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Friday, August 20, 2010
CIA/MOSSAD behind Bandar Bin-SULTAN, the killer assassin, Bamboozled Asef SHAWKAT through the odious White House Murder INC,.....
Saturday, August 07, 2010
Sunday, August 01, 2010
Chas Freeman: Israel is an extreme liabililty for the U.S. financially, strategically, politically
AUG, 2010
Ambassador Chas Freeman – prepared remarks, Nixon Center debate, “Israel; Asset or Liability?
[Ambassador Freeman was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 1993-94, earning the highest public service awards of the Department of Defense. Full bio]
Is Israel a strategic asset or liability for the United States? Interesting question. We must thank the Nixon Center for asking it. In my view, there are many reasons for Americans to wish the Jewish state well. Under current circumstances, strategic advantage for the United States is not one of them. If we were to reverse the question, however, and to ask whether the United States is a strategic asset or liability for Israel, there would be no doubt about the answer.
American taxpayers fund between 20 and 25 percent of Israel’s defense budget (depending on how you calculate this). Twenty-six percent of the $3 billion in military aid we grant to the Jewish state each year is spent in Israel on Israeli defense products. Uniquely, Israeli companies are treated like American companies for purposes of U.S. defense procurement. Thanks to congressional earmarks, we also often pay half the costs of special Israeli research and development projects, even when – as in the case of defense against very short-range unguided missiles — the technology being developed is essentially irrelevant to our own military requirements.
In short, in many ways, American taxpayers fund jobs in Israel’s military industries that could have gone to our own workers and companies. Meanwhile, Israel gets pretty much whatever it wants in terms of our top-of-the-line weapons systems, and we pick up the tab.
Identifiable U.S. government subsidies to Israel total over $140 billion since 1949. This makes Israel by far the largest recipient of American giveaways since World War II. The total would be much higher if aid to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and support for Palestinians in refugee camps and the occupied territories were included. These programs have complex purposes but are justified in large measure in terms of their contribution to the security of the Jewish state.
Per capita income in Israel is now about $37,000 — on a par with the UK. Israel is nonetheless the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, accounting for well over a fifth of it. Annual U.S. government transfers run at well over $500 per Israeli, not counting the costs of tax breaks for private donations and loans that aren’t available to any other foreign country.
These military and economic benefits are not the end of the story. The American government also works hard to shield Israel from the international political and legal consequences of its policies and actions in the occupied territories, against its neighbors, or – most recently – on the high seas. The nearly 40 vetoes the United States has cast to protect Israel in the UN Security Council are the tip of iceberg. We have blocked a vastly larger number of potentially damaging reactions to Israeli behavior by the international community. The political costs to the United States internationally of having to spend our political capital in this way are huge.
Where Israel has no diplomatic relations, U.S. diplomats routinely make its case for it. As I know from personal experience (having been thanked by the then Government of Israel for my successful efforts on Israel’s behalf in Africa), the U.S. government has been a consistent promoter and often the funder of various forms of Israeli programs of cooperation with other countries. It matters also that America – along with a very few other countries – has remained morally committed to the Jewish experiment with a state in the Middle East. Many more Jews live in America than in Israel. Resolute American support should be an important offset to the disquiet about current trends that has led over 20 percent of Israelis to emigrate, many of them to the United States, where Jews enjoy unprecedented security and prosperity.
Clearly, Israel gets a great deal from us. Yet it’s pretty much taboo in the United States to ask what’s in it for Americans. I can’t imagine why. Still, the question I’ve been asked to address today is just that: what’s in it — and not in it — for us to do all these things for Israel.
We need to begin by recognizing that our relationship with Israel has never been driven by strategic reasoning. It began with President Truman overruling his strategic and military advisers in deference to personal sentiment and political expediency. We had an arms embargo on Israel until Lyndon Johnson dropped it in 1964 in explicit return for Jewish financial support for his campaign against Barry Goldwater. In 1973, for reasons peculiar to the Cold War, we had to come to the rescue of Israel as it battled Egypt. The resulting Arab oil embargo cost us dearly. And then there’s all the time we’ve put into the perpetually ineffectual and now long defunct “peace process.”
Still the US-Israel relationship has had strategic consequences. There is no reason to doubt the consistent testimony of the architects of major acts of anti-American terrorism about what motivates them to attack us. In the words of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is a useful PATSY... credited with masterminding the wall to wall INSIDE JOB 9/11 attacks....by the USA/ISRAEL DEEP STATE..., their purpose was to focus “the American people … on the atrocities that America is committing by supporting Israel against the Palestinian people ….” As Osama Bin Laden, purporting to speak for the world’s Muslims, has said again and again: “we have . . . stated many times, for more than two-and-a-half-decades, that the cause of our disagreement with you is your support to your Israeli allies who occupy our land of Palestine ….”
Some substantial portion of the many lives and the trillions of dollars we have so far expended in our escalating conflict with the Islamic world must be apportioned to the costs of our relationship with Israel.
It’s useful to recall what we generally expect allies and strategic partners to do for us. In Europe, Asia, and elsewhere in the Middle East, they provide bases and support the projection of American power beyond their borders. They join us on the battlefield in places like Kuwait and Afghanistan or underwrite the costs of our military operations. They help recruit others to our coalitions. They coordinate their foreign aid with ours. Many defray the costs of our use of their facilities with “host nation support” that reduces the costs of our military operations from and through their territory. They store weapons for our troops’, rather than their own troops’ use. They pay cash for the weapons we transfer to them.
Israel does none of these things and shows no interest in doing them. Perhaps it can’t. It is so estranged from everyone else in the Middle East that no neighboring country will accept flight plans that originate in or transit it. Israel is therefore useless in terms of support for American power projection. It has no allies other than us. It has developed no friends. Israeli participation in our military operations would preclude the cooperation of many others. Meanwhile, Israel has become accustomed to living on the American military dole. The notion that Israeli taxpayers might help defray the expense of U.S. military or foreign assistance operations, even those undertaken at Israel’s behest, would be greeted with astonishment in Israel and incredulity on Capitol Hill.
