Nine years after U.S. troops toppled Saddam Hussein and just a few months after the last U.S. soldier left Iraq, the country has become something close to a failed state. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki presides over a system rife with corruption and brutality, in which political leaders use security forces and militias to repress enemies and intimidate the general population. The law exists as a weapon to be wielded against rivals and to hide the misdeeds of allies. The dream of an Iraq governed by elected leaders answerable to the people is rapidly fading away.
The second global conference ever on nuclear material that has escaped state control is drawing President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Nuclear violators Iran and North Korea won’t be there.
The legacy of the Soviet Union’s breakup, inadequate atomic stockpile controls and the proliferation of nuclear-fuel technology mean the world may be awash with unaccounted-for weapons ingredients, ripe to be picked up by terrorists.
“If material is loose, it may already be impossible to contain or account for it,” said Graham Allison, director of Harvard University’s international security program and a former nuclear-security adviser to President Ronald Reagan. “There are no precise figures for how much high-enriched uranium or plutonium is missing.”
William Pfaff has written a stunning critique of Obama’s policy in Afghanistan — and what its implications are for what is left of the American republic. Note particularly the estimates for sustaining the American-created Afghan National Security Force after 2014: $4.1 billion annually, of which the Afghans will pay only $500 million. The U.S. will continue to shovel out $2.3 billion per year and NATO will make up for the rest.
The likelihood of sustaining this money flow for any length of time is vanishingly low, to put it charitably. This disastrous exit situation is a direct consequence of Obama’s reckless approval of General Stanley McChrystal’s fatally flawed “surge”plan in early 2010. The central flaw was clearly evident in September 2009, well before Obama’s approval in early 2010.
Namely, McChrystal’s plan did not address the debilitating problems impeding a rapid buildup of effective Afghan security forces in the short time horizon envisioned for the “surge’s” effect to begin an drawdown of forces 18 months after its initiation (e.g., as I explained in September 2009 and in January 2010). Predictably, the problems causing the inability of the Afghan Security Forces to meet McChrystal’s planned goals have remained in place and in some cases have gotten worse, notwithstanding the expenditure of billions of training dollars.
Pfaff’s conclusion is almost self-evident: Obama’s domestic politics played fast and loose with the question of escalating the “good” war in Afghanistan; his inexperience and naivete set him up to be steamrollered by the military; and now, Obama is so vulnerable, it is too late for him to pull off even a Nixonesque deception to extricate himself semi-gracefully by ”Vietnamizing” the Afghan War.
How the American dysfunctional political system will cope with the ramifications of this debacle is unknowable.
Phi Beta Iota: Iraq & Afghanistan are both the result of political corruption, intelligence corruption, and the desire of the military industrial complex to “churn” the military, using everything up so it has to be bought again. They probably did not anticipate the financial meltdown. At this point it is crystal clear that neither of the two political parties that share power while excluding all others, is fit to govern.
The military waited six days before releasing the name of U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians earlier this month. One of the reasons for the somewhat unusual delay: to give the military enough time to erase the sergeant from the internet — or at least try to.
That’s according to several Pentagon officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to McClatchy newspapers about the subject. The scrubbed material included photographs of Bales from the military’s official photo and video distribution website, along with quotes by the 38-year-old sergeant in the Joint Base Lewis-McChord newspaper regarding a 2007 battle in Iraq “which depicts Bales and other soldiers in a glowing light.”
The sergeant’s wife, Karilyn Bales, and their two young children were also moved onto Lewis-McChord, reportedly for their protection. Her blog, titled “The Bales Family” about her life as a mother and military spouse, was removed although it’s not known how, precisely. The military’s reasoning for the blackout: protecting the privacy of the accused and his family.
“Protecting a military family has to be a priority,” a Pentagon official told McClatchy. “I think the feeding frenzy we saw after his name was released was evidence that we were right to try.”
