WASHINGTON, November 7, 2013 — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry desperately needs a win on the Afghanistan war. Unfortunately, however, it appears increasingly unlikely he will get one.
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Despite repeated visits and discussions, Kerry has so far failed to secure a clean Bilateral Security Agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Without an agreement, all U.S. and NATO forces – including the approximately 10,000 that the Pentagon wants to keep in country – would have to leave the country next year.
The immediate sticking point is on whether U.S. troops will receive immunity for misdeeds during the deployment, but the larger issue centers on respect, sovereignty and judicial non-interference.
Local populations are overwhelmingly against immunity for U.S. troops. In Afghanistan, most cases currently slide without reprimand or justice. This includes countless stories of abuse accompanying night raids, which Karzai has repeatedly attempted to ban. As is the case in Iraq, the Philippines and elsewhere, local populations want accountability within their own courts for U.S. troops who commit abuses in their countries. Americans would assuredly want the same treatment for foreign troops on U.S. soil.
After 12 years at war with Afghanistan, we continue to miss the mark on four fronts: strategy, cost, accountability and perception.
From: Kevin Kelley <kwk@thehomegalaxy.com> Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2013 10:31:11 -0700 Subject: NSA Files: Decoded – Truly Stunning! & ESSENTIAL! (From The Guardian)
This is truly stunning in many ways! Not in order:
It's stunningly beautiful as a graphic piece and typography
It's a stunning cutting edge of digital reporting converging interactive media
It stunning in it's brilliant and cogent making of it's case
It's stunning in the story it tells and conveys and in it's impact.
A collection of videos, text snap-shots, and images, across many authoritative personalities. This is a MAJOR contribution to the public dialog about mass surveillance and out of control government agencies.
Baker, Stewart (former NSA general counsel)
Drake, Thomas (former senior executive, NSA)
Greenwald, Glenn (Journalist)
Jaffer, Jameel (Deputy legal director, ACLU)
Levison, Ladar (Founder of Lavabit)
Lofgren, Zoe (US congresswoman)
Scalhill, Jeremy (National security journalist)
Soghoian, Chris (Principal technologies, ACLU)
Stepanovich, Amie (Lawyer, Electronic Privacy Information Center)
Wyden, Ron (US senator)
Below is a full text reproduction of the above letter from Gary Hart. The above also contains a letter to John Kerry from Art Goodtimes then of the Telleride Times-Journal. The Hart letter was written a year and a month after Col James Sabow, USMC (Aviation) was murdered, possibly by Marines acting on the orders of General Al Gray, then Commandant of the Marine Corps and long-timer special operations and counter-terrorism enabler for CIA operations outside the legal channels established by Congress. (For more information see Col James Sabow USMC Murder Book).
GARY HART
Davis, Graham & Stubbs
Suite 4700
370 Seventeenth Street
Post Office Box 185
Denver, Colorado 80201-0185
February 14, 1991
The Honorable John Kerry
Chairman
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Communications
222 R.S.O.B.
Washington, D.C. 201510
Hon Gary Hart
Dear Senator Kerry,
The following information is provided at the request of Mr. Tosh Plumlee and is to document specific contacts he made with my Senate Office during the years of 1983-1985.
In March of 1983, Plumlee contacts my Denver Senate Office and met with Mr. Bill Holen of my Senate Staff. During the initial meeting, Mr. Plumlee raised certain allegation concerning U.S. foreign and military policy toward Nicaragua and the use of covert activities by U.S. intelligence agencies. He indicated that he was personally involved in covert military intelligence activities in Central and South America beginning in Feburary 1978. He stated that he had grave concerns that certain intelligence information about illegal arms and narcotic shipments were not being appropriately acted upon by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Mr. Plumlee's stated purpose in contacting my office was to attempt to initiate a congressional investigation of these allegations. Mr. Plumlee stated that he had personally flown U.S.-sponsored covert missions into Nicaragua. He stated that Nicaragua was receiving assistance from Cuba with nearly 6,000 Cuban military advisors and large quantities of military supplies were being stockpiled at various staging areas inside Nicaragua and the Costa Rica border.
Mr. Plumlee also stated that Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala and El Salvador were providing U.S. military personnel access to secret landing field (sic) and various staging areas scattered throughout Central America.
The Honorable John Kerry
Washington, D.C.
February 14, 1991
Page 2
He specifically states the Mexican government's direct knowledge of illegal arms shipments and narcotic smuggling activities that were taking place out of a civilian ranch in the Veracruz area which were under the control and sponsorship of the Rafael Car-Quintero and the Luis Jorge Ochoa branch of the Medellin Escobar Cartel.
Mr. Plumlee states that the U.S. military and intelligence agencies had been otified through proper channels of these allegations.
During the next three months, Mr. Bill Holen of my staff met with Mr. Plumlee on several occasions allowing him to further elaborate on his experiences and concerns with U.S military operations in the region. In those later meetings, Mr. Plumlee raised several issues including that covert U.S. intelligence agencies were directly involved in the smuggling and distribution of drugs to raise funds for covert military operations against the government of Nicaragua. He provided my staff with detailed maps and names of alleged covert landing strips in Mexico, Costa Rica, Louisiana, Arizona, Florida, and California where he alleged aircraft cargoes of drugs were off-loaded and replaced with Contra military supplies. He also tates that these operations were not CIA operations but rather under the direction of the White House, Pentagon, and NSC personnel.
