The Decision-Makers-of-Wars have decided to end one in 2013. That is, after twelve years, after they made the decision to make that war in the first place. No talk of terrorists, wins, or liberation – no more. At least on that one. Same as the other one. The one that they ended with no WMD, no terrorists, and no democracy; only with added massive civilian casualties, fallen and injured soldiers, and loss of billions of dollars- leaving behind a civil-war-torn nation in rubbles. And it looks like the Decision-Makers-of- Wars will be announcing another war to make. Just like the other ones, and the ones before that. And then there is you, my friends- my loyal patriotic American veterans and all those-that-are-yours.

I want you to take a few minutes and take a look at those involved in making decisions to make wars and continue those wars. Please do it. You don’t have to place them under a microscope or analyze them for hours. Just engage in a cursory evaluation. They are alive and well. They still have their legs. Yes. They all possess two legs. They still have their arms; and, their eyes, ears, and all ten fingers. They still get to see and be with their sons and daughters- that is, fully alive offspring. And their children too have their arms, legs, eyes, ears, and all ten fingers. Their wallets are thick, very thick, and have been getting thicker; nonstop. They are all much richer than they were before each one of these wars.

Now please look at the pictures of the loved ones you once had. The ones gone forever for the wars that made those who made them happier, healthier and much richer. Please take a different look at your loved ones missing arms, legs, or eyes. Then, think about the Decision-Makers-of-Wars ‘loved ones’ arms, legs, and eyes; still intact. Now take out your wallet and measure its size. Once you do that, compare it to the size of those who sent your loved ones to the wars they decided upon. Think about how it is that you get to pay the suckers’ price; twice. Once with the lives and body-parts of your loved ones, and then one more time with your wallet.

You see, there is ‘you’, and then there are the Decision-Makers-of-Wars. There are those that are ‘yours,’ injured or gone- forever, and then there is the safe and prospering that are ‘theirs.’ There is your shrinking wallet and diminishing future, and there is ‘their’ thickening wallet and ever-brightening future – thanks to you, your loyalties, and patriotism. It boils down to you and them. And it is not one and the same. It is more like ‘them’ versus ‘you.’

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The U.S. Congress created the Department of War in 1789.  One hundred and sixty years later, in 1949, it became the Department of Defense.  The various factors involved in the name change likely included fatigue with death and destruction after World War II.  But these factors may also have included salesmanship among the dogs of war, soft-selling their wares.  Two years after the name change, President Truman and friends took the nation to war with the newly named Department of Defense, albeit without a formal declaration of war by Congress.  He called Korea a “police action.” History has taken him to task on that one, and it is now commonly called the “Korean War.”  We’ve had lots of wars since then, as well, but not a single formal declaration of war since World War II.

In November 2002, a new entity arrived when the Department of Homeland Security was established.  The DHS had seemingly laudable goals, on the surface.  But the question arises — if we already had a Department of Defense, why did we need a Department of Homeland Security?  Back in 2003, I asked this question of a top political historian, and he responded “Bill, don’t be silly.  We need the Department of Defense to protect our troops overseas!”

Speaking of defense and wars and the like, there is another entity with an inward-looking name and a broader set of goals.  In 1849, the Department of the Interior was created.  Its responsibilities have been described in terms of land and resource management and conservation, and the Department manages millions of acres of federal lands and dams.  But “land and resource management” can also be a broad ambition, depending on how you define those terms.

In 1879, an act of Congress established the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).  This organization did a lot of mapping and energy exploration support services as the U.S. frontier moved west.  During World War I, the USGS intensified its efforts supporting energy and mineral exploration, and in collaboration with the War Department.

Today, the USGS remains within the Department of the Interior — and tied not to the War Department, but to the Defense Department.  This ‘Interior’ department conducts many studies of energy and mineral resources internationally, like these studies for Afghanistan.  Considering Afghanistan a responsibility of the Interior Department, well, it gives a little cause for pause. Afghanistan might be an interior responsibility, one imagines, given that the most direct way to get there is through the interior of the earth.

The pause may get a little longer given that the USGS released an appraisal of Afghanistan in the summer of 2001.  This appraisal included a review of the country’s mineral resources, as well as respect for the country’s location within the “Interior.”

Afghanistan has additional economic potential because of its strategic geographical position as a transit route for Central Asian hydrocarbons to the Arabian Sea. This potential includes proposed multibillion dollar oil and gas export pipelines through the country.

U.S. negotiations over energy issues with Afghanistan were intensifying at this time, and reportedly soured, with military threats from the U.S., soon before 9/11.  We will survey this area of our interior history more closely in future articles. Meanwhile we may need to rename the Defense Department the War Department.  This could make things a little more honest, as well as constitutional.  In turn, maybe we should rename the “Department of the Interior,” and call it the “Department of the Interior and Exterior,” if it is to retain its global mission.

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Bill Bergman has 10 years of experience as a stock market analyst sandwiched around 13 years as an economist and financial markets policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He earned an M.B.A. as well as an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1990. Mr. Bergman is currently working with Social Movement Sciences LLC, a new enterprise developing evaluation and funding services for not-for-profit organizations.

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Today Turkish Weekly ran an investigative piece on the newly appointed chief of police in Osh-Kyrgyzstan. The new police chief Suyun Omurzakov, who used to be a deputy minister of interior, has been known as a highly influential drug lord, a leader of organized criminal groups, and he was the subject of a criminal investigation in the past:

In October 2009, the Kyrgyznews.com published an article pointing to a direct link between the then Osh city deputy chief of police S. Omurzakov and organized criminal groups engaged into drug trafficking, referring to this person as one of the most influential drug lords in the south of Kyrgyzstan.

Another report that investigates the June 2010 events developed by a coalition of Kyrgyz and Uzbek human right defenders “Oshskaya Initsiativa” (Osh Initiative) speaks of Omurzakov as a leader of an organized Kyrgyz criminal group, along with the mayor of Osh Melis Myrzakmatov, and crime bosses Almanbet Manapiyaev and Kadyr Dusanov (“Jengo”), etc., who were directly involved into plotting, leading, financing and participating in anti-Uzbek pogroms and distributing arms and ammunition among Kyrgyz militia.
…

 

Since 2001 Kyrgyzstan has been hosting the Transit Center at Manas (formerly Manas Air Base) as the transit point for US military personnel coming and going from Afghanistan, and pays 200 million for continued use of the facilities. For years the base has been riddled with scandals and fiascos.  Last December Boiling Frogs Post EyeOpener Investigative Report took a closer look at “The Manas Question: Drugs, Revolution & Terrorism on the Road to Afghanistan”:

But as important as the base is to the Kyrgyz people, the true nature of Manas remains an open question. For years, it has been at the centre of a string of allegations revolving around drug-running, terrorism and stage-managed revolutions.One of the most surprising revelations to emerge from Manas centered around the story of Abdolmalek Rigi, the former leader of the Jundullah terrorist organization who was captured by Iran onboard a flight from the United Arab Emirates to Kyrgyzstan.

Jundullah is a Pakistani tribal militant group that concerns itself with plight of Sunni Muslims in the predominantly Shiite Iran. Despite widely-acknowledged links to al-Qaeda, the CIA has been funding the group for years as a proxy force to commit attacks inside Iran, where it is believed to have killed and injured over 500 civilians since 2003.As Rigi himself told his Iranian captors, his story included the air base at Manas, which he claims the US uses to conduct covert meetings with people like himself.

You can watch the full report here at Boiling Frogs Post.

Last year, Peter Dale Scott wrote a lengthy article outlining how US intervention in Kyrgyzstan, in the name of protecting its strategic air base, has led to the destabilization of Kyrgyz politics and to a drastic increase in the flow of drugs through the country:

“…that there is a deep force behind drug, intelligence, and jihadi activity, would be consistent with the legacy of the CIA’s earlier interventions in Afghanistan, Laos, and Burma, and with America’s overall responsibility for the huge increases in global drug trafficking since World War II. It is important to understand that the more than doubling of Afghan opium drug production since the U.S. invasion of 2001 merely replicates the massive drug increases in Burma, Thailand, and Laos between the late 1940s and the 1970s. These countries also only became major sources of supply in the international drug traffic as a result of CIA assistance (after the French, in the case of Laos) to what would otherwise have been only local traffickers.

As early as 2001 Kyrgyzstan’s location had made it a focal point for transnational trafficking groups. According to a U.S. Library of Congress Report of 2002,

Kyrgyzstan has become a primary center of all aspects of the narcotics industry: manufacture, sale, and drug trafficking. Kyrgyzstan’s location adjacent to major routes across the Tajik mountains from Afghanistan combines with ineffectual domestic smuggling controls to attract figures from what a Kyrgyz newspaper report characterized as “an international organization uniting an unprecedentedly wide circle of members in the United States, Romania, Brazil, Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan….These are no half-literate Tajik-Afghan drug runners, but professionals who have passed through a probation period in the mafia clans of the world narcotics system….”

Mr. Scott goes on to shine a further spotlight on the importance of Kyrgyzstan as a critical US “Transit Hub”:

The Badakhshan drug corridor is a matter of urgent concern for Russia. The Afghan opiates entering Russia via Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, the chief smuggling route, come from Badakhshan and other northeastern provinces. The reductions of the last three years in Afghan drug production, while inadequate overall, have minimally impacted the northeast, allowing opiate imports into Russia to continue to grow. Meanwhile the much-touted clearing of opium poppy from the Afghan northern provinces has in some cases simply seen a switch “from opium poppies to another illegal crop: cannabis, the herb from which marijuana and hashish are derived.”

As a result, according to U.N. officials, Afghanistan is now also the world’s biggest producer of hashish (another drug inundating Russia).⁶⁷ This has added to the flow of drugs up the Badakhshan-Tajik-Kyrgyz corridor. In short, the political skewing of America’s Afghan anti-drug policies is a significant reason for the major drug problems faced by Russia today.

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IN July 2010 I wrote a lengthy investigative piece at Boiling Frogs Post on Kyrgyzstan, Bakiyev, Mina Corp and the connected US operatives:

When we talk about the strategic importance of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and other ‘stans’ we are not talking only about strategic in the sense of traditional resources-oil, we also talk about ‘narcotics resources’:

At the moment the stock of pure heroin in Afghanistan is estimated at slightly below 3,000 tons, and the revenues of Afghan drug suppliers reach around $3 bn annually. The international drug mafia earns at least $100 bn annually on heroin from Afghanistan, the money nourishing organized crime not only in Afghanistan but also across Central Asia – in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

And no, the real lords of these resources are not the farmers in Afghanistan or the mules transporting them. The real lords of heroin enterprises happen to be those who’ve been ‘groomed and planted’ to rule the source and transit nations, and the ones who rule those rulers who reside in the United States and other Western countries:

The revenues generated by the drug business are distributed among the criminal groups controlling various segments of the supply chain linking poppy farms to narcotics consumers. While Afghan poppy growers are enduring extreme poverty, the owners of the fields mostly reside in the US, Great Britain, and other Western democracies.

