Bandar Bush sacked! Retires to Texas ranch

Word from my favorite Israeli website is that Prince Bandar bin Sultan has been kicked out of his headship at Saudi Arabia's Ministry of International Mayhem.

Quoting confidential sources, Debkafiles reports that Prince Bandar's completely independent management of the long-stalled Syrian revolution has become an impediment to those in Washington who just want to move things along already.

More specifically, Bandar's irrational obsession with the imaginary Iranian nuclear weapons program is a growing concern in Washington as the Obama team tries to rebrand the Ayatollas from "Axis of Evil" to "Axis of decent chaps who just have some wrong-headed ideas and ridiculous headgear."

While the Debka report cites numerous clandestine Bandar visits to Tel Aviv, it is also a well-known fact that Bandar has made clandestine visits to Tehran. This should not be a surprise. That's what your top spy-guys do; clandestine! Once you have been elevated to the position of top spook in any modern society, everything you do going forward is by definition clandestine!

Anonymous sources have assured the think tank here at Falling Downs that Bandar has taken leave of The Kingdom, probably for good, and settled in Texas. He was last seen helping George W stack firewood at Prairie Chapel Ranch.

This is good news for Assad, Rouhani, and of course Obama, whose Middle East policy has been bogged down in a place worse than Nowhere pretty much since the time he first took office.

With Bandar in Texas, it should be smooth sailing from here on.

Saudi Arabia and the $3B gift to Lebanon's Army; what could go wrong?

For one thing, the fact that the biggest banker and supplier of the jihadist factions in Syria is becoming the de facto banker of the Lebanese army implies a certain common interest between the State of Lebanon and the jihadists. Will that translate into direct military support of anti-Assad fighters? And when it does, will Assad's army feel free to take the battle to the Lebanese Army?

Secondly, any encroachment by the Lebanese army on Hezbollah's area of influence in southern Lebanon will be fiercely resisted. While Hezbollah is widely portrayed as an Iranian proxy in Western media, the reality is that the Shite population of Lebanon sees them as a legitimate defense force, and only those Lebanese completely blinded by wishful thinking believe that more hardware would allow the Lebanese army to rout Hezbollah military forces.

Thirdly, what impact will internecine violence in southern Lebanon have on the relative stability that has obtained on the Lebanon-Israel border since Hezbollah forced the end of the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon? Even Lebanese who are not Hezbollah supporters understand that the Israeli withdrawal was a Hezbollah victory for all Lebanese, not just the Shia. 

Finally, while three billions may buy a lot of deadly hardware, the generosity of the Saudis can only have the effect of stimulating reciprocal generosity on the part of Iran and Russia, who have thus far shown no inclination to back away from their support of Assad. This Saudi gesture will inevitably lead to a massive escalation in the regional arms race. 

Given that the Syrian conflict is already leaking across Syria's borders on all sides, such an influx of weaponry will all but guarantee a regional conflagration that is bound to engulf not only Lebanon, but Turkey, Jordan, and Israel as well.

CIA now kid-friendly

Right there in the upper right corner of the CIA's home page you've got the CIA Kid's Zone.

Taking a page out of Baldur von Schirach's playbook, the folks at Langley have put together some fun activities for the wee ones. You've got your wordsearch, coloring pages, and so much more. It's never too early to get the tikes revved up about the security of the reich!

But let me explain what led me to the CIA's Kid Zone.

It began with this article by Carole Antony on the Counterpunch site. Antony spins a compelling and plausible yarn about, among other things, the changing of the guard in Qatar.

Seems a CIA agent hand-delivered a note from somewhere really high up in Washington to the Emir, advising him that he was outta there, and that his son Tamim would take over. The reason? Allegedly, during the bin Laden raid in Pakistan, documents came to light tying Al Qaida financing to a member of the al-Thani clan. If the old Emir had a problem with the shuffle, he was told Qatari assets around the world would be frozen.

So why is the young al-Thani considered an improvement? Because he is a Sandhurst man! He may wear the flowing robes for the photo-ops but he's one of us through and through and he'll know what's expected of him when he gets a call from Whitehall or Washington.

