while i was listening about kennedy

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... I came across this tidbit from George Kenney called Holbrooke Moves:

So this is just gossip. But I wonder what it means? From multiple sources of extremely high reliability. Soon after Hillary takes office she's getting briefed by senior staff. Richard Boucher, Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, which includes India and Pakistan, is giving his presentation. Holbrooke, not expected to be in the meeting, storms in, sits down, and listens to Boucher. Bear in mind that Boucher has been around the block; he was Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs in my time, is a long serving, very high-ranking senior career diplomat, a real apparatchik. After a few minutes Holbrooke interrupts Boucher, reams him out thoroughly. Very thoroughly. "Either you get on the bus or you'll be under the bus." Hillary says nothing. A couple minutes later Holbrooke storms out, slamming the door. I haven't heard what, in a substantive sense, set Holbrooke off. This puzzles me.

It's a separate question as to how Holbrooke seems to be taking over the State Department, placing his people all over and sticking his fingers in various pies. That's interesting, too, but what about trashing Boucher, in front of Hillary, with nary a peep out of her?

The only thing I can guess is that Boucher, in a pedestrian, workmanlike fashion — very much "Boucher-like" in my experience — was passing up the line the accumulated State Department wisdom as to how to stabilize Pakistan. Exactly the opposite of what Holbrooke wants. At this point my working hypothesis is that Holbrooke is engineering a sequence of events starting with a military coup, with the objective of producing a partial fracturing of Pakistan, just enough for U.S. troops in Afghanistan conveniently to sweep across the border into Balochistan. Why? Because, as Pepe Escobar points out, Balochistan is an "ultimate prize." I differ with Pepe in thinking that U.S. forces can't just waltz in without some kind of cover. And I'm somewhat gobsmacked that Holbrooke would play so fast and loose with Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. But, for now, I can't think of any other explanation.

Does Mr. Obama understand what his national security apparatus may be setting up? That's another very interesting question but one without, at this time, a clear answer.

The Escobar piece to which Kenney is referring in here is Part 2 of his Rebranding the Long War series for the truly unreadably presented online Asia Times, and very luckily some people don't mind doing something about that problem, or I'd never know what the heck they have to say.

Here's some background re Kenney's attitude toward Holbrooke....