Military aid to Israel is sometimes justified by the notion of Israel as a test bed for new weapons systems and operational concepts. But no one can identify a program of military R & D in Israel that was initially proposed by our men and women in uniform. All originated with Israel or members of Congress acting on its behalf. Moreover, what Israel makes it sells not just to the United States but to China, India, and other major arms markets. It feels no obligation to take U.S. interests into account when it transfers weapons and technology to third countries and does so only under duress.
Meanwhile, it’s been decades since Israel’s air force faced another in the air. It has come to specialize in bombing civilian infrastructure and militias with no air defenses. There is not much for the U.S. Air Force to learn from that. Similarly, the Israeli navy confronts no real naval threat. Its experience in interdicting infiltrators, fishermen, and humanitarian aid flotillas is not a model for the U.S. Navy to study. Israel’s army, however, has had lessons to impart. Now in its fifth decade of occupation duty, it has developed techniques of pacification, interrogation, assassinations, in Lebanon using the services of the infamous White House Murder INC, headed by Asef SHAKAT in the levant...., the number one agent of CIA/MOSSAD....and drone attack that inspired U.S. operations in Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, Somalia, Yemen, and Waziristan. Recently, Israel has begun to deploy various forms of remote-controlled robotic guns. These enable operatives at far-away video screens summarily to execute anyone they view as suspicious. Such risk-free means of culling hostile populations could conceivably come in handy in some future American military operation, but I hope not. I have a lot of trouble squaring the philosophy they embody with the values Americans traditionally aspired to exemplify.
It is sometimes said that, to its credit, Israel does not ask the United States to fight its battles for it; it just wants the money and weapons to fight them on its own. Leave aside the question of whether Israel’s battles are or should also be America’s. It is no longer true that Israel does not ask us to fight for it. The fact that prominent American apologists for Israel were the most energetic promoters of the U.S. invasion of Iraq does not, of course, prove that Israel was the instigator of that grievous misadventure. But the very same people are now urging an American military assault on Iran explicitly to protect Israel and to preserve its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. Their advocacy is fully coordinated with the Government of Israel. No one in the region wants a nuclear-armed Iran, but Israel is the only country pressing Americans to go to war over this.
Finally, the need to protect Israel from mounting international indignation about its behavior continues to do grave damage to our global and regional standing. It has severely impaired our ties with the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims. These costs to our international influence, credibility, and leadership are, I think, far more serious than the economic and other burdens of the relationship.
Against this background, it’s remarkable that something as fatuous as the notion of Israel as a strategic asset could have become the unchallengeable conventional wisdom in the United States. Perhaps it’s just that as someone once said: “people … will more easily fall victim to a big lie than a small one.” Be that as it may, the United States and Israel have a lot invested in our relationship. Basing our cooperation on a thesis and narratives that will not withstand scrutiny is dangerous. It is especially risky in the context of current fiscal pressures in the United States. These seem certain soon to force major revisions of both current levels of American defense spending and global strategy, in the Middle East as well as elsewhere. They also place federally-funded programs in Israel in direct competition with similar programs here at home. To flourish over the long term, Israel’s relations with the United States need to be grounded in reality, not myth, and in peace, not war....
Friday, July 30, 2010
نعم المنطقة في خطر....: أميركا وإسرائيل تعدّان للحرب وهذه هي المؤشرات
رغم الصيف الحار، سواء من ارتفاع درجات الحرارة عن نسَبها هذا العام، أو من سخونة الأجواء السياسية التي يتحرق من أخبارها أهل المشرق العربي وبلاد الشام، والتي اختلط فيها، "السمك باللبن بالتمر الهندي"، أي تخصيب إيران للماء الثقيل "الملف النووي" بقضية اغتيال رفيق الحريري، وبدور المقاومة وسلاحها، سواء كان في لبنان أو في فلسطين، وشكلوا جميعاً خلطة عجيبة غريبة من الحجج المركبة والأسباب الواهية التي قد تدفع للحرب وتغيير الواقع السياسي في المنطقة لأسباب إذا أردنا اختصارها فنقول: إنها مهمة أميركا في الحفاظ على التفوق العسكري الإسرائيلي في المنطقة.. وإذا رغبنا بالتوسع فالجمل لا تحصى والمفردات لا تنضب. ولكي نحاول الخوص في العمق المتاح لعالم الأسرار التي لم تعد تدفن في هذا الزمن، أن الحرب في المنطقة واقعة لا محالة، سواء في الأشهر القليلة المقبلة، أم في العام المقبل، :
.. نعم، المنطقة في خطر، بل لو كانت هناك كلمة أعظم من الخطر للفظتها. إننا في خضم الغبار الذي يسبق العاصفة التي لا يعرف أحد أين يتبدد غبارها.. نعم، الحرب آتية، وهل يستطيع هذا الكيان "العجيب" العيش من دون حرب، فإسرائيل أنشئت لتكون الحروب جزءاً من حياة هذه المنطقة، والسلام والاستقرار حلم ينتظره سائر أبنائها، ولو لمرة في إحدى ليالي أعمارهم التي يطويها الانتظار من الآتي.. نعم، إسرائيل ووراءها أميركا تعدان للحرب، معطياتهما على الحركة والحراك الصهيونييْن، وعلى ما يردنا من داخل هذا الكيان، أن الكل في هذه المنطقة أصبح يتجسس على الكل الآخر......... وهذا بعض من المعطيات :
إشارات لا يجب اغفالها
1ـ إن وزير الدفاع الإسرائيلي (إيهود باراك) وأثناء زيارته الأخيرة لواشنطن، كان مصمماً خلال محادثاته مع وزير الدفاع الأمريكي (روبرت غيتس) ووزيرة الخارجية (هيلاري كلينتون) على أن خيار القوة العسكرية ضد حزب الله في لبنان وضد إيران لا مفرّ من اللجوء إليها، وتوقيتها خاضع لإعداد المسرح السياسي والإعلامي. كما أن الملحق العسكري الإسرائيلي في واشنطن؛ الجنرال جادي شمني، قال إن ايهودا باراك حصل على ضوء أخضر للتحرك العسكري الإسرائيلي ضد حزب الله عقب اتهام المحكمة الدولية له باغتيال الحريري.