Antony got these fascinating facts from Osama Fawzi, a "former high-ranking member of the Qatari information ministry." Fawzi is now based in the US and runs the website Arab Times, the largest Arab-American e-newspaper in the US.

Go ahead; click on it... right below the Arab Times logo is an advert for and link to the CIA!

Which is how I got to the CIA Kid Zone, but it also raises a couple of other questions. Is this an arms length advertisement by the CIA on an independent website, or is it something else? If it's just advertising, maybe the CIA would be interested in sponsoring a NASCAR driver? I know Mark Martin would appreciate ending his career with a reliable and well-funded ride.

If it's something else... hell, maybe Osama Fawzi knows what happened to Bandar?

Here's to the news that disappears...

I'm a hard-core news junkie. When a story disappears I notice. I miss it. I want to know where it went.

One story that I really miss is the Bandar bin Sultan story. Bandar got a promotion in the hierarchy of the Kingdom last summer. Head of Saudi intelligence. Top spook.

Cynics would say that promotion just formalized the de facto role he's played for the last thirty years.

Which could well be true.

But within days of the official announcement Bandar disappeared from the global news radar. I noticed.

The disappearance coincided with a story well out on the fringe of the blogosphere that Bandar had been assassinated, allegedly by a Syrian hit squad. That story disappeared just as fast as Bandar disappeared.

But Bandar has been missing ever since. I've e-mailed a number of government agencies in the Kingdom looking for confirmation that Bandar is alive and well. Nothing.

I've e-mailed a number of top-drawer journos who would have access to the latest insider rumors. Nothing.

Wither Bandar?

Even more troubling, the country of Jordan has disappeared. The disappearance of Jordan is an important development. Jordan is an integral part of the Syria war narrative, the Gaza war narrative, and the Arab Spring narrative. That's three high profile narratives that suddenly see one of their main actors go missing.

Wither Jordan?

And wither all that hardware that was going through the Gaza tunnels ever since the collapse of Libya? We saw little or none of it in the imbroglio of the last ten days. Mind you, there was a conspicuous absence of attack helicopters in the air. Was that a silent acknowledgement that the Stingers are in Gaza?

These are all news nuggets that a hard-core news junkie misses when they're not around. I miss those stories. I worry about them. I want to know what became of them.

I raise a glass to the stories that disappear...

Fear and loathing in the Kingdom

Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan isn't the only one getting a little antsy about where the great Syrian adventure might be heading.

UN/Arab League special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi paid a visit to the Saudi's last week. It's hard to know the extent to which the House of Saud is driving the Syria debacle. It is widely acknowledged that they have been ponying up the money to fund the insurrection, along with Qatar, but to what extent are they committed to the idea of regime change in Syria?

Interestingly, there was no mention in Saudi media of Bandar bin Sultan being part of the meetings.

Where is Bandar?

But Bandar or no Bandar, at this point the Saudis must be asking just how long they are expected to fund this "revolution".

They would have had the same assurances from the same authoritative sources that Assad couldn't last more than a few months. Bearing in mind that those are more or less the same authoritative voices who talked us into the Iraq war and the quagmire in Afghanistan, it's not hard to see why there might be a few Royals starting to sweat.

The Saudis could be using that money to forestall rebellion among their own Shiite population.

Bandar Bush gets promoted to chief of Saudi Intelligence

You'll remember Bandar bin Sultan. Saudi ambassador to the US for over twenty years. Investor in Bush family business ventures. Implicated in a huge kick-back scandal in an arms deal between Britain and Saudi Arabia.

Bandar was so tight with the Bush family they referred to him as Bandar Bush.

Bandar Bush now has one of the most powerful and sensitive positions in the entire Middle East. His fingers will be in every pie where the Kingdom needs to overthrow a government (that would be any country with a Shia government) or conversely, stamp out dissent to keep a Sunni government in power (e.g. Bahrain).

An interesting development. Congratulations on your new job, Mr. bin Sultan!