I have been bustling around, distracted, since about three-thirty. Can’t sleep. Too much to think about.
I have to be in Gaithersburg to pick up a proposal to deliver tomorrow, the Bulgarians are coming to continue painting and demolish my front bathroom, and a crew is coming to take a load of assorted furniture that I don’t really care if I ever see again to points south.
Whew- what a week…there may or may not be a story this morning. I was going to pass along a public service announcement on ticks that I got from The Lovely Bea at Willow last night.
Let me back up for a minute. See, I got to the office for the pipeline review in the morning, a couple minutes before nine, and picking my notebook up from my desk I turned my wrist over casually and saw a black blob right where you would slit your wrists, if it came to that- the part where the blood is rich and right near the surface.
A moving black blob, at least parts of it. I had a damn tick. I put down the notebook. Fire, right? Shouldn’t I set fire to the little monster? Do not try to pick it off, I thought. I found my little folding knife with the wicked serrated blade and flicked it open while watching in fascination the movement of the tiny legs of the monster. I flicked my Bic open and heated the blade, then applying it to the tick and the tender flesh of my wrist.
The blob did not appear to like that, and frankly, neither did I. It took a couple tries, but the blob appeared to abandon his assault with head and teeth intact, and I destroyed him with the application of massive force from my white bucks as blood began to seep from the wound. Collateral Damage, I thought.
Bea looked at me sadly, later at the bar. “Vic, all you have to do is swab a little Vaseline on the insect- I think ticks are insects- and they can’t breath and relax. Then you can lift it off, put it in a little baggie and take it to the hospital to see if it carries Lime Disease.
I made a note on a napkin, and another to check the incubation period for a rash or something nasty.
So then home and boxes and piles of crap around the plastic-wrapped living room. My problem is books at the moment, since the Stager says they have to go before the first open house:
These are a combination of my hard-backs and Mom’s slip-cased folio editions that I have looked at in wonder all my life.
What to do with this? The books are not crap, like most of the rest of it, but holy cow, all those ideas are heavy.
So I was doing that, cycling through the bedrooms moving things around in anticipation of the larger move on Friday and the impending arrival of the Bulgarians when the words that dribbled from the radio started to hit me with electricity. Or was it the onset of Lime Disease?
I was not going to write a story, but a Turkish Journalist asked for my thoughts on Syria, not knowing that I don’t have any, and specifically who Secretary Kerry ought to pin the rose on in the Syrian opposition as the recipients of military aid. I think that decision was already made, on the QT, but like I said, I don’t have any thoughts.
They are all idiots, regime and insurgents, and I think we should blow Assad away and get on with life. We have done that everywhere else in the Arab Spring, right?
I deferred advise on the insurgent groups and told the journalist that the trifecta of things this here this morning is going to intensify the urgency in the White House on many issues in the Middle East:
“I think Secretary Kerry has got a real problem in identifying the best of the bad alternatives in Syria.
There have been two developments this morning, a third if you count yesterday’s leak about Libya. Let me frame the issue in the context of the American leadership conundrum with his current scandals. Strength enables bolder action on Syria. Weakness means continued dithering:
The FBI announces they have identified five suspects in Benghazi attack. This is a ticklish issue, since the whole point of the cover-up was to claim that al Qaida was on the run and there was no planned or coordinated terror attack. But the President is no longer facing re-election. If he goes ahead and treats them as enemy combatants and kills these guys with a drone strike or a SPECOPS mission (I think the former rather than the latter is likely) he will look strong again and put the Republicans back on their heels.”
Then, whammo, the Bureau announces this morning that they have shot and killed an associate of the older Boston Bomber. Wild card- just in, first things always wrong- supposition is that the Special Agent who went to interview the guy, who was in touch with Tamerlin and preparing to go to Chechnya, may reveal that there is in fact a domestic network of Jihadis.
Will this undermine or strengthen the President’s hand? If true, he looks like he lied to us again, but has a superb National Security Card to play.
Then there is Yesterday’s News, still explosive:
“Ex-Diplomats Report New Benghazi Whistleblowers with Info Devastating to Clinton and Obama” was the headline. Truth or more lies? I do not know.
“…former diplomats (say) the new revelations concentrate in two areas — what Ambassador Chris Stevens was actually doing in Benghazi and the pressure put on General Carter Ham, then in command of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and therefore responsible for Libya, not to act to protect jeopardized U.S. personnel.
Stevens’ mission in Benghazi, they will say, was to buy back Stinger missiles from al-Qaeda groups issued to them by the State Department, not by the CIA. Such a mission would usually be a CIA effort, but the intelligence agency had opposed the idea because of the high risk involved in arming “insurgents” with powerful weapons that endanger civilian aircraft.
Hillary Clinton still wanted to proceed because, in part, as one of the diplomats said, she wanted “to overthrow Gaddafi on the cheap.””
There it is- the reason not to send fighter jets or C-130s filled with commandos that awful night: the aircaft could be shot down by jihadis with our Stingers. Maybe the leadership feared the same sort of ambush that killed 17 members of SEAL Team Six in Afghanistan just weeks after the bin Laden raid.
Maybe the potential collateral damage that must have seemed unsupportable at the time. But I don’t think that is even the full story.
I think that mission also included an off-the-books Iran-Contra style operation was in progress to transfer some of these MANPAD missiles to the Syrian Rebels. Incendiary, if true. We know for a fact that Stinger-like missiles started to show up several months ago in rebel hands to defect the advantage of the Syrian Air Force.
…and note the fact that the FBI was crucial in the revelation of personal emails with his lovely biographer that destroyed CIA Director Petraeus just when the Administration needed no leaks from Langley about what was really going on in the Libya operation.
Take that with the intrusion by the Justice Department into the computers of two journalists from Fox News and ABC, and the wholesale monitoring of the AP. Well, it certainly seems like something a bit…comprehensive.
I think the Administration has promise and peril here. They may have to do something big to divert attention- but the FBI (under the hands of Eric Holder) is becoming some sort of Praetorian Guard. Interesting…but scary.
You will see more on all three of those new threads, and how the spinmasters in this town treat them could change the calculus of the political game being played.
And the poor Constitution? Another bit of collateral damage, as the FBI becomes something with powers that J. Edgar Hoover could only dream about.
Anyway, remember, if you get one of those pesky ticks, try the Vaseline and avoid the knife. You want to minimize the collateral damage, where possible.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com