…

I encourage you to take the time and read the entire investigative report on Kyrgyzstan here. Once you do that you’ll understand why it makes perfect sense to have a drug boss lead Kyrgyzstan’s police force. It takes far more than a few mules to transport tens of billions of dollars worth of poppies-heroin. And it takes more than a third-world shack to house-base the loads as a transit hub. What you need is a major airbase and a massive hub. A la USA.

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This is Part 6 of our interview series on the New World Order. You can listen to the previous interviews in this series here: Part I, Part II, Part III , Part IV, and Part 5.

Investigative journalist and NATO expert Rick Rozoff joins us to discuss the eighteen-year-old project of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paul Wolfowitz and their cabal to destroy the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States and create a chain of buffer states around Russia, enclosing it with NATO member states and partners. He provides us with analyses and implications of the invasion of Afghanistan by the U.S. and NATO, and the duo’s expansion into Central Asia where Russian, Chinese and Iranian interests converge. Mr. Rozoff talks about the Central Asia chessboard and how the region may be transformed into a battleground of conflicting 21st century geopolitical interests, the role of Islamic extremism and how it is used by the West on this grand chess board, Mujahideen and Al Qaeda’s partnership with US-NATO in the Balkans, Caucasus and Central Asia operations, the real mission of Afghanistan’s NATO-trained 7,000 troops as guardians of the oil and gas pipeline connecting Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India- the TAPI pipeline & more!

Rick Rozoff is an investigative journalist based in Chicago and has been an active opponent of war, militarism and intervention for over 40 years. He manages the Stop NATO e-mail list , and is the editor of Stop NATO, a website on the threat of international militarization, especially on the globalization of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Mr. Rozoff has a graduate degree in European literature.

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This is Part II of our interview series on the New World Order. For the Part I interview with Andrew Gavin Marshall click here.

William Engdahl joins us to discuss the geopolitics behind the phony US war in Afghanistan, how the real purpose of US military presence in that pivotal Central Asian country is obscured, and the crucial importance of restoration and control of the world’s largest supply of opium for the world heroin markets and heroin’s use as a geopolitical weapon against opponents, especially Russia. He talks about Washington orchestrating the Egyptian as well as other regional regime changes from Syria to Yemen to Jordan and well beyond in a process referred to as “creative destruction,” Libya’s role in Washington’s greater Middle East project, the major players in the New World Order such as the Rockefellers, Soros, Washington’s National Endowment for Democracy, the New Silk Road project and pipeline politics, and more!

F. William Engdahl is an American-German freelance journalist, historian, and economic researcher. He has a degree in engineering and jurisprudence from Princeton University and graduate study in comparative economics at the University of Stockholm, and has been working as an economist and free-lance journalist in New York and in Europe. Mr. Engdahl is the author of several books including A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics in the New World Order, and may be contacted through his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net

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As the U.S. becomes more and more the kind of country it has traditionally opposed, the answer to where we are headed may lie more in the arcane traditions of a dim past than in a bright future.

On the 10^th anniversary of 9/11, numerous commentators from across a broad spectrum of opinion focused their alarm not so much on the horror of events in lower Manhattan ten years before, but on what America has become in the aftermath of that horror. Ten years on, the United States desperately expands what appears to be an increasingly irrational, corrosive and ultimately self-destructive national security mandate around the globe and here at home.

In the darkening gloom of  the upcoming 2012 Presidential elections as the U.S. builds up its forces in the Middle East and returns its attention to Asia’s Pacific rim, the CIA’s focus is no longer on analyzing intelligence on terrorists, but simply killing those perceived as a threat to its existence or perhaps more cynically, its livelihood. In the hardened fortresses of endless war, American soldiers walled off from human society claim their own lives in record numbers while in beltway foreign policy circles “Peace” has become a dirty word. In the darkening gloom, robot Predator drones target those thought to be “terrorists” or those suspected of being terrorists. Those unfortunate enough to be standing nearby are targeted as well and will one day be the target of drones piloted by computer software and facial recognition, making the machine-killing completely autonomous.

In this house of mirrors where endless war has made guilt and innocence or even facts irrelevant, the U.S. has left the realm of science and empiricism and entered a realm more mystical than real. It is a realm where ideology dictates plans and programs and not logic and empirical evidence.  It is a realm where ideology dictates who dies and who lives and is populated by men and women who can neither be understood nor reasoned with outside the confines of their own internal and hermetically sealed logic. 

From its inception during World War II, America’s military/intelligence apparatus has acted more as a subculture of America’s ruling elite than a bureaucracy dedicated to the nation’s security. It was said of America’s first spy agency the OSS that its initials stood for Oh-So-Social because of its abundant staffing with New York’s high society blue bloods. Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks even titled their 1974 book on their life in the CIA and Foreign Service as The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. 

But over the last forty years and especially since the events of 9/11, that “Cult,” and its sister organizations in the military/intelligence community have emerged from behind the curtain to become a ubiquitous and forbidding presence.

In effect, 1974’s American “Cult” of intelligence has grown to become in 2011 the dominant American “Cult-ure.” But what that culture really is and where it’s leading us remains a frightening proposition that each and every American needs to understand.

Openly and unashamedly, “national security” now pervades all aspects of American life from the grocery store to academia to hotel check-ins to manufacturing to religion. This militarization of American society has helped to polarize the political process, dwarf diplomacy as a tool of American interests overseas and slowly and inexorably change the way Americans think about their country and behave towards each other.

Its hypnotic pull on the young (and not so young) through online electronic video games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare whose most recent release pulled in a staggering $400 million on the first day of British and American sales, continues to astonish even professional observers. This celebration of modern warfare as a “game” after ten years of budget-busting real war and only two days before the November 11, Veterans Day commemoration was a cruel reminder of the Orwellian illogic of life on the other side of the mirror. But the deeper and more troubling problem now surfacing is that real war and the imagined war played out on the video screens of America now appear to have merged into one stark unreality.

Apart from the moral implications, the future of society and the very nature of who we are as human beings have been fundamentally altered by such technology. Recent studies indicate that heavy gaming may structurally alter the brain in ways comparable to a behavioral addiction.

The altered states of awareness traditionally offered by drugs and mysticism, religion and meditation have been replaced by technology of all kinds and through technology real war and fantasy war have exchanged places. But as this narcotic enticement spreads into the public sphere of politics and business, this new altered state of mind threatens to permanently upend the very nature of reality.

The tyranny of illogical thinking evidenced by the U.S. in its War on Terror can be traced most recently to the Cold War where it became necessary to throw out the burden of proof and invert the rules of logic in order to defeat Communism.

We were personally subjected to this illogic in 1982. In response to our PBS documentary on Afghanistan, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds we were informed by Karen McKay, a former U.S. army officer and spokesperson for the right-wing Washington-based propaganda outfit Committee for a Free Afghanistan,  that the Soviet’s use of poison gas in that war didn’t require proof because “we know they’re guilty.”

Such faith-based assumptions were more the realm of medieval theologians than rational analysts and the late Senator J. William Fulbright said so in his 1972 New Yorker article titled, Reflections: In Thrall To Fear.

“The truly remarkable thing about this Cold War psychology,” he wrote, “is the totally illogical transfer of the burden of proof from those who make charges to those who question them… The Cold Warriors, instead of having to say how they knew that Vietnam was part of a plan for the Communization of the world, so manipulated the terms of public discussion as to be able to demand that the skeptics prove that it was not.”

Fulbright realized that “Rational men could not deal with each other on this basis,” and arrive at anything resembling “truth.” But this understanding quickly evaporated as the Vietnam era ended and the U.S. drifted into a realm governed by irrational men unable to accept that God might not forever be on America’s side. Powered by an ideology freed from logic as well as the reality that Vietnam had overwhelmingly disproved their theories of war and their rationales for using them, America’s defense intellectuals lapsed deeper into a distorted mirror of illogic.

Guided by old ideologues who’d helped to create the Cold War like Paul Nitze, Leo Cherne, William Casey and General Danny Graham and leading neoconservatives like Richard Perle, Harvard professor Richard Pipes and Paul Wolfowitz, their group known as Team B guided the restructuring of American military policy towards the Soviet Union not on the basis of fact or proof, but only on what their minds could imagine in their wildest fantasies.

In fact, Team B accused the CIA’s analysts of “Mirror imaging,” their own intentions once again as President Kennedy’s science advisor Jerome Wiesner had claimed back in the 1960s. Only this time (in a further twist of logic) they claimed the mirror image was of American weakness and not strength reflected in the mirror of the Soviets’ steely eyes.

The idea that the Soviet Union could or should be judged solely based on an ideological perspective was rejected by Washington’s more rational elite. “I would say that all of it was fantasy,” said Anne Hessing Cahn who worked on the staff of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1982 to 1988. “They looked at radars out in Krasnoyarsk and said ‘this is a laser beam weapon’ when in fact it was nothing of the sort… And if you go through most of Team B’s specific allegations about weapons systems and you examine them one by one, they were all wrong… I don’t believe anything in Team B was really true.”

So what is true about the prevailing motives that drive American national security policy today?  In the summer of 1980 we got a major clue to the thinking behind the neoconservative’ s aggressive plotting to overturn the U.S. government’s rational policy regarding nuclear weapons (Mutual Assured Destruction) by replacing it with a faith-based policy that would justify fighting nuclear wars.

Join us next as we unravel the de-evolution of rational defense policy and its immersion into the mystical as we explore the radical 1980 re-interpretation of  the 4^th century Just War Doctrine of the Catholic Church and it perennial advocates.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story  ,  Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire and The Voice.  Visit their website here.

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Alleged arms dealer and so-called “Merchant of Death” Viktor Bout was convicted in a Manhattan federal court room earlier this month on charges of conspiracy to kill US citizens. Since his apprehension in Thailand in 2008 in a DEA sting and his subsequent extradition to the US in 2010, few have doubted that prosecutors would convict Bout, who has been deemed one of the world’s most-wanted men since a series of reports by the UN Security Council beginning in 2000 accused him of arming dictators, fueling wars and enabling war crimes everywhere from Angola to Somalia to Liberia to Afghanistan.

The two major stories on Bout diverge wildly, with the US, the UN Security Council and others accusing Bout of becoming the kingpin of the largest arms smuggling operation in the world, and Bout’s defenders claiming it was all a setup. There are indications, however, that Bout is neither the lone wolf criminal mastermind alleged by the prosecutors in his case, nor the innocent patsy in a geopolitical power struggle as alleged by his defenders.

This is our EyeOpener Report by James Corbett, presenting lesser known and rarely talked about aspects of Viktor Bout, and delving into questions and the enigma surrounding this labyrinth of illusion.