2ـ توجَّه رئيس الأركان العامة للجيش الإسرائيلي؛ الجنرال غابي أشكنازي، إلى كل من فرنسا وإيطاليا للاجتماع بالقيادات العسكرية فيها، وألمحت المصادر العسكرية الإسرائيلية إلى أن وراء هذه الزيارة عدداً من الإشارات، فأشكنازي حمل معه ملفاً متخماً بالمعلومات والتقارير والتصاوير الجوية عن تحويل حزب الله للجنوب اللبناني إلى ميدان قتال فوق الأرض وتحت سطحها، والأمر الأهم أن أشكنازي حصل على موافقة بألا تعترض قوات اليونيفيل القوات البرية الإسرائيلية وهي تندفع في عمق الأراضي اللبنانية.
3ـ قائد المنطقة الشمالية الجنرال؛ جادي إيزنكوت، وبمقتضى التعليمات الصادرة إليه من رئاسة الأركان، رفع مستوى الجاهزية القتالية في صفوف القوات الخاضعة لإمرة القيادة، وذلك من خلال تصعيد التدريبات على عمليات اقتحام الأنفاق التي يُزعم أن حزب الله أقامها في الجنوب لإطلاق الصواريخ وإيواء العناصر المقاتلة.
4ـ حشد وحدات النخبة في الجيش الإسرائيلي (لواء جولاني وجفعاتي، ووحدة أجوز، ووحدة كفير، ووحدة شمشون) وتشكيلات لها خبرة في خوض العمليات العسكرية في جنوب لبنان، إضافة إلى دعوة غير مفصَح عنها لقوات الاحتياط، تمثل 30% من إجمالي قوات الاحتياط.
5ـ تأكيد من قبل قيادات عسكرية إسرائيلية، تحديداً نائب رئيس الأركان؛ الجنرال بيني جانتز، ورئيس شعبة العمليات؛ الجنرال طال روسو، على أن المعركة مع حزب الله ستكون المدخل لمعركة أوسع نطاقاً ضد إيران.
أما الخبراء الاستراتيجيون في إسرائيل، ومن أبرزهم إيميلي لانداو، وإفرايم أسكولاي، ودوري جولد، والجنرال يعقوب عميدرور، فقد أكدوا أن العد التنازلي للمواجهة مع إيران قد بدأ، لكن خوض هذه المواجهة يتطلب أولاً حسم المعركة ضد حزب الله.
إذا أدخلنا مشاهد أخرى للتصعيد، مثل تصعيد النشاط الاستخباراتي والتجسسي، ومحاولة إسرائيل استثمار قرار المحكمة الدولية المكلفة بالنظر في قضية اغتيال الحريري في الاعتبار أيضاً، فسوف يضاف المزيد من الدلائل والمؤشرات إلى أن إسرائيل تستعد للحرب.
أما المشهد الدبلوماسي الذي يتولاه المبعوث الأمريكي جورج ميتشل، والمتمثل في تحريك عملية المفاوضات بين السلطة والعدو الإسرائيلي، فينبغي ألا يضلل أحداً أنه ليس أكثر من محاولة لذر الرماد في الأعين، وعملية تمويه للتغطية على جملة من عمليات التصعيد، والتي ستمتد إلى قطاع غزة ولبنان وسورية وإيران.
التصعيد على الساحة الفلسطينية ينطلق باتجاهين
تصعيد عسكري ضد قطاع غزة، وهجمات وغارات واستعدادات عسكرية أوسع.. تصعيد استيطاني وترانسفيري في الضفة الغربية، تستهدف تهويد ما تبقى من الضفة الغربية، عن طريق الاستيلاء على النسبة المتبقية من الضفة 57%، وتهجير سكان الضفة والقدس.
على المستويين العربي والإسلامي
هناك تصعيد في ساحات أخرى، تشارك فيها، إلى جانب إسرائيل، كل من الولايات المتحدة والاتحاد الأوروبي، ضد السودان والصومال وموريتانيا واليمن والعراق.
كل هذا يتم في نطاق ما يسمى باستراتيجية الإبقاء على بؤر التوتر وتصعيدها، بل وتفجير المزيد منها.
هذا التصعيد لا يحمل طابعاً مختلفاً عن استراتيجية التصعيد والمواجهة التي صاغتها وطبقتها إدارة المحافظين الجدد برئاسة جورج بوش الابن، إنما يأخذ صورة السارق بقفازات بيضاء.
: إنك يا عزيزي تريدنا أن أهمل كل هذه المعلومات ومجمل الأحداث والتطورات عن تفكيرنا، ونقول من الصعب وقوع حرب! لا، فالحرب حاجة إسرائيل، وإذا لم تحدث الآن، فهي واقعة على أبعد تقدير خلال 14 شهراً، وإلا سيبدأ العد التنازلي لانهيار الدولة المغتصبة، حسب رؤى مفكري بني صهيون القابعين وراء أسوار مراكز الأبحاث.
ـ باراك طلب الضوء الأخضر الأميركي
ـ اشكنازي أطلع الفرنسيين والطليان على الخرائط والخطط
ـ بيني جانتز: المعركة مع حزب الله مدخل الحرب على ايران
ـ ميتشيل يقوم بأوسع عملية تضليل قبل المعركة
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
The opposites game in the US war theaters of operations
By Tom Engelhardt
Have you ever thought about just how strange this country's version of normal truly is? Let me make my point with a single, hardly noticed Washington Post news story that's been on my mind for a while. It represents the sort of reporting that, in our world, zips by with next to no reaction, despite the true weirdness buried in it.
The piece by Craig Whitlock appeared on June 19 and was headlined, "US military criticized for purchase of Russian copters for Afghan air corps." Maybe that's strange enough for you right there. Russian copters? We all know, at least vaguely, that by year's end, US spending on its protracted Afghan war and nation-building project will be heading for US$350 billion. And those dollars do have to go somewhere.
