Several issues here: (1) Afghan cultural issues may frustrate success no matter how capable or industrious the military CI agents are or what techniques they may propose; (2) except for a few small and specialized strategic units, military CI is pretty unsophisticated; (3) even though military CI is pretty primitive, we're not exactly overstocked in that particularly skill set; (4) in the case of Air Force and Navy, CI agents are also conventional criminal investigators and that never bodes well from a CI perspective.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Concerned over the growing pattern of Afghan soldiers and police officers attacking their coalition counterparts, the American military is sending 80 counterintelligence agents to Afghanistan to help stem the threat of Taliban infiltration in the Afghan National Security Forces, military officials said Friday.
Phi Beta Iota: Sending 80 alleged counterintelligence specialists at this late date (mostly enlisted, none with language or foreign culture skills) is worse than a joke, it is a clear indication that the flag officers in charge of the mess have no intention of leaving and also have no clue. This is bad theater at best.
Phi Beta Iota: The President's declaration that the border is “safe” has inspired a sense of disbelief and even scorn among those who know that it simply is not so. This level of “cognitive dissonance” now characterizes informed public reactions to most of what the President says on any issue. There is only one cure: he needs intelligence with integrity. Or not.
This blaster is intended to bring two very important reports and a short third report to your attention. The three should be thought about together.
1 is an essay by Robert ParryConsortium News. It is an excellent summary of the last 10 years of perpetual war and the debacle wrought by the Neoconmen. It also explains why these wars are now un-winnable and how President Obama has walked merrily into the Aftrap and is being set up as the fall guy to the Neconmen's debacle. (My essay, which appeared in the Jan-Feb issue of Challenge, explaining the domestic politics underpinning the Pentagon's need for perpetual war can be found here.)
2 is a more narrowly focused but deeply disturbing essay in Counterpunch by Gareth Porter, who reports on a recent book by Saleem Shahzad, the distinguished Pakistani journalist whose body was found outside Islamabad last week. As Porter explains, Shahzad has laid out how Al Qaeda, especially Dr. Ayman Zawahiri (the brains of the outfit), laid out a strategy that played President Bush (and his fellow travellers) like like a violin. Porter describes how the name of the game has been to dupe the cowboys in America to overreact to generate blowback in the Muslim word. He explains why Zawahiri wants the US mucking around in Afghanistan. But Belogolova's report does raise a valid concern. If Shahzad is right in his assessment of Zawahiri, the good Dr must be laughing his rocks off … because from his perspective, Afghanistan may turn out to be the gift that keeps on giving.
3 is Olga Belogolova's report on a new Senate study in the 8 June issue of National Journal …. She tells the reader that the Senate report suggests we can not even leave Afghanistan without collapsing the economy. This is kind of thinking can be used as yet another pretext for signing up to Zawahiri's script of the U.S. staying in Afghanistan forever, enraging the Muslim world — and in the near term for scaring Obama into not withdrawing significant forces in July as he has promised to do. I am not so sure this concern over the economic effects of reducing aid is that important. If so much of the aid money goes into the swamp of corruption, a large part of the collapse may be related to corruption. Is eliminating the honey pot stoking corruption that bad for the Afghan people (or the Americans for that matter)? Will Afghanistan really collapse? Who knows? But I doubt it.
The real subject of these essays, however is the sorry state of the United States and its political elites who are either working for the benefit of other countries (i.e., see Parry's discussion of the Neoconmen and Israel) or are brain dead strategists in Versailles on the Potomac, who, as we used to say in the Pentagon, “went for the cape — right off the cliff.” An now the numbskulls who got the United States into these messes are suggesting we must stay the course. Which brings us back to the Colonel's lament in my last blaster.
Chuck Spinney
La Ciotat, France
Phi Beta Iota: Integrity might be lost at the top, but it is the failure of integrity among all ranks that enables the corruption at the top to persist. We swear an oath to the Constitution, not to the chain of command, but all of our officers, with few exceptions, appear at this time to be in violation of their oath to the Constitution.
This email is from an active duty colonel who travels all over Afghanistan. He actually goes on foot patrols with troops to see things for himself. Here is his latest report. His message is bad Ju Ju, I am afraid.
Chuck Spinney
La Ciotat, France
To All,
The mendacity is getting so egregious that I am fast losing the ability to remain quiet; these yarns of “significant progress” are being covered up by the blood and limbs of hundreds – HUNDREDS – of American uniformed service members each and every month, and you know that the rest of this summer is going to see the peak of that bloodshed.
The article by Michael O'Hanlon last week (i.e. Success worth paying for in Afghanistan) and the one in today's WSJ by Kagan and Kagan (i.e., We Have the Momentum in Afghanistan) made me sick to my stomach – especially the latter. Have you seen it yet? It is the most breathless piece of yellow journalism I’ve seen in the entire OIF-OEF generation.
It is now 1:10 in the afternoon and as the daily life in Tripoli unfolds that includes teachers, staff, and children at school, shopkeepers working in their businesses, streetsweepers sweeping the streets, people moving to and fro in the cars, on bicycles, and on foot, Tripoli has thus far since around 11:00 up to now, received at least 29 bombs.
Interestingly, the efforts of the Washington Post, New York Times, Associated Press, and others to portray Libya claims on the bombings as “absurd” are patently false and are merely efforts to defend in the court of public opinion, the indefensible bombing of civilians going about their lives in a heavily populated area. The Washington Post headlined “Libya government fails to prove claims of NATO casualties” and the Los Angeles Times headline blared, “Libya officials put a spin on a conflict.” These bombs and missiles are not falling in empty spaces: people are all over Tripoli going about their lives just as in any other major metropolitan city of about two million people.
Meanwhile, NATO has a spin machine of its own: NATO says it is making “significant progress” in protecting Libyan civilians. “What we did target was the military intelligence headquarters in downtown Tripoli,” the alliance said. I am currently with a delegation of former MP's and professors from France who are here in Tripoli on a fact-finding mission. The program for today was to visit the camps of internally displaced persons in this part of the country. However, we are not able to complete our program while Tripoli is under attack. I will do my best to visit some of the areas bombed today when/if this attack lets up.
What were you doing today between 1:00 and now? The people of Tripoli endure the trauma of repeated bombings in their immediate environment.
June 5-6, 2011 — TRIPOLI, LIBYA. NATO war crimes in Libya exposed
In the current NATO war on Libya, the citizens of European and North American NATO countries are being treated to the largest propaganda blitz by their governments in cahoots with corporate media outlets since the U.S.-led invasions and occupation of Iraq. The situation on the ground in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, could not more different from what is being portrayed by Western news networks and newspapers.
DoD major commands have serious staffs that try to do the right thing. The same cannot be said for White House staffers or the intelligence community staffs promoted to their maximum level of incompetence. Reading between the lines of the below article, it's possible to see a national security decision-making process that is to close to “ready fire aim.”
Phi Beta Iota: David Ignatius is clearly among the lead writers striving to give Dr. Robert Gates a “legacy” (mythical as it might be). Missing from his various odes are the fact that decisions are not being made on the basis of facts or with the public interest firmly in mind.