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*The Transcript for this video is available at Corbett Report: Click Here

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‘Two’:I am reading the new sensational headlines on Honduras’ now internationally recognized status as the Western Hemisphere’s major Cocaine Hub:

Long an impoverished backwater in Central America, Honduras has become a main transit route for South American cocaine.”Honduras is the number one offload point for traffickers to take cocaine through Mexico to the U.S.,” said a U.S. law enforcement official who could not be quoted by name for security reasons. A U.S. State Department report released in March called Honduras “one of the primary landing points for South American cocaine.”

Almost half of the cocaine that reaches the United States is now offloaded somewhere along the country’s coast and heavily forested interior — a total of 20 to 25 tons each month, according to U.S. and Honduran estimates.

Here is a brief video clip for a general idea of Honduras’ now recognized Narco State Status:

 
‘Another Two’: Remember the illegal military coup in June 2009? I am talking about the one our President vehemently and actively supported while recognizing it as illegitimate and unconstitutional? Our president not only continued financial aid and support to the illegitimate new government of Honduras, but actually increased it, and continues to increase it. This, despite of a whole host of human rights violations, such the killing of more than 3000 people including journalists, lawyers and activists by the US supported illegitimate government.

‘Next Two’: Have you read the Nation magazine’s recently uncovered close relationship between the corporate drug lords and private paramilitaries and the Obama administration?  Wealthy landowners with ties to the cocaine trade, like Miguel Facussé, who actively supported the 2009 military coup, and who has met with the State Department numerous times, and met with Obama in Washington DC in the first week of October. How about that, huh? And the results?

Obama has allocated $45 million in new funds for military construction, including expansion and improvement of the jointly operated Soto Cano Air Force Base at Palmerola (supplied now with US drones) and has opened three new military bases, Police and military funding, almost $10 million for 2011, rose dramatically in June with $40 million more under the new $200 million Central American Regional Security Initiative, supposedly to combat drug trafficking in Central America.

“More Two’s”: With Honduras’ ascending status in the drug trade and associated violence and corruption, why has the Obama administration been vehemently supporting the illegitimate and criminal Honduran regime and its top-tier drug lords? Huh, doesn’t this sound very familiar? Think about Afghanistan’s drug lords and operators. I’m talking about the pawn government we have planted there. You know, the Karzai Heroin Clan?

You may also throw in the following ‘two’ provided to you by Boiling Frogs EyeOpener Video Report with James Corbett: Morbid Addiction: CIA & the Drug Trade

Okay. Now, shall we go ahead and add the two and two and two and two …What does it add up to? You tell me.

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Just as the British Empire was in part financed by their control of the opium trade through the British East India Company, so too has the CIA been found time after time to be at the heart of the modern international drug trade. From its very inception, the CIA has been embroiled in the murky underworld of drug trafficking.

There are billions of dollars per year to be made in keeping the drug trade going, and it has long been established that Wall Street and the major American banks rely on drug money as a ready source of liquid capital. With those kinds of funds at stake, it is unsurprising to see a media-government-banking nexus develop around the status quo of a never-ending war on drugs – aided, abetted and facilitated by the modern-day British East India Company, the CIA.

This is our EyeOpener Report by James Corbett presenting the history, documented facts, and cases on the CIA’s involvement and operations in the underworld of drug trafficking, from the Corsican Mafia in the 1940s through the 1980s Contras to the recent Zambada Niebla Case today.

*The Transcript for this video is now available at Corbett Report: Click Here

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From ten years on, everything about 9/11 feels otherworldly and irrational, the reasons for it, the apparent helplessness in the face of it, the curious identities of the people involved and the American government’s response to it. It defied logic then and it still does. The World Trade Towers were proud symbols of who we were as early 21^st century Americans, at least who we thought we were. After all, wasn’t the spiritual motto of the original 1939 Flushing, NY World’s Fair “World trade center” pavilion dedicated to “world peace through trade?”  

There would be no peace after 9/11. The destruction loosed a demon that had been struggling for America’s soul since the creation of the Cold War in 1947. The U.S. would now be freed to pursue “evil” wherever it could be found and there would be no turning back. The creation of the World Trade Towers by Rockefeller brothers Nelson and David had been steeped in psychological symbolism from their start in the early 1960s. As the most well known scions of American business, the Rockefeller family brought more than just money to their endeavors, they brought a vision for the future of the planet and a philosophy to guide it.

Begun as a massive undertaking to revitalize lower Manhattan, Chase Manhattan Bank Chairman David and New York Governor Nelson pushed hard for the project and each tower stood as a symbol of their respective power. As metaphor, the towers were more than just two of the tallest buildings in the world. It might be said they were as important as the two pillars Joachim and Boaz which stood at the entrance to Solomon’s Temple; mystical gates to a Cathedral of wisdom in which all could worship under one religion; the religion of business, Capitalism.

The Rockefellers were no strangers to the power of psychological warfare and its impact on American opinion. During World War II Nelson had headed the U.S. government’s intelligence agency for Latin America, the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA). CIAA’s film division guided the 1942 production of Walt Disney’s Saludos Amigos to promote pro-American sentiment in South America. In 1954 Nelson was appointed as President Eisenhower’s White House special assistant on Cold War tactics and psychological warfare. Nelson Rockefeller played a central role in formulating domestic propaganda programs throughout the 1950s as chairman of the Planning Coordination Group which, in addition to its propaganda work, oversaw all CIA covert operations. His 1956 Special Studies Project directed by Rockefeller protégé Henry Kissinger produced many of the domestic policy recommendations that came to be known as President Kennedy’s New Frontier. His family’s philanthropic support of the arts had been carefully coordinated with the CIA and was both overtly and covertly propagandistic.

As a committed Anglophile, Rockefeller had aided British intelligence during World War II when he rented space in New York’s Rockefeller Center at a steep discount to a number of British propaganda agencies including their secret intelligence service for the Americas, the British Security Coordination (BSC). The BSC’s chief, Sir William Stephenson (Intrepid) set up shop in New York City with the help of some of New York’s wealthiest families with one main objective in mind: Get the United States into the war in Europe on Britain’s behalf.

One key agent in the psychological war for American public opinion was young RAF pilot Roald Dahl who along with James Bond creator Ian Fleming, playwright Noel Coward and Gallup pollster David Ogilvy were given free rein to commit sabotage, political subversion and propagandize “the natives” (Americans) through whatever means possible.

Dahl’s creative fiction earned him praise from the New York Times and publishing contracts from Random House as well as entrée to Hollywood where he would collaborate with Walt and Roy Disney in their studio’s transformation into an arsenal of animation while inspiring numerous imitators.  Dahl would go on to marry a movie star and become a Hollywood icon with perennial successes, most notably “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” The cult of intelligence would ultimately become so seamlessly blended into every aspect of publishing, television and film, the CIA would jokingly be referred to as “the Chocolate Factory.” Along with Fleming, Ogilvy and Coward, Dahl would help to get the United States into the war with Germany and craft an enduring Anglo-centric cultural narrative in the public’s mind whose main objective was the promotion of a British agenda for the United States. That agenda would quickly shift from anti-fascist to aggressive Cold War anti-communist (read anti-Russian) as World War II ended, with Britain playing a seminal role in the creation of America’s national security state.

President Harry Truman’s March 12, 1947 proclamation laying out the rationale for the Cold War (Truman Doctrine), fundamentally altered America’s identity by embedding a permanent psychology of fear. But a hidden aspect of this conflict was the slow, grinding corruption that its unreality fostered in America’s leadership. That unreality was finally revealed in the catastrophe of Vietnam.

In a remarkably self-effacing (especially by today’s standards) January 8, 1972 New Yorker article tracing the origins of the devastation caused by Vietnam titled “Reflections: In Thrall To Fear,” Senator J. William Fulbright bemoaned the mental corruption caused by the Truman Doctrine during the 1940s, 50s and 60s, whereby “Our leaders became liberated from the normal rules of evidence and inference when it came to dealing with Communism… The effect of the anti-Communist ideology was to spare us the task of taking cognizance of the specific facts of specific situations. Our ‘faith’ liberated us, like the believers of old, from the requirements of empirical thinking… Like medieval theologians, we had a philosophy that explained everything to us in advance, and everything that did not fit could be readily identified as a fraud or a lie or an illusion.”

What Fulbright’s brilliant but tragic reflections fail to include is that America’s assumptions about the Cold War were never empirical. In fact the assumptions weren’t even necessarily American but had been crafted by America’s Anglo-centric intelligence bureaucracy and rooted in messianic 19^th century British designs for control of the Eurasian landmass. A recent release of classified documents reveals that Britain’s wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill was so obsessed with Eurasian conquest, he’d envisioned rearming Germany and attacking the Soviet Union right up to the end of World War II in a plan named Operation Unthinkable. Faced with the absurdity of confronting an overwhelmingly superior Soviet force and starting World War III, Churchill’s operation was shelved, but his famous Iron Curtain speech of 1946 would animate the idea while establishing the ideological narrative by which all future U.S./Soviet relations would be defined.   

The inspiration for Churchill’s speech and its warning of the growing Communist threat to “Christian civilization” was the American child of British immigrants, James Burnham. As the godfather of neoconservatism, Burnham would work his way from Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky in the 1930s, to authoring a book that would forge the foundations of a new kind of planned, centralized society, to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. His much critiqued landmark 1940 The Managerial Revolution would be read and admired by Hitler’s general staff and viewed as the blueprint for George Orwell’s 1984 in which a new class of business executives, technicians, bureaucrats and soldiers would destroy the old capitalist order, crush the working class and seize all of society’s wealth for themselves.

In a 1945 Partisan Review article titled “Lenin’s Heir” Burnham, while still at the OSS, infused his apocalyptic political views with mystical allusions to the Eurasian heartland as “the magnetic core” of Soviet power, comparing it to the mystical “reality of the One of Neo-Platonism,” whose inexorable and unstoppable “emanative progression… descends through the stages of Mind, Soul, and Matter” towards its ultimate destination beyond the Eurasian boundaries and through “Appeasement and Infiltration (England, the United States).”  Burnham was a keen advocate of dirty tricks. He would play an important role in the overthrow of Iran’s Mohammed Mosaddeq and the installation of the Shah. His book The Machiavellians would become a handbook for CIA planners. 

As an “anti-Communist ideology” Burnham’s apocalyptic warnings about the inevitability of Soviet expansion from Eurasia’s magnetic core ring like a medieval theologian’s incantation throughout Churchill’s  “Iron Curtain” speech. George Orwell even makes clear in his 1946 “Second Thoughts on James Burnham” that Burnham’s words read like a mystical invocation and were most likely intended to hypnotize.  

Twenty six years later, Senator Fulbright would realize that only because of the disastrous outcome of Vietnam was there any willingness at all to reexamine the basic assumptions of American postwar policy toward the Soviet Union and what had brought the United States to such a sorry state. The 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks SALT would spring from this realization, as would the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty ABM and eventually SALT II, until in January of 1980 President Jimmy Carter would ask the Senate to delay consideration of the Treaty on the Senate floor because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. That treaty would never be passed.

