News Briefs, 11/07/08

Obama wins North Carolina, becoming the first Democrat to carry the state since Carter.

Iranian President, Ahmadinejad congratulates Obama. It was the first time since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution that an Iranian leader congratulated an American president-elect.

US records highest unemployment rate in 14 years - 6.5%.

Here's a compilation of news articles on Obama's White House team.

Coleman's lead over Franken gets smaller even before the recount starts in Minnesota. Coleman leads by 236 votes.

Will Obama campaign manager David Plouffe replace Biden in the Senate?

Democratic challenger's lead over Virgil Goode increases in Virginia's 5th district.

Democrat Kratovil extends lead in Maryland's first disrtrict.

Misguided

CQ Politics: Covert U.S. action to topple Iran’s government through operations inside the country’s borders has become a major hindrance in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner asserts in a new study.

...Support for a handful of proxy groups began in mid-2005, including the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, which the State Department lists as a terrorist organization. But clandestine operations escalated only within the last year or two, and a new presidential finding was signed and partially briefed to appropriate members of Congress, which expanded funding for a wider scope of operations within Iran, according to Gardiner.

“Whether explicitly approved in this latest presidential finding or not, it is now fairly clear that assassinations are being carried out,” Gardiner writes, citing the work of Andrew Cockburn in Counterpunch in May as well as the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, ABC News and numerous other U.S. and Iranian news agencies in support of his claims. “Terms like ‘targeted officials’ and ‘high-value targets’ have clear meaning in the sterile language of covert operations,” but the national security community is uneasy about whether the terms reflect government complicity in the proxy groups’ killing of Iranian leaders in government, the military or the nuclear program.

There are four main groups, which are managed by the CIA and U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, Gardiner writes. They include the MEK, which has been performing intelligence work for the United States for at least a few years; the Free Life Party of Kurdistan, or PJAK, which performs combat operations in Iran and is supplied with Russian weapons; the Jundallah, which operates out of Afghanistan and Pakistan and conducts killings, leaving behind videotapes in some cases; and a new group, the Ahwazi Arabs of southwest Iran.

Bomb, Bomb, Bomb

McCain's last meeting with an editorial board didn't go so well. Now Think Progress reports on an audio clip of McCain's interview with The Denver Post editorial board, where McCain recommends a hard-line approach to Iran. Read the entire story here.

Here's an extract featuring multiple administration officials and others disagreeing with McCain's recommendations.

Only after years of failure — and a strengthened and emboldened Iran — have members of Bush’s team finally recognized the need to engage Iran. In other words, McCain is now more extreme on Iran than the Bush administration:

ADM. MIKE MULLEN, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair: I would like to have a healthy dialogue with Iran…I do think engagement would offer an opportunity, certainly, to understand each other better. [6/21/08]

ROBERT GATES, Defense Secretary: We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage…and then sit down and talk with them…If there is going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can’t go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us. [5/14/08]

NICOLAS BURNS, Undersecretary of State for political affairs: There is a choice: confrontation or diplomacy. We prefer diplomacy and we are trying to open two diplomatic channels — on the nuclear issue and on Iraq. [5/2/07]

The call to move away from the isolationist policy McCain hopes to revive has been endorsed by five secretaries of state, including McCain adviser Henry Kissinger, as well as McCain’s own neocon foreign policy adviser Robert Kagan. McCain’s “let’s completely isolate Iran” approach makes him even more radical than President Bush, who last year said, “We can have meetings. Talking is not the problem. We can talk to Iran.”

Iran and Iraq

Via Think Progress:

Former House Majority Leader Richard Armey (R-TX), “who was wavering on giving President Bush the authority to wage war in late 2002, said Vice President Cheney misled him by saying that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had direct personal ties to al-Qaeda terrorists and was making rapid progress toward a suitcase nuclear weapon.” There was “no intelligence to support” Cheney’s assertions.

Five former secretaries of state — including Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, and Henry Kissinger — urged talks with Iran yesterday. “I agree with Madeleine, and I suspect my other colleagues, that we should try to talk to them,” Powell said during a forum hosted by The George Washington University.

On McCain and Iraq

H/T: Think Progress