Admittedly, these days in parts of the US, state and city governments are having a hard time finding the money just to pay teachers or the police. The Pentagon, on the other hand, hasn't hesitated to use at least $25-27 billion to "train" and "mentor" the Afghan military and police - and after each round of training failed to produce the expected results, to ask for even more money, and train them again.
That includes the Afghan National Army Air Corps which, in the Soviet era of the 1980s, had nearly 500 aircraft and a raft of trained pilots. The last of that air force - little used in the Taliban era - was destroyed in the US air assault and invasion of 2001. As a result, the "Afghan air force" (with about 50 helicopters and transport planes) is now something of a misnomer, since it is, in fact, the US Air Force.
Still, there are a few Afghan pilots, mostly in their forties, trained long ago on Russian Mi-17 transport helicopters, and it's on a refurbished version of these copters, Whitlock tells us, that the Pentagon has already spent $648 million. The Mi-17 was specially built for Afghanistan's difficult flying environment back when various Islamic jihadis, some of whom we're now fighting under the rubric of "the Taliban", were allied with us against the Russians.
Here's the first paragraph of Whitlock's article: "The US government is snapping up Russian-made helicopters to form the core of Afghanistan's fledgling air force, a strategy that is drawing flak from members of Congress who want to force the Afghans to fly American choppers instead."
So, various congressional representatives are upset over the lack of a buy-American plan when it comes to the Afghan air force. That's the story Whitlock sets out to tell, because the Pentagon has been planning to purchase dozens more of the Mi-17s over the next decade, and that, it seems, is what's worth being upset about when perfectly good American arms manufacturers aren't getting the contracts.
But let's consider three aspects of Whitlock's article that no one is likely to spend an extra moment on, even if they do capture the surpassing strangeness of the American way of war in distant lands - and in Washington.
1. The little training program that couldn't: There are at present an impressive 450 US personnel in Afghanistan training the Afghan air force. Unfortunately, there's a problem. There may be no "buy American" program for that air force, but there is a "speak American" one. To be an Afghan air force pilot, you must know English - "the official language of the cockpit", Whitlock assures us (even if to fly Russian helicopters). As he points out, however, the trainees, mostly illiterate, take two to five years simply to learn the language. (Imagine a US Air Force in which, just to take off, every pilot needed to know Dari!)
Thanks to this language barrier, the US can train endlessly and next to nothing is guaranteed to happen. "So far," reports Whitlock, "only one Afghan pilot has graduated from flight school in the United States, although dozens are in the pipeline. That has forced the air corps to rely on pilots who learned to fly Mi-17s during the days of Soviet and Taliban rule." In other words, despite the impressive Soviet performance in the 1980s, the training of the Afghan air force has been re-imagined by Americans as a Sisyphean undertaking.
And this offers but a hint of how bizarre US training programs for the Afghan military and police have proven to be. In fact, sometimes it seems as if exactly the same scathing report, detailing the same training problems and setbacks, has been recycled yearly without anyone who mattered finding it particularly odd - or being surprised that the response to each successive piece of bad news is to decide to pour yet more money and trainers into the project.
For example, in 2005, at a time when Washington had already spent $3.3 billion training and mentoring the Afghan army and police, the US Government Accounting Office (GAO) issued a report indicating that "efforts to fully equip the increasing number of [Afghan] combat troops have fallen behind, and efforts to establish sustaining institutions, such as a logistics command, needed to support these troops have not kept pace". Worse yet, the report fretted, it might take "up to $7.2 billion to complete [the training project] and about $600 million annually to sustain [it]".
In 2006, according to the New York Times, "a joint report by the Pentagon and the State Department ... found that the American-trained police force in Afghanistan is largely incapable of carrying out routine law enforcement work, and that managers of the $1.1 billion training program cannot say how many officers are actually on duty or where thousands of trucks and other equipment issued to police units have gone." At best, stated the report, fewer than half of the officially announced number of police were "trained and equipped to carry out their police functions".
In 2008, by which time $16.5 billion had been spent on army and police training programs, the GAO chimed in again, indicating that only two of 105 army units were "assessed as being fully capable of conducting their primary mission", while "no police unit is fully capable".
In 2009, the US Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction reported that "only 24 of 559 Afghan police units are considered ready to operate without international help". Such reports, as well as repeated (and repetitive) news investigations and stories on the subject, invariably are accompanied by a litany of complaints about corruption, indiscipline, illiteracy, drug taking, staggering desertion rates, Taliban infiltration, ghost soldiers, and a host of other problems. In 2009, however, the solution remained as expectable as the problems: "The report called for more US trainers and more money."
This June, a US government audit, again from the Special Inspector General, contradicted the latest upbeat American and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) training assessments, reporting that "the standards used to appraise the Afghan forces since 2005 were woefully inadequate, inflating their abilities".
The usual litany of training woes followed. Yet, according to Reuters, President Barack Obama wants another $14.2 billion for the training project "for this year and next". And just last week, the Wall Street Journal's Julian Barnes reported that new Afghan war commander General David Petraeus is planning to "retool" US strategy to include "a greater focus on how Afghanistan's security forces are being trained".
When it comes to US training programs then, you might conclude that Afghanistan has proved to be Catch-22-ville, the land where time stood still - and so, evidently, has the Washington national security establishment's collective brain. For Washington, there seems to be no learning curve in Afghanistan, not when it comes to "training" Afghans anyway.
And here is the oddest thing of all, though no one even bothers to mention it in this context: the Taliban haven't had tens of billions of dollars in foreign training funds; they haven't had years of advice from the best US and NATO advisors that money can buy; they haven't had private contractors like DynCorp teaching them how to fight and police, and strangely enough, they seem to have no problem fighting.
They are not undermanned, infiltrated by followers of President Hamid Karzai, or particularly corrupt. They may be illiterate and may not be fluent in English, but they are ready, in up to platoon-sized units, to attack heavily fortified US military bases, Afghan prisons, a police headquarters and the like with hardly a foreign mentor in sight.