Our involvement in the Afghanistan story began in the summer of 1979 when we began production of a documentary titled Arms Race and the Economy: A Delicate Balance. During the next months numerous experts including economist John Kenneth Galbraith lent their experience to our understanding of the unseen damage that a massive new diversion of tax dollars and investment capital would represent to the civilian economy. Galbraith insisted that accelerated defense spending and renewing the Cold War – as the neoconservative right was demanding at that critical moment – would ultimately destroy the civilian economy. He was convinced that the Cold War had already made America more and more like the Soviet Union, ruled by a military-industrial-academic establishment suspended from reality.

But by the time our program aired that winter, the argument was no longer whether our government should call a halt to the nuclear arms race and reinvest in the civilian economy. The December 27, 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had rolled back the narrative to 1947, the Truman Doctrine, to Churchill and Burnham’s mystical, medieval enchantment and the psychological warfare campaign necessary to bring it back to life was about to begin.

J. William Fulbright’s 1972 “Reflections: In Thrall To Fear” represented an awakening from the deep hypnotic trance imposed upon Americans by Cold War ideology. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan brought about its re-emersion, but this time to a deeper and totally detached level of unreality.

With the election of Ronald Reagan in the fall of 1980, the United States not only rejected Fulbright’s concerns for the intellectual dishonesty represented by the continuation of the Cold War, but willfully embraced the fraud, the lie and the illusion as its own and was willing to take it one step further.   

The U.S. had silently, almost imperceptibly crossed through a mirror in 1947 with the creation of a second and covert national-security-government. But few in Washington understood at the time, the Faustian bargain they were signing onto. Now that secret government would take the U.S. on a fairytale journey into a mirrored image of itself from the 1940s, interweaving its own delusion with a remanufactured, two dimensional Hollywood invention named Ronald Reagan as the host. America would never be the same.

As an actor, Reagan had been implanted into America’s subconscious as a hero during the 1940s and his militaristic campaign of Peace through Strength  was sold to Americans as the Reagan revolution. It was in fact a counter-revolution engineered by a reactionary gang of consummate insiders headed by former Research Industry of America employee, OSS veteran and Wall Street lawyer William J. Casey with the intention of restoring America’s militarist Cold War thinking.

As Reagan’s intelligence chief, Casey had key access to the concentric circles of international power necessary to carry off the tectonic shift of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street that would transfer power to an already wealthy globalist elite. As one of OSS chief Wild Bill Donovan’s Knights Templar during World War II, Casey took his “Crusade for Freedom” and a one world religion of Capitalism as creed, and as Director of Central Intelligence was perfectly positioned to put James Burnham’s dirty tricks and Machiavellian philosophy to work in the heartland of Eurasia.

Casey’s passion for the Afghan jihad was messianic. An ultra-conservative Catholic, Casey saw little difference in the antimodernist beliefs of the Wahhabist House of Saud and the anti-enlightenment views of the newly installed Polish Pope, John Paul II. Disguised as a war to liberate Afghanistan from Soviet aggression, Casey’s campaign was intended to infiltrate covert teams beyond Afghanistan into the Soviet Union’s Muslim provinces and provoke an insurrection. Backed by neoconservatives, the Saudis and secretive organizations like the Safari Club, Le Cercle, the Bilderberg Group and the 6I, it would play out in propaganda from Rambo to Charlie Wilson’s War as the greatest American victory of the Cold War.

In reality, Casey’s team would so tear down the wall between fact and fiction, legal and illegal, truth and the lie, it would make 9/11 inevitable.

But if anyone deserves the prize for the culture of triumphalist self-deception which lives on today in the endless war on terror and the Homeland Security State-culture-of-fear, it is James Burnham.  On February 23, 1983 James Burnham was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan culminating his fifty years of service as one of the “guiding lights in mankind’s quest for truth.” Burnham’s 1940 prediction that Nazi Germany would win the war had actually been wrong as was his prediction that the Soviet Union would lose. His subsequent revised prediction that the Soviets would win and expand beyond the Eurasian heartland followed only after a Soviet victory appeared obvious in 1944.

In George Orwell’s 1946, “Second Thoughts on James Burnham,” Orwell clinically diagnosed Burnham’s convenient powers of revisionist prophecy as the product of a “mental disease” whose “roots lie partly in cowardice and partly in the worship of power, which is not fully separable from cowardice.”

Ten years after the events of September 11, 2001, thirty two years after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and sixty four years after the creation of the Cold War, James Burnham lives on as an icon to a deeply corrupted Homeland Security-culture “In Thrall to Fear.” We have no one to blame but ourselves for allowing that culture’s acolytes, their lies and their fabrications to continue to hypnotize us.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story and Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire Visit their website here.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

The idea that the drug trade in Afghanistan is enabled and protected by western interests for their own benefit is by no means a new or controversial idea. After all, we are talking about the third most lucrative commodity in the world behind oil and the arms trade. However, the media coverage of this issue involving hundreds of billions of dollars is another story. James Corbett brings to you questions and points not dared to be raised by the media and pseudo alternatives alike.

This is our EyeOpener Video Report by James Corbett on Afghanistan’s White Gold for boilingfrogspost.com

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

The root cause of what the United States suffers from today, both politically and economically stems from the psychological warfare campaign triggered by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  At that time, Americans responded dutifully if not robotically to the threat as a barrage of propaganda poured from a hoard of foreign policy “experts” claiming vindication for Vietnam while bemoaning America’s military weakness. Zbigniew Brzezinski himself claimed that the Soviet invasion was a vindication of his prediction that the Soviets would be emboldened by a lack of U.S. resolve elsewhere. The shaken president, Jimmy Carter announced a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, the creation of a rapid deployment force to the Middle East and a new get tough posture toward the Soviet Union.

On January 2, 1980 the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour presented former U.S. Ambassador Theodore Eliot and Harvard Professor Richard Pipes to speculate on the implications of the invasion. As an unabashed neoconservative ideologue, Pipes should have been considered a controversial choice sitting alongside the thoroughly Eastern establishment Eliot. But on this evening Pipes had been carefully chosen to play the very special role of delegitimizing détente with the Soviet Union while moving the discussion permanently and irretrievably to the neoconservative right.  Paired with Eliot, the dean of American diplomacy and soon to be Secretary General for the United States of a gathering of international elites calling itself, the Bilderberg group, the two were there to send the signal that the ideology of neoconservatism, globalism and the institutions of the American government were now one and the same.

It was a moment that would change the United States in ways that few Americans would immediately understand and many continue to find baffling. Years earlier, Pipes had been chosen to chair a highly controversial operation known as the Team B experiment in competitive analysis.

The decade of the 1970s had presented a series of strategic shocks to the United States. The Watergate scandal and the Arab oil embargo, campus protests, combined with the American military failure in Vietnam had shaken Washington’s own belief in the American narrative. Vietnam had removed the veil from America’s Cold War defense-intellectual elite, revealing their elaborate plans and complex mathematical formulas to be useless as a guide to action. But even before the end of that war in 1975, pressure had been building from a powerful collection of right-wing ideologues to ignore their own complete intellectual failure, wind back the clock and return to an openly militarized Cold War approach to the Soviet Union.

Backed by Gerald Ford’s CIA director George W. Bush, the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) vice chairman, Leo Cherne, and the father of Cold War thinking, Paul Nitze, Team B’s goal was to turn the CIA’s thinking about the Soviet Union on its head.

“The intensity and scope of the current Soviet military effort in peacetime is without parallel in twentieth century history,” they claimed in their top secret 1976 report. The Soviets were preparing for a “third world war” and were comparable only to “Nazi remilitarization of the 1930s.” Given military superiority and the will to use it, they reasoned, at some point in the near future the Soviets would make a strategic move that the United States would be militarily unable to stop.

But it was in their claim that the Soviets would first “intimidate smaller powers . . . adjacent to the USSR . . . where pro-Soviet forces have an opportunity to seize power but are unable to do so without military help,” that the Team B assessment attained a level of prophecy.

If anything could be described as a psychological warfare operation come unhinged, it was the Team B experiment. Team B effectively exposed the government’s own process of rational analysis to an irrational exercise in personalized, politicized, ethnic and faith-based psychological warfare. And it succeeded.

By 1979, the Team B and its acolytes Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Zalmay Khalilzad had so managed to overlay their alternate reality onto the mind of government that when the invasion of Afghanistan took place in 1979 their fantasy appeared to be as real and foreordained as it was intended to be.

Richard Pipes made clear in that January 2, 1980 broadcast that Afghanistan was “a superb springboard from which to launch offensives both into the Indian subcontinent and into Iran and the Iranian Gulf….” And then invoked the magic of World War II by stating that never before had the Soviets “felt bold enough… to engage in a direct blitzkrieg. So if they get away with it in Afghanistan, there’ll not only be great danger for our whole Middle eastern position but we will have encouraged them to engage in actions of this sort in other parts of the world, including, for example, Southeastern Europe or possibly even Western Europe.”

A “direct blitzkrieg” aimed at the Middle East, India, Southeastern and even Western Europe? Just like the phantom threat posed by Saddam Hussein in 2003 and brought forward by the very same people, the idea that the Soviets might cut off a vital oil supply was all that was needed to capture public opinion. That spring CBS News anchor Dan Rather followed up with a coast to coast broadcast reinforcing the company line: the American people were asleep to Soviet designs and had better start supporting the Mujahideen “freedom fighters” before it was too late. 

The major media had been priming the pump for months prior to the invasion citing Brzezinski and the importance of the “arc of crisis,” and predicting that the Soviet Union would be driven toward the Persian Gulf within the decade due to intelligence reports that it was “running short of the oil it needs to fuel an expanding economy.” Never mind that the Soviet economy was actually contracting at that point and the CIA’s secret 14-page memo titled “The Impending Soviet Oil Crisis,” was pure hokum.

Brzezinski and his Team B allies wanted the Soviets in Afghanistan as part of a long standing plan for the conquest of Eurasia and the psychological warfare campaign to convince Americans of the Soviets’ malevolent desires for world domination was already gearing up to make it reality.

International Rescue Committee Chairman Leo Cherne was well practiced in the arts of such deception. As of 1978, the year of the Marxist coup in Afghanistan the IRC was already at work stating in their Annual Report that they were actively engaged in bringing Afghan refugees to Europe and the United States following “The takeover of Afghanistan by dictatorial forces sympathetic to the Soviet Union…” The IRC’s Annual Report that year featured a photograph of Cherne’s old protégé at the Research Institute of America, board member William J. Casey while conducting a tour of Southeast Asia. Casey would serve as Chairman of the Executive Committee the next year before running Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election campaign and shortly thereafter becoming his CIA director.