My staff brought these allegations to the attention of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time but no action was initiated by either committee.
No one in the ballroom came right out and shouted, “William McRaven for elected office!” but the idea hovered like a thought bubble over the OSS Society’s William J. Donovan Award Dinner Saturday night, where the commander of US Special Operations was honored—including by President Obama—and even sounded himself a bit like a candidate.
US special operations commander, Adm. William H. McRaven, greets guests at the annual OSS Society dinner, where he was honored with the William J. Donovan Award. Photograph by Carol Ross Joynt.
The annual celebration commemorating the World War II spy agency and predecessor of the CIA—for the intelligence and special operations communities, it’s the prom and the Oscars wrapped in one—is a time for reminiscing and gossiping for both the smooth-skinned, ramrod-spined young operatives and the retired spies and warriors with more medals than hair or teeth. But McRaven, the Navy admiral who oversaw the 2011 Navy SEAL mission that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden and who received the Donovan award, gave this year’s gathering a political edge.
President Obama addressed the audience and the honoree via taped video, his image filling three ceiling-high screens. He called McRaven “one of the finest special operators our nation has ever produced. Few Americans will ever see what you do, but every American is safer because of your service.” Also lauding him in taped messages were two other individuals who were directly involved in the bin Laden mission, former CIA director Leon Panetta and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
A third official who was a player in that historic episode, John Brennan, now director of Central Intelligence, relived the experience in his remarks. He said the deliberations to undertake the mission were “difficult and fraught with uncertainty.” He said there was “a key moment in those deliberations when President Obama seemed to move a step closer to his final decision. It was when Adm. McRaven looked at the President and said, ‘Sir, we can get this job done.’ You could hear a pin drop. It was at that time that everyone in that room knew the decision was made and we were going forward.”
Interesting paper that came out a couple of nights ago from one of the DC think tanks. The principal author, LTG Dave Barno, was my classmate in a school in the early '80s when we were both captains. Biggest thing I see is the assertion that the major fraction of GO positions are “enterprise management” vice “operational,” or “tail” vice “tooth.” Assuming correct numbers and analysis, that should be an ego-defeater given the culture of the military. If you can buy into that, some of the other stuff seems reasonable.
EXTRACTS:
If left unaddressed, the divergence between the leadership skills of current senior military officers and the demands of an uncertain future may result
in a U.S. military led by generals and admirals who are prepared for neither the complexity of future warfare nor the efficient management of a hugely complex – and now resource-constrained – defense enterprise.
. . . . . . .
Many future flag officers will have no extended educational opportunities during the entire second half of their careers.
. . . . . . .
Once an officer is appointed to three-star rank, he or she will never pass before another promotion board, will never receive another written performance evaluation and will
rarely engage in setting formal expectations or goals with his or her boss in a new position.
Civil Liberties: The news that Angela Merkel’s phone has been wiretapped by the USA exposes the biggest wiretapping lie ever – that mass surveillance is targeted at catching terrorists and pedophiles. The German Chancellor is rightfully furious, and she should be furious on behalf of her citizens, too. Mass surveillance was never about terrorists or pedophiles: it is a tool of pure and raw domination.
With the exposure of German Chancellor Merkel’s phone being wiretapped by the US surveillance agencies, the mass surveillance has received yet another spotlight. This is welcome as it intensifies the discussion on civil liberties and the freedoms of speech, assembly, opinion, and the press – and how these freedoms need to carry over into the online environment.
To some extent, it is sad that it takes a personal insult against a leading politicians for something as grave as a threat to democracy itself to come to light, but still, here we are. The mass surveillance has been rolled out en masse without much protest, due to leading politicians smoothing over any worries by using worse scarewords, a common tactic.
We have frequently and repeatably been told that mass surveillance and wiretapping is necessary to “catch terrorists”. Pedophiles are also mentioned from time to time. This is a complete and utter lie.
To inform people is hard slugging. Everything is lined up against the public being informed, or the policymakers for that matter. News is contaminated by its service to special interests and hidden agendas. Many scientists or their employers are dependent on federal money. Even psychologists and anthropologists were roped into the government’s torture and occupation programs. Economists tell lies for corporations and Wall Street. Plant and soil scientists tell lies for agribusiness and Monsanto. Truth tellers are slandered and persecuted. However, persistence can eventually win out. In the long-run, truth sometimes emerges. But not always. And not always in time.
I have been trying to inform the American people, economists, and policymakers for more than a decade about the adverse impacts of jobs offshoring on the US economy. The word has eventually gotten out. Last week I was contacted by 8th grade students competing for their school in CSPAN’s StudentCam Documentary Contest. They want to interview me on the subject of jobs offshoring for their documentary film.
America is a strange place. Here are eighth graders far ahead of the economics profession, the President, the Congress, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, and the financial press in their understanding of one of the fundamental problems of the US economy. Yet, people say the public schools are failing. Obviously, not the one whose students contacted me.