Consider it, then, a modern miracle in reverse that the US has proven incapable of training a competent Afghan force in a country where arms are the norm, fighting has for decades seldom stopped, and the locals are known for their war-fighting traditions. Similarly, it's abidingly curious that the US has so far failed to train a modest-sized air force, even flying refurbished Italian light transport planes from the 1980s and those Russian helicopters, when the Soviet Union, the last imperial power to try this, proved up to creating an Afghan force able to pilot aircraft ranging from helicopters to fighter planes.
2. Non-exit strategies: Now, let's wade a little deeper into the strangeness of what Whitlock reported by taking up the question of when we're actually planning to leave Afghanistan. Consider this passage from the Whitlock piece: "US military officials have estimated that the Afghan air force won't be able to operate independently until 2016, five years after President Obama has said he intends to start withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan. But [US Air Force Brigadier General Michael R] Boera said that date could slip by at least two years if Congress forces the Afghans to fly US choppers."
In other words, while Americans argue over what the president's July 2011 drawdown date really means, and while Karzai suggests that Afghan forces will take over the country's security duties by 2014, Whitlock's anonymous "US military officials" are clearly operating on a different clock, on, in fact, Pentagon time, and so are planning for a 2016-2018 target date for that force simply to "operate independently" (which by no means indicates "without US support".)
If you were of a conspiratorial mind, you might almost think that the Pentagon preferred not to create an effective Afghan air force and instead - as has also been the case in Iraq, a country that once had the world's sixth-largest air force and now, after years of US mentoring, has next to nothing - remain the substitute Afghan air force forever and a day.
3. Who are the Russians now?: Okay, let's move even deeper into American strangeness with a passage that makes up most of the 20th and 21st paragraphs of Whitlock's 25-paragraph piece: "In addition," he reports, "the US Special Operations Command would like to buy a few Mi-17s of its own, so that special forces carrying out clandestine missions could cloak the fact that they are American. 'We would like to have some to blend in and do things,' said a senior US military official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the clandestine program."
No explanation follows on just how - or where - those Russian helicopters will help "cloak" American special operations missions, or what they are to "blend" into, or the "things" they are to do. There's no further discussion of the subject at all.
In other words, the special op urge to Russianize its air transport has officially been reported, and a month later, as far as I know, not a single congressional representative has made a fuss over it; no mainstream pundit has written a curious, questioning, or angry editorial questioning its appropriateness; and no reporter has, as yet, followed up.
As just another little factoid of no great import buried deep in an article focused on other matters, undoubtedly no one has given it a thought. But it's worth stopping a moment and considering just how odd this tiny bit of news-that-won't-ever-rise-to-the-level-of-news actually is. One way to do this is to play the sort of opposites game that never quite works on this still one-way planet of ours. Just imagine a similar news item coming out of another country.
That might be a little hard to imagine right now, but I guarantee you one thing: had some foreign news source reported such a plan, or had Whitlock somehow uncovered it and included it in a piece - no matter how obscurely nestled - there would have been pandemonium in Washington. Congress would have held hearings. Pundits would have opined on the infamy of Iranian or Chinese operatives masking themselves in our choppers. The company or companies that sold the helicopters would have been investigated. And you can imagine what Fox News commentators would have had to say.
When we do such things, however, and a country like Pakistan reacts with what's usually described as "anti-Americanism", we wonder at the nationalistic hair-trigger they're on; we comment on their over-emotionalism; we highlight their touchy "sensibilities"; and our reporters and pundits then write empathetically about the difficulties American military and civilian officials have dealing with such edgy natives.
Just the other day, for instance, the Wall Street Journal's Barnes reported that US Special Operations Forces were expanding their role in the Pakistani tribal borderlands by more regularly "venturing out with Pakistani forces on aid projects, deepening the American role in the effort to defeat Islamist militants in Pakistani territory that has been off limits to US ground troops". The Pakistani government has not been eager to have American boots visibly on the ground in these areas, and so Barnes writes: "Because of Pakistan's sensitivities, the US role has developed slowly."
Imagine how sensitive they might prove to be if those same forces began to land Russian helicopters in Pakistan as a way to "cloak" their operations and blend in? Or imagine just what sort of hair-trigger the natives of Montana might be on if Pakistani special operations types were roaming Glacier National Park and landing old American helicopters outside Butte.
Then consider the sensitivities of Pakistanis on learning that the just-appointed head of the Central Intelligence Agency's National Clandestine Service turns out to be a man of "impeccable credentials" (so says CIA director Leon Panetta). Among those credentials are his stint as the CIA station chief in Pakistan until sometime in 2009, his involvement in the exceedingly unpopular drone war in that country's tribal borderlands, and the way, as the director put it a tad vaguely, he "guided complex operations under some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable".
Here's the truth of the matter, as Whitlock's piece makes clear: we carry on in the most bizarre ways in far-off lands and think nothing of it. Historically, it has undoubtedly been the nature of imperial powers to consider every strange thing they do more or less the norm.
For a waning imperial power, however, such an attitude has its own dangers. If we can't imagine the surpassing strangeness of our arrangements for making war in lands thousands of kilometers from the US, then we can't begin to imagine how the world sees us, which means that we're blind to our own madness. Russian helicopters, that's nuthin' by comparison.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), an alternative history of the mad Bush years. His latest book is The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's (Haymarket Books),
Does event honoring Israeli spy suggest another Israeli operation?
| Does event honoring Israeli spy suggest another Israeli operation? By Jeff Gates Jul , 2010, |
Less than two weeks prior to the mass murder of September 11, 2001, the Israeli government made a $1 million grant to Israeli super-spy Jonathan Pollard. In retrospect, the facts suggest that grant may well have served as a signal to Israeli operatives inside the U.S.
On July 13, 2010, in observance of Pollard’s 9,000th day of incarceration, the Jerusalem municipality dimmed the lights illuminating the Old City. This gesture of Israeli solidarity included a projection onto the darkened walls of a message urging that President Obama release their spy from prison.
Thus, the concern among knowledgeable intelligence operatives that this Pollard commemoration may mean that another Israeli operation is underway.