The IRC in cooperation with the CIA had virtually created the elaborate psychological warfare mechanism that sold the U.S. military buildup in Vietnam to the American public. By 1975 their campaign of black lies had been exposed as a dangerous fraud. But in faraway Afghanistan, those mistakes would be forgotten with the help of the Europeans and a covert globalist agenda. 

It was obvious to us in 1980 that the Soviet invasion was not what it seemed and even more obvious that the Western response to it was not what it should have been. 1979 was a critical moment in American history. Vietnam had created huge problems for the post World War II infrastructure and economy. Huge debt and a military resurgence was the last thing the U.S. needed. But when Theodore Eliot showed up at a preview of our first-person 1981 Afghan documentary on life behind Soviet lines and demanded to know who in the U.S. government had “authorized” our project, we realized we had penetrated a psychological warfare campaign that was steeped in the irrational.  

Like clockwork, the 1979 Soviet invasion would open a back door for a small band of globalists to bleed, loot and ultimately disassemble the Soviet Union, just the way the very same people would use 9/11 to go through the front door to bleed, loot and disassemble the United States.

Join us next for Willie Wonka and the National Security State as the U.S. resumes a holy war begun in the 19^th century through a syncretistic cult-like British foreign policy known as Mystical Imperialism.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story and Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire Visit their website here.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

The state’s use of psychological warfare to bend the population to war is as old, if not older than the existence of states themselves. But it was perhaps Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering whose statement while on trial at Nuremberg best summed up the cynical simplicity of the logic.

“Of course people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders, that is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger.”

Psychological warfare in the form of propaganda comes in all shapes and sizes as well as shades of black, grey or white.  America’s coordinated use of psychological warfare began in earnest during World War II and ever since has grown and expanded into public relations, advertising, cinema, radio and television, electronic video games and now social media. Its pro-war boosterism extends over sports, religion, education, news and entertainment (and of course the military) to form a seamless electronic cocoon-like web. It is employed on an ever growing list of those deemed as enemies of America as well as on a confused and agitated American public – whose corporate news networks frame and manage an increasingly shallow narrative while engaging in a kind of Orwellian Kabuki Theatre of fairness and balance.

Americans were heavily propagandized to support a U.S. entry into World War II and again heavily propagandized to accept the morality of deploying the atomic bomb to end it, despite dissent from within the scientific community. Even Mickey Mouse was conscripted for America’s total war effort along with the minds of America’s youth. Following the war Americans were heavily propagandized to accept the Cold War, the need for maintaining a permanent army, navy and air force as well as the buildup of a nuclear weapons arsenal.

 Since 9/11 Americans have been bathed in psychological warfare on Islamic terrorism despite the fact that only a handful of incidents in the West can be attributed to radical Islamists. What is generally not appreciated by America’s leadership about this kind of prolonged use of propaganda on the American public is that it exposes the rationale for the longest war in American history in Afghanistan as flimsy and unconvincing and completely sidesteps the outright lies and deceptions used to justify the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The origins of Washington’s war in Afghanistan have always been strategic, long term and particularly black, obscured throughout the Cold War by a narrative adapted from Britain’s 19^th century colonial expansion.

Given little priority during the U.S.’s long involvement in Vietnam in the 1950s and 60s, America’s psychological warfare campaign shifted its attention to Central Asia in 1973 when Afghanistan’s king was overthrown by his brother in law and cousin Mohammed Daoud with the help of the Parcham faction of the Marxist/Leninist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). The role of the Communist party meant so little to the U.S. media at the time it remained invisible in both Time and Newsweek’s published reports of the coup. But to U.S. ambassador Robert G. Neumann, the presence of the PDPA meant that a “limited Great Game” with the Soviet Union was now back in play.

A coordinated campaign of pressure from U.S.-backed Pakistan and Iran soon ousted Daoud’s Marxist partner while the Shah’s dreaded spy agency SAVAK moved in to help Daoud clean house of leftists. The Shah even readied a military force to invade should Daoud waver in his newfound anti-Communist zeal. But by 1978 a new day for Iran and Afghanistan was about to dawn.  

Enter Hafizullah Amin. Before, during and after World War II the U.S. had created a number of psychological warfare organizations designed to compete with the political propaganda of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.  Integrated closely into the CIA’s intelligence and psychological warfare units after the war, organizations like Leo Cherne’s International Rescue Committee (IRC) and according to the CIA’s own website, the Congress for Cultural Freedom “helped to solidify CIA’s emerging strategy of promoting the non-Communist left–the strategy that would soon become the theoretical foundation of the Agency’s political operations against Communism over the next two decades.”

In constant competition with the KGB, the CIA was also known to target foreign students destined to hold high rank in their home countries.  Handpicked by U.S. administrators to participate in a UNESCO/Columbia University program, Amin was sent to New York in 1957. He later completed a master’s degree at Columbia—coincidentally at a time when future National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski was gaining prominence as a professor there.

Amin claimed to have become radicalized at the University of Wisconsin in 1958. He also claimed to have become a Marxist that summer but would conceal his emergence as a leader in the Kalq faction of the PDPA until much later. Despite being a Marxist, Amin was again chosen in 1962 by the Americans to attend Columbia, this time as a doctoral candidate and rose quickly to become the president of the Afghan Student Association. A disclosure in Ramparts magazine in 1967 would reveal the CIA’s sponsorship of that same Afghan Student Association during that time. Following his return Amin rose rapidly in Afghan politics and by 1978 was positioned to play a pivotal role in another Palace coup, this time of Prince Mohammed Daoud himself.

1978 was a pivotal year in the foreign policy of the United States as President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski made steady inroads into Secretary of State Cyrus Vance’s power. By that year he had persuaded Carter to transfer jurisdiction over the CIA from the Inter-Agency Policy Review Committee, (headed by the secretary of state) to the National Security Council’s Special Coordinating Committee which he chaired. This shift gave Brzezinski control over covert operations in Afghanistan. It also gave him control of the psychological warfare campaign necessary to make those operations work both at home and abroad.

Hafizullah Amin played the perfect foil to Brzezinski’s propaganda war which, regardless of the lack of evidence, painted the PDPA takeover in Kabul as a clear example of the growing dangers of Soviet expansionism and their pursuit of dominance in the Persian Gulf. Throughout 1978 and into 1979 Amin’s actions dovetailed perfectly into the expanding psychological warfare campaign with Brzezinski blaming Amin’s February 1979 assassination of American Ambassador Adolph Dubs, on the Soviets.

Transcripts from Politburo meetings in Moscow from March 1979 show a Soviet leadership confounded as the events unfolded, referring to conversations with Amin as looking “like a detective novel.” Had the operation been scripted in advance by the CIA to confuse Moscow, it was working brilliantly.

The subsequent, December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan ended détente, renewed the Cold War and opened a U.S. relationship with Communist China that could not have been imagined at the time. It established a new narrative of an expanding Evil Empire threatening America’s vital interests in the Persian Gulf and would redefine U.S. objectives along neoconservative lines. These lines were laid out within days of the Soviet invasion by former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Theodore Eliot and Harvard Professor Richard Pipes in a MacNeil Lehrer broadcast on January 2, 1980.

But it wasn’t until we probed this new narrative by going to Afghanistan ourselves in 1981 and were challenged personally in a public forum for doing so by Ambassador Eliot, that we realized there was much more to Ambassador Eliot and his narrative than met the eye.

*Join us next as we look at the strange team behind the psychological warfare campaign that brought the United States into Afghanistan and kept it there and how that campaign has come home to haunt America in a post 9/11 world.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story and Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire Visit their website here.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

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This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

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This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

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BFP Nightly Video Potpourri 

Video 1: Social Security Reform Bill Encourages Americans to Live Faster, Die Younger!

Video 2: 5.8 Million Israelis get $100,000,000,000 in US Tax Dollars While American States are falling apart

Video 3: Rebel Militias Include the Human Traffickers of Benghazi

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International Newsworthy

US in ‘Denial’ Over China’s Pacific Plans 

Britain Expels Diplomats & Officially Recognizes Libyan Opposition

Former Russian Foreign Minister: “What will Happen after Gadhafi?”

US ‘Threatens’ Reaction to Iran over Rising Violence in Iraq  

Iran Courts Post-Mubarak Egypt, Worrying Allies

NATO Bargaining Hard on Turkish Air Defense

Jordan Receives $1 Billion Grant from Saudi Arabia

Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs Behind Docu-Reality Series ‘Is.Real 2011′

Israeli President: Syrian Leaders Assad Must Go

Afghanistan: Long-Term Deal with US Conditional

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National Newsworthy

Here We Go Again- Obama: Bin Laden Death Ups Terror Risk for Americans!

Why Are US Lawmakers Determined to Make the Job Crisis Worse?

Hedge Funds Regulation: Not Working

Near-Bankrupt Alabama County Once Hired DC Lobbyists

Poll: 46% of Americans Think Most in Congress are Corrupt

Anthrax Emergency Use of Doxycycline Hyclate

Halliburton Whistleblower Receives $970K for Exposing Halliburton No-Bid Contract in Iraq

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Noteworthy Editorials

US Sponsored “Democracy” in Colombia: Political Assassination Poverty & Neoliberalism

The Solution to America’s Debt Ceiling Crisis: Looting What Has Already Been Looted…

The Political Theater & the Debt Ceiling Crisis: Are we Being Had?

The Most Dangerous Word in the World

How Obama Squandered the High Hopes of Those Who Elected Him

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Video 1: Classic Johnny Carson Lie Detector for Politicians

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 International Newsworthy

A Saudi Beacon for Iraq’s Sunni Militias

Amnesty International Website Blocked in Saudi Arabia

The Cause of the Latest Russian-Kyrgyz Energy Row 

New US Envoy: NO Rush to Leave Afghanistan

NATO Admits: 5 Children Wounded in Afghanistan Air Strike

Afghan Lawmakers Tackle Karzai on US Deal 

Britain Farmers Find Promise in a Crop Illegal in Afghanistan

Iraq “Ignores” US-Imposed Sanctions Against Iran 

NATO Strikes Kills 7 in Libya Hospital

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National Newsworthy

Goldman Sachs: US Credit Risk if Wars Counted as ‘Cuts’

Federal Reserve Attorneys: Fed Banks are NOT Agencies but “Independent  

Corporations” with “Private Boards of Directors”

Pentagon: US Transport Funds End Up with Taliban!

Top Cyber Official Resigns Abruptly

Super Congress Moves Forward Despite Tea Party Opposition

Navy Vet Arrested After Videotaping Police in Tampa

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Noteworthy Editorials

The Cyber-Security Industrial Complex 

How America Became an Empire 

As the American Empire Spreads Abroad, it Becomes a Police State at Home

The Spinning of Polls & Demonization of Palestinians 

Obama: Job Destruction Makes us Richer?

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 Video1: CIA Funding & Manipulation of the US Media

Video 2: We Are Mad As Hell & Can’t Take This Any More!

