by Ray McGovern, Consortium News, June 25, 2010
Raymond McGovern (born 1939) is a retired CIA officer turned political activist (see biography).
Is President Barack Obama so dense that he could not see why Gen. Stanley McChrystal might actually have wanted to be fired — and rescued from the current March of Folly in Afghanistan, a mess much of his own making?
McChrystal leaves behind a long trail of broken promises and unfulfilled expectations. For example, there is no real security, at least during the night, in Marja, which McChrystal devoted enormous resources to conquer this spring.
Remember his boast that he would then bring to Marja a “government-in-box” and offer an object lesson regarding what was in store for those pesky Taliban in Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second largest city?
But it’s now clear that there will be no offensive against Kandahar anytime soon. On its merits, that is surely a good thing, but it is a huge embarrassment for McChrystal and his former boss, the never nonplussed Gen. David Petraeus.
When McChrystal and his undisciplined senior aides let a Rolling Stone reporter know what they really thought of the “intimidated” Obama and most of his national security team, Obama and his advisers rose to the bait.
Phi Beta Iota: Ray McGovern is a man of intelligence and integrity. He gives General McChrystal too much credit here for a contrived exit, while at the same time touching on the pathethic lack of integrity in the White House, happy to sacrifice lives of “the little people” if it can embroil General Patraeus, who never had a shot at the Presidency, in a one-man quagmire. What Obama has just done is treason in the purest sense of the word: there has been no strategic analysis, no Whole of Government conceptualization of what we need to do to rescue America while disengaging from a lecacy of 50 years of colonialism, militarism, and predatory immoral capitalism. Obama is treating the US military–and especially General Patraeus who should have known better than to accept– as a pawn on the political chess-board–at the same time that he is, with malice aforethought, doing nothing at all in the public interest, just counting the days to his Goldman Sachs retirement package. Shame. Shame. Shame.
Millions of lives have been lost, economies have collapsed, and whole states have failed under brutal repression. And what has made it worse is that the world is in denial. The end of the Cold War was also supposed to be the “End of History” — when democracy swept the world and repression went the way of the dinosaurs. Instead, Freedom House reports that only 60 percent of the world's countries are democratic — far more than the 28 percent in 1950, but still not much more than a majority. And many of those aren't real democracies at all, ruled instead by despots in disguise while the world takes their freedom for granted. As for the rest, they're just left to languish. Although all dictators are bad in their own way, there's one insidious aspect of despotism that is most infuriating and galling to me: the disturbing frequency with which many despots, as in Kyrgyzstan, began their careers as erstwhile “freedom fighters” who were supposed to have liberated their people. Back in 2005, Bakiyev rode the crest of the so-called Tulip Revolution to oust the previous dictator. So familiar are Africans with this phenomenon that we have another saying: “We struggle very hard to remove one cockroach from power, and the next rat comes to do the same thing.
1. KIM JONG IL of North Korea (yrs in power: 16) Visa says no info
2. ROBERT MUGABE of Zimbabwe (yrs in power: 30) US embassy
3. THAN SHWE of Burma (yrs in power: 18) US embassy
4. OMAR HASSAN AL-BASHIR of Sudan (yrs in power: 21) US embassy
5. GURBANGULY BERDIMUHAMEDOV of Turkmenistan (yrs in power: 4) US embassy
6. ISAIAS AFWERKI of Eritrea (yrs in power: 17) US embassy
7. ISLAM KARIMOV of Uzbekistan (yrs in power: 20) US embassy
8. MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD of Iran (yrs in power: 5) Iran c/o embassy of Pakistan + Canadian embassy
9. MELES ZENAWI of Ethiopia (yrs in power: 19) US embassy
10. HU JINTAO of China (yrs in power: 7) US embassy
11. MUAMMAR AL-QADDAFI of Libya (yrs in power: 41) US rep
12. BASHAR AL-ASSAD of Syria (yrs in power: 10) US embassy
13. IDRISS DÉBY of Chad (yrs in power: 20) US embassy
14. TEODORO OBIANG NGUEMA MBASOGO of Equatorial Guinea (yrs in power: 31)
15. HOSNI MUBARAK of Egypt (yrs in power: 29) US embassy
16. YAHYA JAMMEH of Gambia (yrs in power: 16) US embassy
17. HUGO CHÁVEZ of Venezuela (yrs in power: 11) US embassy
18. BLAISE COMPAORÉ of Burkina Faso (yrs in power: 23) US embassy
19. YOWERI MUSEVENI of Uganda (yrs in power: 24) US embassy
20. PAUL KAGAME of Rwanda (yrs in power: 10) US embassy
21. RAÚL CASTRO of Cuba (yrs in power: 2) “Cuba interests section”
22. ALEKSANDR LUKASHENKO of Belarus (yrs in power: 16) US embassy
23. PAUL BIYA of Cameroon (yrs in power: 28) US embassy
Comment: We are uncertain why FP stopped at 23, why they list Hugo Chavez over Blaise Compaore' (who they claim murdered an opponent, while Chavez' gov was the 1st to respond to the Haiti crisis), and what their view is of Saudi Arabia whose known to fund the notorious Pakistani Intelligence Service (ISI) who are connected to terrorist operations, and Saudi Arabia was well-known to be pro-Taliban and they were recently revealed to be funding terrorism in Iraq. Also check out the History Commons timeline associated with the Saudis and Taliban connection.