On March 4, 1987, this Israeli-American was sentenced to life imprisonment for conveying to Israel more than 1 million classified U.S. military documents. Tel Aviv passed those secrets on to Moscow.
In practical effect, this Israeli espionage jettisoned not only America’s Cold War defense strategy, it also jeopardized the entirety of NATO’s defense posture.
From 1948 to 1989, U.S. taxpayers invested $20 trillion in Cold War-related defense (in 2010 dollars). In practical effect, an Israeli spy operation negated those outlays. Following Pollard’s arrest in 1986, Israel repeatedly assured U.S. leaders that he was part of a rogue spy operation.
Not until 12 years later did Tel Aviv concede the obvious: Pollard was an Israeli spy the entire time. According to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, “[It is] difficult to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by . . . Pollard’s treasonous behavior.”
Twelve years later, the Pollard storyline shifted again when in June 2010 Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., revived the phony “rogue” portrayal in yet another attempt to distance Tel Aviv from the fact that Israel continues its espionage operations in the U.S.
Another “hyphenated American,” Oren relinquished the U.S. component of his citizenship to serve as Israel’s ambassador to Washington. Though he withdrew his Pollard statement, no one could explain why someone with his sophistication would issue a “rogue operation” statement.
Signaling the network
Tel Aviv’s first concerted attempt to gain Pollard’s release dates to 1998 when, while negotiating the Wye River Accords, Prime Minister Ehud Barak secured from President Bill Clinton an agreement for Pollard’s release. Clinton backpedaled when threatened with a mass resignation by outraged members of the U.S. intelligence community.
The entryway to the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, features an agency crest imbedded in the tiled floor. An adjoining wall commemorates with stars the unnamed dead who lost their lives as U.S. intelligence operatives. Those featured typically achieved the equivalent military rank of colonel.
As a result of Pollard’s spying, 110 C.I.A. operatives lost their lives. In addition, a reported 1,600 prime American assets were lost due to this Israeli espionage. Americans have yet to be told the true extent of this loss.
In the history of U.S. national security, Pollard enjoys top billing as inflicting the most damage. In Israel, he is revered. Eligible for release in 2015, he will be welcomed home as a Zionist hero to a nation that granted him citizenship and several national awards.
His iconic status assures that news of Pollard -- any news whatsoever -- emboldens Israeli-Americans committed to the Zionist geopolitical agenda. Attempts to secure his release assure hyphenated Americans that their “homeland” will stand in solidarity with them at any cost. Israeli offers of large sums of money reinforce that commitment.
Americans remain largely clueless about the espionage role played by Israeli-Americans. Few recall Jonathan Pollard. Fewer still grasp the costs that Pollard’s treason imposed in blood and treasure. Nor do Americans understand the overwhelming influence of dual-citizens both in creating and communicating the false intelligence that took the U.S. to war in the Middle East.
“To wage war by way of deception” has long been the operative credo of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence and operations directorate. Mossad operatives routinely target Israeli-Americans as recruits when staging operations in the U.S.
Even now, many Americans believe that Israel is an ally despite more than six decades of facts confirming the contrary. Israeli espionage remains ongoing aided by a cadre of cooperative members of both the House and Senate and their staffs.
To believe otherwise allows gullibility to displace facts confirming the gravity of the threat that this entangled alliance imposes on the U.S. and, by extension, on the international community.
This latest Israeli adoration of traitor Jonathan Pollard is clearly an affront to the U.S. as Israel’s sponsor, financier, protector and primary arms supplier. Of immediate concern, this high profile event may be a signal setting in motion another murderous incident meant to persuade Americans that they face an external threat rather than the ongoing threat of an enemy within.
| The parallel universe By Douglas Valentine Jul , 2010, |
As a result of Dana Priest’s three-part article, Top-Secret America, published in the Washington Post, pundits have been falling all over themselves in their rush to describe the size and implications of the elephant in the living room. Forget that none of these pundits has seen fit to write about the elephant before. More important is the fact that the elephant has dimensions Dana Priest never even touched upon.
Let me tell you a story.
In 1985, I was contacted by Larry, a CIA officer who had had a breakdown and wanted to talk to me. He had served as a deep cover agent overseas for over 15 years at that point. He had been recruited from the Marines in Vietnam, and given a fake life in which his father had been an Australian soldier in World War II, and his mother a Filipino who died in childbirth. The Australian soldier had abandoned the mother before she gave birth. The father had later died in World War II, and Larry, having been brought up in an orphanage, was adopted as an infant by a couple in the United States.
In the legend created by the CIA, Larry’s foster parents told him about his real parents while he was a Marine in Vietnam. Larry took advantage of his proximity to the Philippines to travel there and claim his right to Filipino citizenship. In this way the CIA established an agent in the Philippines, with impeccable credentials. Larry eventually was even elected to public office.
To make a long story short, after Larry’s breakdown, the CIA got him a job as a manager of a Playboy club in Detroit. Later they transferred him to Washington, DC, as manager of the Four Ways restaurant. When I met him there, his Filipino wife and entourage were staffing the facility, along with his CIA hand-holder, who handled finances.
This was the fanciest place I had never been in my life. It was a place where State Department officials, foreign dignitaries and business tycoons enjoyed the finest wines and the most haute cuisine. Each lavishly appointed room had its own dining table and waiter. As I sat in a leather booth in the wood-paneled basement bar with Larry, he explained that each room was bugged by the CIA.
As we were talking, a group of well-dressed younger people in the company of one older man took occupied the booth next to us. The rest of the basement bar was empty. They ordered drinks, but remained silent and alert as Larry explained the ins and outs of his CIA experience to me. At one point, he nodded to the older man at the other table; then he informed me that the young people were junior officer trainees from Langley, who were also listening to his lecture.
Again, to make a very long story short, Larry explained that the CIA manages a parallel society to American society, where deep cover agents like him, as well as retired CIA officers and their agents, are provided with comfortable employment in their retirement years, or when they otherwise need recompense for their service. Many of these agents have no resume that is suitable in the modern professional world. So there is this parallel universe that they are folded into, as managers of the local Ford dealership, or Chinese restaurant, or hotel, or in hundreds and thousands of other jobs.