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Can we just step back for a few minutes, put aside all the little meddling points showcased by the propaganda machine media and political showmen, take a look at the following facts, and try to see the forest despite the trees?

An ‘alleged’ Mastermind executes a terror attack on September 11, 2001, with a few men, to be exact 19.

Our government responds by sending over at least 150,000 men and women.

 That ‘alleged’ Mastermind implements the 9/11 terror plot with a few hundred thousand dollars; in the range of $400,000.

Our government spends more than $1,000,000,000,000 in response, on wars on terror abroad, at least that much here at home, and keeps on spending.

Our government has been using lots of this:

To bomb the hell out of this:

Because we have this:

And they have only this:

The 9/11 Terrorist Attack cost us 2977 innocent lives. 19 terrorists’ also died on that day; resulting in 2996 deaths.

 In Afghanistan alone our government’s response has resulted in the deaths of more than 2600 coalition forces, at least 10,000 civilians, and many more thousands lumped together as Taliban, Militants or  simply unknown; our estimated total around 20,000.

We suffered greatly as a result of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, with 2977 deaths, nearly 7000 treated for injuries, and tens of thousands suffering the losses of their loved ones.

As a nation we’ve been suffering continuously since then; for almost a decade: with thousands of our soldiers killed, many more thousands wounded, and many many more thousands of these men and women’s loved ones suffering the results. We have also been suffering the loss of trillions of our hard-earned tax dollars. For a decade; Continuously.

As a nation we’ve been causing lots of suffering too; for a decade; continuously. With tens of thousands of people we’ve killed and seriously injured, and with many more tens of thousands of orphans and loved ones left behind to suffer those losses.

Tens of thousands of lives. Trillions of dollars. Tens of thousands of disabled; orphans, and widows. Suffering there. Suffering here.

There must be ‘some ones’ out there immune to all this suffering. Obviously those ‘some ones’ have not been suffering. In fact ‘some ones’ must be gaining a lot from all this suffering.  And maybe, considering the tremendous level of ‘gains’ involved, ‘some ones’ actually want, thus, start and inflict the suffering. Otherwise what could ever explain this insanity?

Tens of thousands of lives lost there. Thousands of lives lost here. Tens of thousands more in pain; and many more mourning. Millions deprived of Trillions of hard-earned dollars. And there are those ‘some ones’ who have been earning billions of dollars from many millions’ sufferings; for almost a decade, and, continuously.

Who could these ‘some ones’ be? Any food for thought?

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Newsworthy

U.S. Blocks Oversight of its Mercenary Army in Iraq

Egypt Military Postpones First Post-Mubarak Elections

Inside DARPA’s Secret Afghan Spy Machine

General Zia Expresses Concern over Instability in Balochistan

Central Asia & Caucasus: A Look at Tactics Used by Cyber Censors

A New Epoch Beginning in the History of the Euro?

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US House Committee Saves Israeli Aid in Foreign Aid Cut

Financial Sectors Score Big Money for Obama Reelection

Murdoch’s Cash Lines Pockets of Members of Congress

Justice Department Trips in Anthrax Case- Again!

Next Army Chief Isn’t So Cool with a Smaller Force

New Study Proves Falsity of John Brennan’s Drone Claims

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Which Side of American Torture Are You On?

Hell-Bent on War

US Afghan Strategy: Senseless & Merciless

Former ‘Antiwar’ Leader Shills for Obama

End America’s Role as a Military Empire

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Video: The Founders Did Not Intend for the US to be Run by Big Banks & Wall Street

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And so the notorious Ahmed Wali Karzai (A.W.K) is dead, killed by a (formerly) trusted bodyguard who had worked closely with U.S. Special forces and the C.I.A.  The assassination of a C.I.A. strategic asset, alleged Kandahar drug boss and tribal “fixer” for his half brother Afghan president Hamid Karzai raises a lot of questions, not to mention issues, about the nature as well as the future of America’s involvement in Afghanistan.

Not surprisingly, the Taliban issued a statement claiming credit for the killing as retribution for his role in “Cooperating with the Americans, Canadians and Britons… for spreading the net of intelligence of the Western invaders and boosting their sway in south-west Afghanistan.” They also claimed he continued to receive “high salary from CIA.”

As it was elsewhere in Afghanistan, America’s approach to Kandahar after 2001 was always counterintuitive. Putting hated warlords back in charge to fill the leadership vacuum left by fleeing Taliban was expedient but self-defeating. But U.S. reliance on this unorthodox strategy for success has remained consistently curious for the Taliban-stronghold. During a trip to Kabul in the fall of 2002 we were told that Pakistani ISI were crossing the Durand line (the disputed border between Afghanistan and Pakistan) to openly recruit Afghans for al Qaeda/Taliban cells in the villages of the province. No one we spoke to could explain such a lapse in U.S. intelligence, considering that at the time, (prior to the Iraq invasion) the U.S. had all the resources necessary to deal with such a flagrant cross-border operation.

In the ensuing years, Ahmed Wali Karzai filled in for the U.S. absence by running Kandahar province as a Karzai family protectorate. With C.I.A. backing A.W.K. built his power base up from nothing and in 2005 was elected to Kandahar’s provincial council. With local officials and tribal elders in his pocket, he was a sure bet to take over the governor’s office. In 2008, A.W.K. ran afoul of his C.I.A. beneficiaries and was subjected to an intense effort by senior US military officials to remove him prior to the “surge” of U.S. forces. That effort failed, but the acrimony and distrust of Ahmed Wali’s methods and alliances remained. 

As a linchpin in General Petraeus’s 2009 “surge” strategy for victory over the Taliban, A.W.K. symbolized the dysfunctional symbiosis stretching between the Presidential Palace, the American Command and the U.S. Embassy. His sudden absence now leaves  either a strategic vacuum in U.S. plans or a long awaited opportunity – just as the promised U.S. draw down begins and Petraeus ends his Afghan tour to become the Director of Central Intelligence.

In September of 2010, former Chief of the C.I.A.’s Directorate of Operations, Dr. Charles Cogan invoked the ghost of Vietnam when he posted a blog asking whether the United States wasn’t approaching “the Diem Moment” in relation to Hamid Karzai and his powerful brothers. Vietnamese president Diem and his brother Nhu were perceived as having become anti-American and were making passes at France and even the enemy in Hanoi. Cogan suggested that the time was fast approaching for Mr. Karzai and his family members to be offered safe passage out of Afghanistan before the worst befell them.

But as Dr. Cogan should know, A.W.K’s assassination smacks of another event in Afghan history far more appropriate to this moment than allusions to Vietnam, and it’s that moment which we’ll call the “Hafizullah Amin moment” that better provides the clues to the strange death of Ahmed Wali Karzai.  

Hafizullah Amin was the U.S. educated, pseudo-Marxist Afghan-nationalist-strongman overthrown by the Soviets that December 1979, after playing out his role in a tragicomic farce to lure the Soviets into their own Vietnam. It was well known at the time that Amin had a longstanding relationship with the C.I.A. and was cutting a deal (brokered by Pakistan) with his fellow Ghilzai Pashtun, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. U.S. ambassador Adolph Dubs had been carefully trying to work Amin away from Soviet influence but was so worried about his provocative behavior Dubs had gone to his own C.I.A. station chief and demanded to know if Amin was a C.I.A. agent. In February of 1979, Dubs ran into the deeper agenda already underway when he was kidnapped by a band of Tajik Maoists and assassinated when Amin ordered an attack on the room where he was being held hostage.

In the months leading up to the Soviet invasion, Amin tried to twist out of the knot by filling Kabul’s ministries with his closest relatives, arresting scores of old friends and agreeing to accept the Durand line as the permanent border with Pakistan, but his time in the saddle had run out. Amin had become hated by his own people and a disposable nuisance to all concerned, both American and Soviet. The rest, as they say, is history.

Fast Forward to 2011 as a panicked President Hamid Karzai surrounds himself with relatives, anti-US advisors and religious fanatics drawn once again from the ranks of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hesb-i Islami, as he fends off hostile attacks and conspiracies from a dozen directions meant to bring him down.

With his power-broker-brother gone and his access to Kandahar’s complex patronage system cut off, Hamid Karzai has been dealt a severe blow. The death of Ahmed Wali Karzai closes off a major option for his half brother Hamid at a crucial moment when Washington has shifted into phase two of its ten year program for Central Asia and with the Durand line once again the focus of the U.S. war. Next up comes the large military bases that the U.S. wants to occupy beyond 2014 and a status of forces agreement. This is something which Karzai cannot afford to allow for fear of alienating Afghanistan’s population and his regional neighbors and at the same time cannot refuse and continue to accept protection as an American client. Karzai is desperate to find allies to save him, but time is short. Should he get the nod from strongman Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s backers in Iran and Pakistan to merge his dwindling political forces with those of the Hesb-i Islami he may get a reprieve, but without his man in Kandahar, Ahmed Wali to do his dirty work, Hamid Karzai’s “Hafizullah Amin moment” may be right around the corner.

# # # #

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story and  Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire  Visit their website at  www.invisiblehistory.com.  

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Newsworthy

CIA Trains Coverts Units of Afghans

US Senators Warn Beijing on South China Sea 

Deadly New Zealand Earthquake Unearths Israeli Spy Ring

Bahrain: Washington & London Endorse Dialogue with Tyrants & War Criminals & Torturers

How Israel & Its Allies Thwarted Gaza Aid Flotilla

Foreign Investment Begin to Pour into Iraq

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Rep. Burton ‘had no inkling’ Lobbyist Linked to Spy Agency

Pentagon Seeks To Manipulate Social Media for Propaganda Purposes

CIA Bank Accounts Used to Funnel Oil Deal Money, Court Documents Claim

House Threatens Pakistan Aid over Bin Laden Wives

Fed Charges Activist as Hacker for Downloading Millions of Academic Articles

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Creating a Military State

 How AIPAC’s Stealth Political Action Committees Undermine US Elections 

Echelon: Dwarfs Murdoch’s “News of the World”

1 Million Dead in Iraq? 6 Reasons the Media Hide the True Human Toll of War … And Why we Let Them

The Kingdom & the Towers

Guilty Men: The Political Origins of the Meltdown

Why Obama Should Think Medium

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Video- Dennis Kucinich: “War Takes Money from the American People & Gives it to War Profiteers”

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Newsworthy

US Rebuffs Russians Ingenuity on Iran

Missile Shield in Turkey? NATO Military Action against Iran Implies Suicide

Drone War in Pakistan: Photos from the Ground Showing Civilian Casualties

Canadian Military Stages Show of Force against Russia in Arctic

How Israel Offered to Sell South Africa Nuclear Weapons

100 Hours in Israeli Detention for Trying to Visit Bethlehem

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DOJ Lawyers Contradict FBI Findings in Anthrax Case

DOJ Casts Serious Doubt on its own Claim about the Anthrax Attack

 USS Cole Bombing Case “Too Tainted” for Death-Penalty Trial

Obama Nominates Former Ohio AG, A Loyal Democratic Donor, to Lead New Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Hollywood Producer Was an Israeli Nuclear Agent

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US War Dept Dances on the Ceiling

Predator Drones & the International Mafia

Imperial Priorities: Obedience First, Character Last

Afghanistan: Hearts, Minds & Murders

Austerity for Everyone, Except the DOD

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Video 1: In the Past 6 Years Only One Palestinian Minor Acquitted out of 835 Charged with Stone-Throwing!

