of seven federal agencies participating in a pilot program to make records requested via the Freedom of Information Act more readily available to the public, as reflected in the recently released Third National Action Plan for Open Government.

Over the course of the pilot, ODNI will note the release of new “proactive disclosure” documents here on IC on the Record. Documents posted to DNI.gov this week include:

- The revocation of American passport of Anwar al-Aulaqi by the U.S. Dept. of State and any criminal complaint by the Dept. of Justice against U.S. citizens Mr. al-Aulaqi or Samir Khan

- All emails and means of correspondence pertaining to the overall situation in and around Benghazi, Libya

- PDDNI memo – changes to the HUMINT Control System (HCS) May 20, 2014

- NCSC Director Bill Evanina’s appointment calendar January January 5-9, 2015