What Is Really Going On

Every so often, the Skip Bureau publishes its best guess as to the actual happenings in the world, not that reported by media, your brother-in-law, or other reliable sources.

So, Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan. Curiously, legitimate opponents of Musharraf have been dropping like flies, to legal problems, or, er, like flies. However, Musharraf's hold on Pakistan remains tenuous. It has been apparent to the Bureau since the beginning of the misadventure in Afghanistan and the global war on ragheads that Musharraf would not long endure. He has always been nothing more than the puppet of the Bush administration, and is unpopular amongst some very hard men. It appears on first blush and with nothing even remotely approaching evidence that some intelligence agency or agencies have seen fit to help him remain in power.

Now, given the previous paragraph, one would normally point at the CIA or Pakistani Intelligence, but there are a lot of potential candidates. India, for instance, is situated to make inroads into Pakistan, having much more money available and an improving governing process. China has an interest and China's intelligence capability in wet work is pretty much unknown at this point, but they have steadily been improving their assessment capability, and one should not be surprised at effective field work from them. Of course, the CIA is a suspect, as they treat Pakistan like a back yard, having operated there for decades now, due to Afghanistan having been a front line in the cold war.

On the economic front, the dollar continues to fall, but all other currencies fall as well. China is forcing its currency down as a 'race to the bottom' with the dollar. The Euro is falling more slowly than the dollar. Ditto the Pound, Loony, so on. However, the global resource boom continues, driven, mostly, by falling currencies. The risk is that the falling currencies will misprice commodities and cause an eventual over-production in commodities, pretty much as inflation has caused an over-production in everything else so far. However, for those of you out there trying to avoid losing your shirts, the key thing to remember is that all paper money is inflating and thus losing value. None of them are safe.

On the US political front, it is appearing more and more that Obama may win the presidency. Ron Paul has made major inroads and still remains viable for the nomination, and the Bureau makes not secret about supporting him. However, many of the voters that Ron Paul needs are also possible Obama supporters, and Iowa has shown Obama can win them.

On the plus side, it appears Giuliani may be done for. This is a positive outcome of the Paul campaign, in that Paul and Giuliani compete for substantially the same Republican vote, that of the socially liberal fiscal conservative Republican. These have almost entirely gone to Ron Paul due to his superior record in civil liberties. Giuliani has to count on 'blue state Republicans', which are getting pretty thin on the ground anyway.

As for Iraq, it has become clear that genocide has reduced violence. After all, there's nobody left to kill in much of the country...

There are some improvements attributable to better management, but they all end up being in the vein of working with the locals, which often means surrendering key goals the administration had prior to the repurposing of the war. What this means is that many of the left's ideals, such as feminism, are going to be ignored in the final settlement in Iraq, pretty much as the Iraqis want it.

Iran continues to puzzle the stunted analysts in DC. What every person who analyzes anything in the Middle East must understand is very few arab countries have anything remotely approaching a unified government. In most cases, there is a secular government, which in Iran is Ahmanijad or however you spell it, and then there is a much more powerful group, which in Iran comprises the Ayatollahs or however you spell it. Many countries are essentially in multi-way civil wars.

So, Ahmanijad is the president of Iran, which is a bully pulpit, but does not reflect the feelings of the people or even the position of the religious leaders. The truth is that Iran as a country holds no real ill will against the United States. However, they are, understandably, nervous, given what has happened in Iraq.

No matter how much one may argue the US had ever reason to attack Iraq, nobody outside of the US concurs. Basically, the US has been seen as an aggressor, attacking a country for little more than failure to abide by a technicality in an agreement with the UN. It was pretty apparent to anyone interested in intelligence that Iraq never posed any real threat to the US, being one of the better run countries in the middle east.

In the same vein, Iran poses no serious threat to the US or its interests. However, it is refusing to 'play nice', which offends sensibilities in the neocon camp. Iran does, however, pose a threat to the US if mishandled. Iran has a virtual lock on the Strait of Hormuz, making potential losses high without an overland trek to get to Iran. The US military is, of course, not in any shape to fight Iran anyway.

The US military is in bad shape. Aircraft are running high hours. Ships are old. Morale is low due to extended deployments. As long as we continue to pretend our soldiers are not permanently deployed professional soldiers, we will have morale problems. As long as we put off spending to fund necessary repairs, we will have equipment failure, which, by the way, will exacerbate morale problems.

Fortunately, a corner seems to have been turned, with the National Intelligence Estimate showing some signs of a revolt against the once solid Bush regime. The drubbing the Republicans are receiving by the Democrats in terms of primary turnout shows that this neocon adventure may be nearly over. The Bureau does not, however, expect any improvement with a Democratic administration, harkening back to the days of Clinton and his progression of stupid interventions, one of which, Somalia, is a textbook example of how to ruin a country.