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 I said I was not going to waste time writing about the Ahmed Wali Karzai assassination story and let the stenographers in our media spread the preapproved nonsense. I wrote my piece and provided you with my own humble two cents, and I was ready to move on:

…on the other hand, once things sour, when those liabilities begin to surpass the asset and the profits, you’ll see the media rush and begin swarming around the no-longer-a-favorite Kingpin. Then comes a short period of silence, and after that Bam: You have an assassinated, murdered, suicide-d, or disappeared Old Kingpin case. Alas; no surprise there since this is how these Kingpins ultimately meet their end- this one ‘supposedly’ by the currently fashionable enemy: the Taliban. I promise you won’t be hearing a single word about this in a few days and forever-The Langley Way.

            …

The entire scenario of a Taliban-Turned confidante bodyguard didn’t sit well with me; way too Langley. When you get a chance read a bit about the assassination of Vietnam’s Diem Brothers, and then you’ll understand what I mean when I say ‘Too Langley.’

Anyhow, this morning I read the following headline: Bodyguard Who Killed Karzai’s Brother Was Trusted CIA Contact :

The bodyguard who assassinated President Hamid Karzai’s brother had been working closely with US Special Forces and the CIA …

Everything made sense up to this point, but then came the following sentences:

…before he was recruited by the Taliban, raising fears over the Islamist movement’s increasingly sophisticated intelligence apparatus which has managed to threaten the inner circles of power in Afghanistan.

…

Utter nonsense; that is, if you start adding 2 and 2 and another 2, and then check the result against the one presented to you by the media. Let’s add up a few twos here:

-We know that Ahmed Wali Karzai was a CIA operative and trusted asset for years.

-We know that the CIA relationship- aka working arrangement soured with Ahmed Wali Karzai around 2008, so he was outed by Langley.

-We know that Ahmed Wali Karzai had a pretty good relationship with a certain group of Taliban figure-heads and was pro dialogue with the Taliban.

-We know that Ahmed Karzai’s bodyguard, Sardar Mohammad, spent years as a CIA trusted asset and US ally.

-We know that Karzai’s Bodyguard was a well-know Taliban Foe and played an important role as a snitch reporting on Taliban and helping with their arrest.

Here is what the above twos add up to:

The known Taliban Foe CIA Asset assassinates former CIA Asset-Operative whose relationship with the CIA had soured, and who had relationships and dialogue with certain Taliban figureheads.

And here is the add up by the media:

The bodyguard turned out of the blue into a Taliban and assassinated former US operative who turned out to be a drug kingpin Ahmed Wali Karzai.

Now it is your turn. Please go ahead and do the math.

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Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration. Their recent book, Crossing Zero, focuses on the nuances of the Obama administration’s evolving military and political strategy, those who have been chosen to implement it, and the long-term consequences for the U.S. and the region. Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story published by City Lights, January 2009 chronicles their three-decade-focus on Afghanistan and the media.

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It has been over two weeks since the orchestrated ever-changing Bin Laden Death. The question of what happened remains the same except it doesn’t seem to matter any longer. The US media is done after making their initial splash, and the majority is left with one conclusion: the SOB is dead, and who gives a da… how it happened. Whether Osama held an AK-47 while using some damsel in distress as a shield, whether there was a real fight or not, whether it was really Osama’s body in an organic edible shell we fed to the endangered sharks, whether the full credit goes to the CIA or the White House or the Pentagon …no longer seems to matter. Dizzy-fying confusion induced by dozens and dozens of lies and discrepancies and denials has given way to post-adrenaline-rush exhaustion. The question of what happened has been classified as moot and irrelevant. Right or wrong I’ll leave that question behind, at least for now, and instead, go back to focus on the more important question- the question of ‘why and why now.’

As I stated during the first few days of covering the Bin Laden Death Script, when it comes to DC dirty politics, when it comes to the new world order machine, and when it comes to US presidents, timing is everything and there are no such things as coincidences:

Considering the mainstream media’s sensationalism and propaganda tactics and their cemented role as an extension of the establishment, one must step back and take in the entire landscape, the context, connections, and of course the timing. Only after that, after putting the pieces together instead of dumbly staring at the images spread before us by the media, we have a chance to get a grasp of the reality-facts; or at least a chance to come up with real questions.

In the past two weeks, after talking with many experts and sources, both nationally and internationally, Pakistan has been surfacing as the common thread holding the most rational explanation of ‘why and why now.’ Interestingly, I came across the following statement by Rep. Ron Paul during his interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe:

“The helicopters that landed in Abbottabad won’t be the last to put American troops on the ground in Pakistan, I see the whole thing as a mess, and I think that we are going to be in Pakistan. I think that’s the next occupation and I fear it. I think it’s ridiculous, and I think our foreign policy is such that we don’t need to be doing this.”

I was planning to write a comprehensive piece based on information and analyses I have gathered from my solid intelligence and Pentagon sources. However, after watching the interview with Ron Paul (And he has his credible sources), I decided to go ahead and write a fairly quick commentary on why the question of ‘why and why now’ keeps pointing to Pakistan as the next probable occupation target for our never-dying neocon objective-makers. Actually the following is more of significant developments and a timeline than a subjective interpretation or commentary. I am going to put them together and have us look at the pattern and where these points point to, and that’s exactly what I meant by “one must step back and take in the entire landscape, the context, connections, and of course the timing.”

Let’s start with Project for the New American Century (PNAC) which was launched in 1997 and became known for leading the public campaign to oust Saddam Hussein both before and after the September 11 attacks. As many of my highly aware readers know, those neocons, their objectives and activities, never go away. They may change names or change a few front faces, but like a leech they always hold on to the system; the system they help put in place in the first place:

The blandly-named Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) – the brainchild of Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, neo-conservative foreign policy guru Robert Kagan, and former Bush administration official Dan Senor – has thus far kept a low profile; its only activity to this point has been to sponsor a conference pushing for a U.S. “surge” in Afghanistan.But some see FPI as a likely successor to Kristol’s and Kagan’s previous organisation, the now-defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which they launched in 1997 and which became best known for leading the public campaign to oust former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein both before and after the Sep. 11 attacks.

…

So what’s their mission statement, and what have these neocons been cooking up with the new face, their new president, Obama? The following is from an article by Jim Lobe in 2009:

The mission statement opens by listing a familiar litany of threats to the U.S., including “rogue states,” “failed states,” “autocracies” and “terrorism”, but gives pride of place to the “challenges” posed by “rising and resurgent powers,” of which only China and Russia are named.

…FPI intends to make confrontation with China and Russia the centrepiece of its foreign policy stance. If this is the case, it would mark a return to the early days of the Bush administration, before 9/11, when Kristol’s Weekly Standard took the lead in attacking Washington for its alleged “appeasement” of Beijing… FPI has chosen to push for escalating the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan. The organisation’s first event, to be held here Mar. 31, will be a conference entitled “Afghanistan: Planning for Success”.

…

For now, this is what I want you to take from the above on Obama’s Neoconistic objectives: fiercely counter China-Russia when it comes to establishing US hegemony, especially in Central and South Asia, with emphasis on Afghanistan. Next, let’s look at the strategic importance of the same region for China [All emphasis mine]:

In order for China to sustain its status as the emerging economic superpower, it must take all the necessary steps required in order to have sufficient energy resources for the near future. According to Pakistani think tank, BrassTacks, Chinese interests in the Indian Ocean became visible in 2002, when they invested heavily and began work on the Gwadar Port, located in Baluchestan, a province of Pakistan.

The Gwadar Port has its benefits for both Pakistan and China. According to Abdus Sattar Ghazali, executive editor for American Muslim Perspective, “The cost benefits to China of using Gwadar as the port for western China’s imports and exports are as evident as the long-term economic benefits to Pakistan of Gwadar becoming a port for Chinese goods.” Not only does Gwadar enable China to fulfill its energy needs, but it will also provide a strategic military footprint in the Arabian Sea, which has the United States worried.

…

Okay, now you have Obama’s Neoconistic objectives with China as its main target and competitor, and you have China competing for the same strategic area, Pakistan, to fulfill its energy needs and establish a strategic footprint in the Arabian Sea, and in the middle of it, the point where US-China strategic objectives intersect: Pakistan.

In order to halt this, the globalists need to block China’s access to the Arabian Sea by way of Gwadar. According to BrassTacks, to do this, “there needs to be a ‘new Pakistan’ as indicated in Operation Enduring Turmoil.” Operation Enduring Turmoil is PNAC’s plan to disassemble Pakistan into three parts. According to a “game plan” drawn out by Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, in a 2006 article of the Armed Forces Journal, “Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier tribes would be reunited with their Afghan brethren [and] would also lose its Baluch territory to Free Baluchistan. The remaining ‘natural’ Pakistan would lie entirely east of the Indus, except for a westward spur near Karachi.” With this done, what was once the NWFP, a province of Pakistan, is now part of Afghanistan, and what was once Baluchistan, a province of Pakistan, is now its own state, Free Baluchistan. This would force China to impossibly go through Afghanistan and Free Baluchistan in order to reach the Arabian Sea. Such an arrangement would cut China’s route to the Arabian Sea.

…

Now, please focus on our three main actors- China, US and in the middle, the strategically important Pakistan. Let’s use our common sense minus logic-clouding details, and consider what happens when the strategically crucial actor in the middle starts straying away from one main actor and moving toward the other.

This is from November, 2009:

China has sent out an interesting signal ahead of US president Barack Obama’s scheduled visit to Beijing by offering a set of advanced fighter jets to Pakistan. It has agreed to sell $1.4 billion worth of jets to Islamabad days ahead of the planned visit of the US president Barack Obama to Shanghai and Beijing on November 15-18.

The move is expected to jolt the US administration as it works on notes and talking points for Obama’s meetings with Chinese leaders. He is expected to discuss Beijing’s relationship with India and its role in internal conflicts in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Beijing is keen to reduce US influence on Pakistan, which will make it easier for it to deal with India, sources said. Washington’s recent decision to extend massive financial assistance to Islamabad is seen in some quarters as a policy setback for China.