Non-genius idea for FP: link information sources that backup your list.
SECRECY NEWS from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2010, Issue No. 50
June 21, 2010
The Federal Bureau of Investigation identified 14 suspected “leakers” of classified U.S. intelligence information during the past five years, according to newly disclosed statistics (pdf).
Between 2005 and 2009, U.S. intelligence agencies submitted 183 “referrals” to the Department of Justice reporting unauthorized disclosures of classified intelligence. Based on those referrals or on its own initiative, the FBI opened 26 leak investigations, and the investigations led to the identification of 14 suspects.
“While DOJ and the FBI receive numerous media leak referrals each year, the FBI opens only a limited number of investigations based on these referrals,” the FBI explained in a written response to a question from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).
“In most cases, the information included in the referral is not adequate to initiate an investigation. The most typical information gap is a failure to identify all those with authorized access to the information, which is the necessary starting point for any leak investigation. When this information is sufficient to open an investigation, the FBI has been able to identify suspects in approximately 50% of these cases over the past 5 years. Even when a suspect is identified, though, prosecution is extremely rare (none of the 14 suspects identified in the past 5 years has been prosecuted),” the FBI said.
The FBI report to Congress predated the indictment of suspected NSA leaker Thomas A. Drake, who was presumably one of the 14 suspects that the FBI identified. The case of Shamai Leibowitz, the FBI contract linguist who pled guilty to unauthorized disclosures in December 2009, is not reflected in the new report and may be outside the scope of intelligence agency leaks that were the subject of the congressional inquiry.
The FBI recommended that agencies continue to report unauthorized disclosures of classified information to the Department of Justice for possible criminal investigation, but it said they should also consider imposing their own administrative penalties. “Because indictments in media leak cases are so difficult to obtain, administrative action may be more suitable and may provide a better deterrent to leaks of classified information,” the FBI said.
The previously unreported statistical information on unauthorized disclosures of classified intelligence information was transmitted to Congress on April 8, 2010 and was published this month in the record of a September 16, 2009 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing (pdf).
“As a matter of national security and employment discipline, it is important that leakers face repercussions for improper disclosure of classified information,” Sen. Whitehouse said. This formulation notably implies that a leaker should be subject to punishment even if no damage to national security results from the unauthorized disclosure, so as to bolster an agency's authority over its employees.
The Obama Administration has adopted an increasingly hard line toward leaks of classified information with multiple prosecutions pending or underway, as noted recently in Politico (May 25) and the New York Times (June 11). A recent memorandum from the Director of National Intelligence will “streamline” the processing of leak investigations, Newsweek reported June 11.
When Franklin A. Richards, a CIA agent, readily accepted assignment to Iraq, he knew he might have to take a bullet — some lead — for his
country.
And he says he took plenty, but not because he was shot.
Richards, a firearms expert, was sent to Iraq in August 2003 to provide weapons training. He wasn't hit by a bullet during the three weeks he was there, but according to a lawsuit he has filed, he was seriously wounded by lead poisoning.
Now he can no longer work as an agent, or at much of anything else, he says. The former agent is suing the CIA because of a long list of
ailments that he alleges grew from being ordered to labor in a toxic workplace that even the Army had placed off-limits.
Phi Beta Iota: Obama has betrayed both the public and the government civil servants and uniformed personnel. He is nothing more than a continuation of “business as usual” under Bush-Cheney, and Leon Panetta is obviously nothing more than a placeholder who liked being played for a fool. This case officer (evidently The Washington Post no longer employs editors or fact checkers–in the foreign intelligence world agents commit treason, case officers handle them) deserves better. He should make this a class action lawsuit for $100 million, and seek $10 million for himself and his lawyer. CIA is covering up so many high crimes and misdemeanors, it is hard to get a grip on all of them, but the worse high crime has been CIA mismanagement of the clandestine, analytic, administrative, and so-called scientific and technical services. From the Afghan Eight to the Iraq Thousand, CIA is so morally bankrupt that plowing salt into the ground at Langley would be an upgrade.
So, let me see — State wants, say, a billion dollars worth of DoD hardware gratis…what does the Marine Corps Security Guard Battalion say about all that? I guess that means jobs for former aviation warrant officers and maybe retired SF NCOs….but who pays for the contractors?
WASHINGTON — The State Department says its diplomatic staff won’t be safe after the American military leaves Iraq unless it has its own combat-ready protection force, a warning that underscores concerns about the Iraq army and police the US has spent billions of dollars training and equipping.
Vehicles and aircraft used by the department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security to protect personnel in other parts of the world are “inadequate to the extreme security challenges in Iraq,’’ according to documents the State Department sent to the Pentagon in April.
The bureau will need to “duplicate the capabilities of the US military’’ by December 2011, the documents say, when all American forces are scheduled to leave Iraq.
