Washington Times report.

The United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States said Tuesday that the benefits of bombing Iran's nuclear program outweigh the short-term costs such an attack would impose.

In unusually blunt remarks, Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba publicly endorsed the use of the military option for countering Iran's nuclear program, if sanctions fail to stop the country's quest for nuclear weapons.

Mark Curtis in the Guardian.

But Whitehall's view of Islamist militants as handy weapons or shock troops is far from historical. In 1999, during Nato's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, the Blair government secretly trained fighters in the Kosovo Liberation Army to act as Nato's soldiers on the ground. The KLA was openly described by ministers as a terrorist organisation, and worked closely with al-Qaida fighters who joined the Muslim cause; their military centre was in the same camp network in Kosovo and Albania where the SAS were providing training. One KLA unit was led by the brother of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden's right-hand man. This murky feature of Blair's "humanitarian intervention" remains conveniently overlooked in most accounts of the war.

James Denselow in the Guardian.

In 2009 the head of the army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "A high number of deaths inevitably makes you question what we are doing, how we are doing it. The conclusion one has to reach is, going right back to basics on this, that this mission is really important." Yet Dannatt is guilty of a moral triangulation that has typified the avoidance of a real audit into Afghan deaths.

Indeed, the constant repetition of the British death toll and fiscal expenditure is part of the "blood and treasure" argument that, in a country that supports its soldiers, places a firewall in front of any real debate on the war itself, typified by the consensus during the recent election campaign.

William Dalrypmle in the Guardian.

Since then the nature of Karzai's plans have become clearer: it has emerged that the head of the ISI, Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, has secretly been visiting Karzai; on Monday General Kayani, the head of the Pakistani army, will arrive in Kabul, presumably to confirm whatever deal has been agreed. It seems the Pakistanis are encouraging an accommodation between Karzai and the ISI-sponsored jihadi network of Sirajuddin Haqqani, which would give over much of the Pashtun south to Haqqani but preserve Karzai in power in Kabul. The US has been party to none of this, and administration officials are apparently surprised and alarmed.

Telegraph report.

The documents have been kept secret since the war but were released to the Chilcot Inquiry, which is holding hearings into the Iraq conflict, after Sir Gus O'Donnell, the head of the civil service, ruled that they raised "unprecedented" matters of public interest.

They show that in the months running up to the war, Lord Goldsmith repeatedly made clear that he had concerns about the legality of an invasion.

Daily Mail report.

Our new revelations include the ambiguous nature of the wording on Dr Kelly's death certificate; the existence of an anonymous letter which says his colleagues were warned to stay away from his funeral; and an extraordinary claim that the wallpaper at Dr Kelly's home was stripped by police in the hours after he was reported missing - but before his body was found.

Craig Murray writes.

General Stanley McChrystal has tendered his resignation (not necessarily accepted) as the rows about his crazy surge and plans to make Jalalabad a second Fallujah spill out into the public domain.

[...]

UK Special Envoy Sherard Cowper-Coles - who is less keen on killing people but believes we should occupy Afghanistan for at least a generation - has been sent away on extended leave to lie down for a few weeks in a darkened room.

New York Times report.

American taxpayers have inadvertently created a network of warlords across Afghanistan who are making millions of dollars escorting NATO convoys and operating outside the control of either the Afghan government or the American and NATO militaries, according to the results of a Congressional investigation released Monday.

The investigation, begun last year by the House Subcommittee for National Security, found that money given to these Afghan warlords often amounts to little more than mafia-style protection payments, with some NATO convoys that refused to pay the warlords coming under attack.

IMEMC report.

The Al Mustqbal Lebanese paper stated that France has information from different sources, mainly from Washington, revealing that Israel intends to wage a war against Lebanon in order to strike the Hezbollah party.

[...]

The experts told their American counterparts that preparations are nearly complete, and that the decision to go to war has already been approved, but will not be implemented at the current stage due to the congressional elections in the United States on November 2nd 2010.

Craig Murray writes.

The 300th British soldier killed in the Afghan War died today. The poor fellow survived for eight days before giving up in a Birmingham hospital. His injuries must have been appalling and that should remind us of the thousands of British soldiers maimed who did not die, some of whom sometimes wish they had.

Afghan casualties are, of course, very many times higher, with the additional horror that at least six Afghan civilians have been killed for every Afghan fighter.

We immediately have David Cameron and Liam Fox spewing out the standard propaganda about the occupation of Afghanistan making the world a safer place. This is quite simply a ludicrous proposition, and one to which the security, military and diplomatic establishments do not subscribe.

Guardian report.

Britain's special envoy to Afghanistan, known for his scepticism about the war in the country and his support for opening talks with the Taliban, has resigned from his post just a month before a critical international conference in Kabul.

[...]

A top diplomat in Kabul said Cowper-Coles had increasingly come to believe that "sod-all can be done" about turning round the fortunes of the nine-year war.

Guardian report.

The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks says it plans to release a secret military video of one of the deadliest US air strikes in Afghanistan in which scores of children are believed to have been killed.

[...]

The video could prove to be extremely embarrassing to the US military and risks weakening Afghan support. The US said it was targeting Taliban positions when it used weapons that create casualties over a wide area, including one-tonne bombs and others that burst in the air. But two US military officials told a newspaper last year that no one checked to see whether there were women and children in the buildings.

Craig Murray writes.

Yesterday Maxim Bakiyev, son of the recently ousted Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, was arrested in the UK when he arrived at Farnboro in a private plane.

[...]

It is interesting that the specific count of corruption cited relates to Pentagon contracts given to Maxim Bakiyev for the supply of the US airbase in Kyrgyzstan. This appears to be the standard US modus operandi for bribing dictators in Central Asia. In Uzbekistan, the US has given massive supply contracts to dictator's daughter Gulnara Karimova.

This is yet another ill effect of the Afghan war - the increase in corruption and the personal reward of dictators by the USA. Is the Pentagon exempt from the reach of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the United States?

Times report, possibly to be treated with some caution.

In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran. To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom's air defences will return to full alert.

Daily Mail story.

The investigation into the death of weapons inspector David Kelly is likely to be reopened, it has emerged.

The case has 'concerned' Attorney General Dominic Grieve and - as the highest ranking law officer in England - he is considering an inquiry to review the suicide finding, Whitehall sources say.

At the same time, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke is considering a request from campaigning doctors to release medical files relating to the death.

Craig Murray writes.

What I was being told last night was very interesting indeed. NATO HQ in Brussels is today a very unhappy place. There is a strong understanding among the various national militaries that an attack by Israel on a NATO member flagged ship in international waters is an event to which NATO is obliged - legally obliged, as a matter of treaty - to react.

[...]

I leave the last word to one of the senior NATO officers - who incidentally is not British:

"Nobody but the Americans doubts the US position on the Gaza attack is wrong and insensitve. But everyone already quietly thought the same about wider American policy. This incident has allowed people to start saying that now privately to each other."