Think of it as a sort a witness protection program. Since 1985 it has grown substantially. It is, of course, another facet of Top-Secret America, but the ex-spooks in this dimension are not your average every day wingnut ideologue informant or strong-arm man. They know how to burn down buildings, which is what the CIA does.
As John Lennon said, “Imagine.”
Doug Valentine is the author of “The Phoenix Program” and his latest book is “The Strength of the Pack: The Personalities, Politics and Espionage Intrigues That Shaped The DEA.” Please visit his website at www.members.authorsguild.net/valentine/bio.htm.
Leaks are part and parcel of a deliberate disinformation and covert wars strategy...
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Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The neocons and MEMRI mis-translation game now trains its sights on Vladimir Putin
July , 2010 -- The neocons and MEMRI mis-translation game now trains its sights on Vladimir Putin...
The neocons, who can always be relied upon to lie, cheat, steal, fabricate, have also refined the propaganda art of mistranslating foreign language quotes of various foreign leaders for their own insidious purposes.
In 2006, the corporate media hyped the supposed statement in Farsi by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad that Israel should be "wiped off the map." In fact, what Ahmedinejad actually said, "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." Certainly, regime change, something the neocons advocate against governments hostile to their global designs, is not the same as wiping a nation off the map.
The mistranslations of Ahmedinejad's speeches were largely courtesy of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a Mossad front operation that operates out of a post office box in Washington, DC.
It now appears that Reuters, taking a page from MEMRI, is conducting the same kind of mistranslation operations against Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In a July 24 report from Foros, Ukraine, Putin is quoted that he recently met the so-called Russian spies, arrested in the United States and swapped for four Western agents imprisoned in Russia. The article claimed that Putin said he "sang Soviet songs" with the expelled agents told them he admired what they did. However, one of the expelled agents, Anna Chapman is only 29 years old and she would have only ten years old when the USSR collapsed.
Reuters was apparently playing as fast and loose with translations of Russian as MEMRI does with Farsi and Arabic. RIA Novosti reported that what Putin actually said was he and the expelled agents "sang patriotic songs accompanied by live music and talked about life during the meeting." That is certainly different than Putin, an ex-KGB agent, singing "Soviet songs" as part of some sort of nostalgic remembrance of the former Soviet Union and KGB. But that is the picture painted by Reuters from Ukraine, a nation that is embedded with operatives of the CIA's master-manipulator of disinformation tactics in the former Soviet bloc, George Soros.
The neocon Wall Street Journal also ran with the "Soviet song" story, when, in fact, one of the songs was from a 1968 series that ran on television in Moscow. The Guardian (UK), which has suspiciously hyped the CIA/DIA/DOD/Wikileaks leak of tens of thousands of classified documents dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan and had to point out that it did not pay Wikileaks for the material, described the TV show theme song as a "sentimental Soviet song." Putin did not call the song Soviet -- that task was taken up by certain Western media like The Guardian, which are more interested in propaganda dissemination than in news reporting.
A former U.S. intelligence analyst who tracked Russian government communications told WMR, "The Russian word for Soviet is советский (Sovetskiy). The Russian word for patriotic is отечественный (otechestvennyy). Putin either said Soviet or he said patriotic. If Putin was speaking in Russian, as of course he would, then these words could not have been 'mistranslated' by Reuters. Patriotic Russians these days do not sing the Soviet anthem."
Putin was also reported to have told the alleged Russian agents, "As far as those people are concerned -- everyone of them had a tough life." Reuters reported that Putin was referring to the expelled agents. However, according to the former U.S. intelligence analyst, Reuters, again, appears to have mistranslated Putin's comments. The ex-analyst said, "When Putin spoke of 'their life being hard,' he was not referring to the alleged hard life of the so-called Russian spies. He was speaking generically about the difficulty of being a spy." Putin was a KGB agent assigned to East Germany during the Cold War.
Reuters and RIA Novosti agreed on one of Putin's comments to the swapped agents. Putin said he knows those who betrayed the agents by name. Putin said of the scandal, "As I said earlier, this came as a result of betrayal. They [the betrayers] always end up badly taking to drink or drugs, in a gutter' he said, adding that he knew all betrayers by their names."
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has also been a victim of mistranslations from the same "usual suspects." In 2006, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles launched a polemic against Chavez claiming he said, "the world has wealth for all, but some minorities, the descendants of the same people that crucified Christ, have taken over all the wealth of the world." The canard of Chavez's anti-Semitism was echoed by the neocon Weekly Standard, as well as the Voice of America. In fact, Chavez was not talking about Jews but the Romans and Spaniards. Chavez actually stated:
"The world has an offer for everybody but it turned out that a few minorities--the descendants of those who crucified Christ, the descendants of those who expelled Bolivar from here and also those who in a certain way crucified him in Santa Marta, there in Colombia--they took possession of the riches of the world, a minority took possession of the planet's gold, the silver, the minerals, the water, the good lands, the oil, and they have concentrated all the riches in the hands of a few; less than 10 percent of the world population owns more than half of the riches of the world."
The neocons would have the world believe that Chavez said the Jews expelled Simon Bolivar from Venezuela, when in fact he was referring to the Romans who crucified Christ and the Spaniards who expelled Bolivar. Facts matter little to the neocons, whose stock in trade is comprised of mistruths, half truths, blatant forgeries, wars and extra-judicial assassinations in the Levant and the world by the infamous White House Murder INC,.....
Ousted President Manuel Zelaya was also subjected to mistranslations after he re-entered Honduras and was given refuge in the Brazilian embassy. Again, the culprits were the "usual suspects," particularly the Miami Herald.