Try as they might, the military couldn’t completely scrub Bales from the web. What you put online lasts pretty much forever, and that’s no different for the military. Reporters quickly discovered cached versions of Bales’ photograph, the quotes from his base newspaper and the family blog. “Of course the pages are cached; we know that,” the official added. “But we owe it to the wife and kids to do what we can.”
But as McClatchy points out, the military didn’t hesitate to release the name of Major Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people in a 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas. (Though Hasan was unmarried and had no children.)
Phi Beta Iota: Evidence exists of a unit action including vehicles. 1000 repatriated veterans a month continue to attempt suicide, with 18 a day successfully committing suicide.
11 years after 9/11, scientists from America’s weapons labs will be releasing conclusive data on the types of weapons used to destroy the World Trade Center.
The outlet will be through Jeff Prager, we will carry as much of the material, it is volumes, as possible, but the original source is both official, highly classified and less “unauthorized” than believed.
Word is, that, based on lack of any movement toward investigation, the White House has set a “leak anything you want” policy, especially during this election year and based on what is a fear that anything not disclosed now will provide a reason to silence President Obama prior to a very probable second term.
A bit of background and we will move on. During closed hearings of the 9/11 Commission, information was requested of the Department of Energy about the possibility that nuclear weapons “may have been on the planes,” to quote what I am not supposed to be able to quote. Remember, this was their line of questioning, not my own.
The DOE responded by saying that the smallest weapon in their arsenal was over 300 pounds and would fit inside a “steamer trunk.”
The photo below is of a second generation fission weapon first tested in 1959:
By now, you’d think we’d be entering the end of the 9/11 era. One war over in the Greater Middle East, another hurtling disastrously to its end, and the threat of al-Qaida so diminished that it should hardly move the needle on the national worry meter. You might think, in fact, that the moment had arrived to turn the American gaze back to first principles: the Constitution and its protections of rights and liberties.
Yet warning signs abound that 2012 will be another year in which, in the name of national security, those rights and liberties are only further Guantanamo-ized and abridged. Most notably, for example, despite the fact that genuinely dangerous enemies continue to exist abroad, there is now a new enemy in our sights: namely, American oppositional types and whistleblowers who are charged as little short of traitors for revealing the workings of our government to journalists and others.
Here and elsewhere, it looks like we can expect the Obama administration to continue to barrel down the path that has already taken us far from the country we used to be. And by next year, if a different president is in the Oval Office, expect him to lead us even further astray. With that in mind, here are five categories in the sphere of national security where 2012 is likely to prove even grimmer than 2011.
1. Ever More Punitive(Ever Less Fair-minded).
2. Ever More Legal Limbo (Ever Less Confidence in the Constitution).
3. Ever More Secrecy(Ever Less Transparency)
4. Ever More Distrust (Ever Less Privacy)
5. Ever More Killing(Ever Less Peace)
Karen J. Greenberg is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University Law School and author of “The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days.”More Karen Greenberg
One day after Afghan President Hamid Karzai lashed out at the US and implied that more than one US soldier was involved in the mass murder of 16 Afghans in Kandahar's Panjwai district last weekend, a delegation from the Afghan parliament is claiming that at least 15 US soldiers “accompanied by 2 helicopters” were involved in the massacre. From Khaama Press:
A delegation of the Afghan parliament members who visited Kandahar province said at least 15 US troops were behind the assassination of 16 Afghan villagers at Panjwai district in this province.The delegation included 5 Afghan parliament members who were sent by the Afghan House of Representatives to find out the facts behind the massacre of 16 Afghan civilians at Panjwai district.
The delegation presented its findings report to the Afghan House of Representative which states that the civilians massacre was plotted where at least 15 US troops were involved.
A member of the Afghan parliament Shakila Hashimi who presented the report to the Afghan House of Representatives said false statements were given to the Afghan people by provincial governor Toryalai Weesa and US commander saying that the shooting was carried out by a single US soldier.
She also added, the assassination was carried out by 2 groups of US soldiers consisting of 15 to 20 soldiers and were accompanied by 2 helicopters.