The State Department wants 24 of the Army’s Black Hawk helicopters, which cost between $12 million and $18 million each; 50 bomb-resistant vehicles; heavy cargo trucks; fuel trailers; and high-tech surveillance systems, according to the documents.
Patrick Kennedy, the State Department’s undersecretary for management, wants the equipment transferred at “no cost’’ from military stocks.
Rotting Oder of Pentagon Info Op Signals Effort to Shore Up its Great Game in the Hindu Kush
On 13 June, James Risen of the New York Times conveniently (at least for the Pentagon and the war party) reported that the “United States has discovered $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan [also attached below for your convenience]. I say convenient, because time is running out for the Pentagon in Afghanistan, and this report introduces a ‘new’ reason for occupying Afghanistan. The timing of this report was noticed very quickly by several skeptical commentators ( e.g., here and here).
But there is more. The NYT report has the rotting odor of yet another Pentagon misinformation operation to lather up the masses using the willing offices of the tired old Gray Lady of journalism. The oder is intense, because Risen’s Pentagon-inspired geological report coincides with the growing disenchantment with Afghan adventure. And more people are coming to appreciate the disconnect between (1) a spate of credible reports (e.g., here) describing the lack of progress in Afghanistan, particularly the failure of the showcase Marja COIN strategy to deliver its predicted result and (2) the requirement imposed by President Obama to show progress by the end of this summer. Bear in mind, Obama’s ‘requirement’ was imposed on the Pentagon when he improved the flawed McChrystal/Petraeus surge plan and sold it to the American people last fall. The military and spokesmen for the Obama administration began immediately to back away from the deadline shortly after its inception, and it has already been stretched to coincide with the mid-term elections in November — which goes to show that domestic politics do not end at the water’s edge?
Although the several commentators expressed their justifiable skepticism about the timing of the NYT report, to the best of my knowledge, none have addressed the substance of the mineral estimate. Shortly after it was published, my good friend and colleague Pierre Sprey, who has been called a vampire because he does his best work in the dark after midnight, got to the heart of the latter question and put the entire story together in an elegantly brief email that he distributed in the dark early hours of 14 June.
Attached for your reading pleasure is Pierre’s incisive critique:
Pierre Sprey
U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan
Pierre Sprey 14 June 2010
The timing of this release of ancient mining news–especially when floated with Petraeus' name plastered all over it in a tried-and-true government propaganda outlet like the N.Y. Times–smells to me like a last ditch attempt to invent an economic justification for hanging on many more years in the hopeless Afghani morass.
Note that the now sacrosanct 1980s Russian mineral survey was “stumbled on” six years ago in 2004 by an American reconstruction team foraging in the Afghan Geological Survey Library. Then, according to the Times' (read Petraeus and DoD) spin, nothing happened until two years later when the U.S. Geological Survey launched a 2006 aerial mineral survey followed by another in 2007, supposedly yielding all-new evidence of astonishing mineral wealth (iron, gold, copper, lithium, supposedly a trillion dollar's worth) just waiting to be tapped. Supposedly, this astonishing new evidence was then ignored by all until a Pentagon business development task force “rediscovered” the ignored USGS mineral data in 2009.
This spin is quite untrue: in 2005, the Afghan government, quite aware of their mineral resources, opened bidding on copper mining leases in Logar Province, bidding that was won by the Chinese in 2007. As for the reliability of the USGS data, note that they report 1.8 billion tons of potential lithium deposits (lithium is very trendy with the greens these days) but only a puny 111 million tons in proven or probable deposits.
But none of this purportedly astonishing USGS aerial survey data has raised much dust in the international mining world, despite the fact that the entire current New York Times scoop was thoroughly covered by Reuters and Mining Exploration News a year ago in April of 2009.
So what turned the ho-hum Reuters news of April, 2009 into a hot Times scoop in June of 2010? Is there any connection with the desperate need of McChrystal, Petraeus and Gates for a life jacket, now that the Afghan surge they floated is sinking so rapidly?
WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.
Chapter 20, “21st Century Counterintelligence: Evaluating the Health of the Nation,” especially Dereliction of Duty (Defense); Disinformation, Other Information Pathologies, & Repression; Emprire as a Cancer including Betrayal & Deceit; Impeacahable Offenses (Modern); Institutionalized Ineptitude; and Intelligence (Lack Of), all in the online hyperlinked version of INTELLIGENCE for Earth: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability (pages 179-205, in Part III.
Talk of wealth from minerals by US geologists and Pentagon personnel add to the darkening view that those involved in war, corruption and disregard for the people of Afghanistan (and sacrificed soldiers + more to be sacrificed) will prosper…
Income from cannabis per ha (gross/net) US$ 3,900 / US$ 3,341 | Income from opium per ha (gross/net) US$ 3,600 / US$ 2,005 | Income from wheat per ha (gross/net) US$ 1,200 / US$ 960
+ Gas Pipeline attempts = 1998 Congressional record related to Unocal/U.S. interests in Central Asia & November 2001 Asia Times article about the book “Bin Laden, la verite interdite (Bin Laden, the forbidden truth)” mentioning the US government's main objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia.
“To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11”
-Tony Blair (London Times, 7/17/02)
originally at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-358038,00.html but no longer at that URL