WMR exposed this disinformation tactic: "The Herald reported on a telephone interview with Zelaya and said the Honduran leader said he was being subjected to 'high-frequency radiation' from Israeli mercenaries who are supporting the Honduran junta. The paper also reported that Zelaya said that the Israelis were using “mind-altering” gas and radiation. In actuality, that is not what Zelaya stated in his conversation on September 24 with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who was attending the UN General Assembly session in New York. Chavez said he spoke to Zelaya by phone at 1:00 pm EDT and the Honduran leader said a piece of equipment on the rooftop of a neighboring home had been recovered and brought into the embassy by Zelaya loyalists. When Zelaya checked the gear’s serial number on the Internet, it turned out the equipment was a cell phone jamming device manufactured in Israel. What Zelaya stated to Chavez and presumably to the Miami Herald is that the junta and its Israeli private security company advisers were jamming the cell phones of those holed up inside the embassy. Zelaya never spoke of radiation death rays but that is the impression the Herald gave and it was quickly picked up by various neocon and Zionist-controlled media outlets."
The cold warriors and their allies -- the Zionists, the right-wing Cuban exiles, and other retrogressive elements in the Obama administration, appear hell-bent on re-creating the Cold War. Putin joins Ahmedinejad, Chavez, and Zelaya in the neocon mistranslation arena of lies and distortions. The latest ploy of the neocons is to paint Putin as an unrepentant Soviet KGB agent....
It was 2017. Clans were governing America....
The first clans organized around local police forces. The conservatives’ war on crime during the late 20th century and the Bush/Obama war on terror during the first decade of the 21st century had resulted in the police becoming militarized and unaccountable.
As society broke down, the police became warlords. The state police broke apart, and
the officers were subsumed into the local forces of their communities. The newly formed tribes expanded to encompass the relatives and friends of the police.
The dollar had collapsed as world reserve currency in 2012 when the worsening economic depression made it clear to Washington’s creditors that the federal budget deficit was too large to be financed except by the printing of money.
With the dollar’s demise, import prices skyrocketed. As Americans were unable to afford foreign-made goods, the transnational corporations that were producing offshore for US markets were bankrupted, further eroding the government’s revenue base.
The government was forced to print money in order to pay its bills, causing domestic prices to rise rapidly. Faced with hyperinflation, Washington took recourse in terminating Social Security and Medicare and followed up by confiscating the remnants of private pensions. This provided a one-year respite, but with no more resources to confiscate, money creation and hyperinflation resumed.
Organized food deliveries broke down when the government fought hyperinflation with fixed prices and the mandate that all purchases and sales had to be in US paper currency. Unwilling to trade appreciating goods for depreciating paper, goods disappeared from stores.
Washington responded as Lenin had done during the “war communism” period of Soviet history. The government sent troops to confiscate goods for distribution in kind
to the population. This was a temporary stop-gap until existing stocks were depleted, as future production was discouraged. Much of the confiscated stocks became the property of the troops who seized the goods.
Goods reappeared in markets under the protection of local warlords. Transactions were conducted in barter and in gold, silver, and copper coins.
Other clans organized around families and individuals who possessed stocks of food, bullion, guns and ammunition. Uneasy alliances formed to balance differences in clan strengths. Betrayals quickly made loyalty a necessary trait for survival.
Large scale food and other production broke down as local militias taxed distribution as goods moved across local territories. Washington seized domestic oil production and refineries, but much of the government’s gasoline was paid for safe passage across clan territories.
Most of the troops in Washington’s overseas bases were abandoned. As their resource stocks were drawn down, the abandoned soldiers were forced into alliances with those with whom they had been fighting.
Washington found it increasingly difficult to maintain itself. As it lost control over the country, Washington was less able to secure supplies from abroad as tribute from those Washington threatened with nuclear attack. Gradually other nuclear powers realized that the only target in America was Washington. The more astute saw the writing on the wall and slipped away from the former capital city.
When Rome began her empire, Rome’s currency consisted of gold and silver coinage. Rome was well organized with efficient institutions and the ability to supply troops in the field so that campaigns could continue indefinitely, a monopoly in the world of Rome’s time.
When hubris sent America in pursuit of overseas empire, the venture coincided with the offshoring of American manufacturing, industrial, and professional service jobs and the corresponding erosion of the government’s tax base, with the advent of massive budget and trade deficits, with the erosion of the fiat paper currency’s value, and with America’s dependence on foreign creditors and puppet rulers.
The Roman Empire lasted for centuries. The American one collapsed overnight.
Rome’s corruption became the strength of her enemies, and the Western Empire was overrun.
America’s collapse occurred when government ceased to represent the people and became the instrument of a private oligarchy. Decisions were made in behalf of short-term profits for the few at the expense of unmanageable liabilities for the many.
Overwhelmed by liabilities, the government collapsed.
Globalism had run its course. Life reformed on a local basis.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
The Real CIA/MOSSAD Terrorists
What's missing from the Washington Post's Top Secret America 'expose?' 50,000 intelligence reports are published each year and I'll bet not one of them is about the threat of a false flag in our country from our own CIA and the Mossad Siamese twins.... None of them are focused on past and present criminals within the government, pentagon and industry concerning the real story of 9/11. They can't or they would be out of a job or eliminated by the infamous White House Murder INC,....
Untold billions spent on 'intelligence' and our Secretary of State says bin Laden is still hiding in Pakistan. It's not even funny anymore, since OBL died in December of 2001 of kidney failure....
If we really wanted to end the 'war on terror' and have security, all we would have to do is round up a few hundred of the real terrorist traitors that are right in our midst, bring all of our troops home and cut off all aid and support to Israel and the world banking system. Shut down the Federal Reserve and their banker/Wall St. allies and we might just be heading on the right track....
Of course we are dreaming. There's no one to do this so I suppose we as a nation, and the world, will just have to wait until the system collapses from the weight of its own utter corruption, deal with mayhem that will follow and try and survive to pick up a few of the pieces.
It's coming down to saving ourselves ... from ourselves.
911 was a vile act of mass murder by the usual Zionist criminals and their buddies. Eventually I hope we get the chance to apologize to the Muslim world for the libelous crusade launched against them in its name.
It is our burden to carry. Keep spreading the real back story. Don’t let our friends and neighbors get led by the nose to blame the usual patsies.