…

A year later, in October 2010, the following interesting perspective on how things were heating up between the US and Pakistan is published by Margolis:

The neoconservative far right in Washington and its media allies again claim Pakistan is a grave threat to US interests and to Israel. Pakistan must be declawed and dismembered, insist the neocons. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is reportedly being targeted for seizure or elimination by US Special Forces. There is also talk in Washington of dividing Afghanistan into Pashtun, Tajik and Uzbek mini-states, as the US has done in Iraq, and perhaps Pakistan, as well. Little states are easier to rule or intimidate than big ones. Many Pakistanis believe the United States is bent on dismembering their nation. Some polls show Pakistanis now regard the United States as a greater enemy than India.

…

It is important to remember how Obama passed AIPAC neocons’ test on Pakistan during his presidential campaign in 2007. Obama said if elected in November 2008 he would be willing to attack inside Pakistan with or without approval from the Pakistani government,”If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will,” Obama said.

Now, let’s fast-forward to early April 2011:

Pakistan’s ambassador to China used a recent celebration of his country’s Republic Day to give a rhetoric-filled talk about Beijing-Islamabad relations. If March 23, 1940, was the day the Muslim League decided to establish Pakistan, then the anniversary would be a time to declare that relations with China will define the way forward. ‘We shall take our bilateral relations to new heights,’ Masood Khan proclaimed. [...] Pakistan has been moving into China’s sphere of influence for decades and the countries routinely refer to each other as ‘all-weather’ partners.

This year will mark the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations. ‘Even when I was there in 1981, ’82, I could see Chinese military factories going up,’ says Stephen Cohen, a Pakistan expert at the Brookings Institution. Now, Pakistan represents a major market for China’s nuclear and military technology. According to SIPRI, a Swedish think tank, over 40 per cent of Chinese arms exports go to Pakistan—the largest share of any country China sells to.”

Obviously Obama’s day in day out bombing of Pakistan, his ‘let’s drone the hell out of them’ policy, had backfired, producing the opposite effect for his Neoconistic global hegemony objectives. Now, things begin to really heat up; this is from April 17, 2011:

President Obama’s rhetoric in Delhi had no substance except to rile the Pakistanis. The Delhi card didn’t quite work. The Chinese Premier visited Islamabad and pledged $20 billion in investment in Pakistan during the next five years. How about them apples? The Pakistani retort is what it has always been we need “Friends Not Masters”.

Britain as a colonial power practiced “Divide and rule” pitting religious and ethnic differences in the Middle East to rule continents. Bhutto famously theorized that the post-colonial powers were working on a “unite and rule” strategy forcing Pakistan to work with India against China.

“The idea of becoming subservient to India is abhorrent and that of cooperation with India, with the object of promoting tension with China, equally repugnant.” Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

…

Most Pakistanis don’t want closer relations with Washington–they want to build closer relations with Beijing, and work on creating the Muslim Union (similar to the European Union) in Central Asia. Links with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey are key to the future of Pakistan.

Islamabad is moving ever closer to China, both militarily and economically– and that’s a fact Jack.

…

By mid April things start going downhill; very fast.

The transactional relationship between Washington and Islamabad is coming to an end. While US-Pakistani transactional relations are fraying at both ends, the opposite is true of Sino-Pakistani relations.

Pakistan supported China when she was recognized only by Albania, and built the bridge to the USA. This fact cannot be forgotten by the Chinese who mention it in every summit and mentioned it in this summit also

…

There is renewed energy to pace up the development of Gwadar Port to provide China a shorter route and easy excess to world markets to dispatch its goods to Europe and America.

“The Gwadar port project will transform Pakistan’s Navy into a force that can rival regional navies. The government of Pakistan has designated the port area as a “sensitive defense zone.” The Gwadar port will rank among the world’s largest deep-sea ports. The port provides China a strategic foothold in the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Located at the entrance of the Persian Gulf and about 460 kms from Karachi, Gwadar has had immense Geostrategic significance on many accounts. The continued unstable regional environment in the Persian Gulf in particular as a result of the Iran/Iraq war, the Gulf war and the emergence of the new Central Asian States has added to this importance. Considering the Geo-economic imperative of the regional changes, the ADB’s Ports Master Plan studies considered an alternate to the Persian Gulf Ports to capture the transit trade of the Central Asian Republic (CAR) as well as the trans-shipment trade of the region.

…

And finally, on April 27, according to my sources, the following catalyst prompts the Obama team to execute the Kill Osama Bin Laden Script. This is the pivotal point in the Bin Laden Death Operation Script as a catalyst for the soon to come Pakistan Occupation:

Pakistan is lobbying Afghan President Hamid Karzai against building a long-term strategic partnership with the United States, and urging him instead to look to Pakistan and its ally, China, for help in striking a peace deal with the Taliban and rebuilding the economy, according to Afghan officials.

…

Washington”s relations with Pakistan have reached their lowest point in years following a series of missteps on both sides, and Pakistani officials say that they no longer have an incentive to follow the American lead in their own backyard, the report added.

“Pakistan is sole guarantor of its own interest,” said a senior Pakistani official, adding: “We”re not looking for anyone else to protect us, especially the US. If they”re leaving, they”re leaving and they should go.”

…

The next day, on April 28, , a senior Pakistani government official said that the Export-Import Bank of China will loan Pakistan $1.7 billion to develop a city-wide train system in the eastern city of Lahore.

Since the holes-filled and never-explained ‘kill or capture’ operation, the presidential PR machine, the US media and their extension guised under ‘alternative’ have been beating the war drums. After all, as with any wars of ours, public opinion must be shaped, and public backing must be garnered. This is one of the latest reflecting just that: 

After the killing of Usama bin Laden in Pakistan, few American voters believe that country is an ally of the United States in the war against terrorism. Moreover, most doubt Pakistan is worthy of continued U.S. foreign aid.

That’s according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday.

Nearly three out of four voters — 73 percent — say the United States should stop sending foreign aid until Pakistan demonstrates a deeper commitment to the war against terrorism. Some 19 percent would continue to provide funding.

…

With the discovery that bin Laden apparently had been living in Pakistan for years, the consensus is Pakistan is not a friend (74 percent). A small 16 percent minority of voters views Pakistan as a strong U.S. ally in the war against terrorism.

…

You must be thinking: Pakistan must have tons in their own dossier to expose US government duplicities, lies, and nefarious activities. So why have they been relatively silent in all this? Why don’t they open the flood gate on ‘facts’ surrounding Bin Laden, his supposed role in 9/11, his supposed journey since 9/11, and his supposed death recently? And I have an answer for that: neither party has played all their cards yet. Just take a look at how Gates has been playing both sides carefully while measuring the outcome of various factors in play:

Gates reiterated the accusation that elements within the Pakistani government knew about the location of Osama bin Laden and were keeping that information from the United States. Bin Laden was killed in a US raid earlier this month.

At the same time, Gates echoed comments by other officials, conceding that the US has absolutely no evidence to that effect and that it is “pure supposition on our part.” The repeated accusations, despite being based on “pure supposition” have done major damage to US-Pakistan ties, and have spawned calls from Congress to suspend all aid to Pakistan to punish them.

Gates, who attended the conference with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen, also said that the US raid that killed bin Laden had “humiliated” the Pakistani government, and that they had “paid a price” for bin Laden’s presence. Mullen added that the US ability to attack Pakistan with impunity was “a humbling experience” for the Pakistani military.

…

The White House neocons are in the midst of age-old diplomatic games, bluffing, and hedging their bets. They have the ‘foreign & military aid’ card. They have the ‘ISI dirt files’ card. They have the ‘ultimate China leaning’ card. And of course, they have the ‘mighty power of preemptive occupation war’ card which is always blessed and supported by NATO and overlooked by their butlers in the UN.

China has its own set of cards; whether it is their biggest market for dumping goods, or carrying the US debt, or who knows what else. For now they are using the ‘talk’ card with no real strings attached:

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao assured his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani of China’s “all-weather friendship” on Wednesday, during a visit that sharply contrasted with anger between Washington and Islamabad.

“I wish to stress here that no matter what changes might take place in the international landscape, China and Pakistan will remain forever good neighbours, good friends, good partners and good brothers,” Wen told Gilani at the start of a meeting in central Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.

Suffice it to say that not all cards have been placed on the table. As the famous Kenny Rogers’ Gambler lyrics go:

You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table.
There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.

As for us the people, we’ll be sitting and waiting for the three parties to conclude this stage of their global hegemony game. We’ll be reading and watching and listening to their PR machine in the media give us one concocted fantasy after another. As in all other wars of ours we will have zero to say, zilch to gain, and plenty to lose. They have the cards, and we are the piled up tokens on the table.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald join us to talk about their recently released book, Crossing Zero: The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire. They discuss the origins of the Taliban and the array of armed groups in AfPak that are lumped together as “Taliban” by US media and politicians. Gould-Fitzgerald talk about Pakistan’s double play, the struggle for oil and gas that is the basis for the conflict, pipeline politics, the confused or even lack of strategy in the senseless costly war, the current corruption ridden puppet regime in Afghanistan, Obama administration’s drone-mania, their 8-point plan for ending the US occupation, and more!

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration. Their latest book Crossing Zero: The AFPAK War at the Turning Point of American Empire published by City Lights in March 2011 focuses on the nuances of the Obama administration’s evolving military and political strategy, those who have been chosen to implement it, and the long-term consequences for the U.S. and the region.

Here are our guests Elizabeth Gould & Paul Fitzgerald unplugged!

*For the history of democracy in Afghanistan, and a detailed recounting of the US support for the Mujahiddin during the 1980′s Soviet occupation, creating some of the “blowback” seen in the current US occupation, listen to Peter B Collins’ recent interview of the Gould-Fitzgerald duo here.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

I am going to list a few noteworthy articles and commentaries from this past week, and I am going to make it very brief. I am sure you have heard that before. Okay, it will be relatively brief; emphasis on ‘relatively.’ Those of you who have gone through selling your house, while living in it, especially with a kid or two or three …, well, you know how annoying it can be. You get a short notice, you run around trying to organize, clean, put away toys (including those hidden under the sofa, tucked behind the sink …), and then, you have to ‘evacuate’ your house for the potential buyer…Now you have the reason behind the ‘relatively brief’ round up.

I hope you enjoyed our interview with Tom Woods. We also recorded a great interview with Grant Smith on Israel and the Israel Lobby which will be posted next Friday. I don’t know why but I’ve been getting tons of good comments/responses at Facebook, and very little feedback here at BFP. Any ideas as to why? Please let us know.

Here are my noteworthy items from this week:

The Good Taliban, The Bad Taliban, The Ugly Taliban- different or one & the same?

In May 2009 I wrote an article on the Obama presidency and the current American political party system as ‘Two Sides of the Same Coin … Heads-Heads.’ Here is what I wrote on our confused Afghan strategy:

It is another war with no time table. It is the continuation of the same abstract ‘War on Terror’ without any definition of what would constitute an ‘accomplished mission.’ One minute there is pondering on possible ‘reconciliation’ with the Taliban, and the next minute seeking to topple it. In fact, to confuse the matter even further, we now hear this distinction between ‘Good Taliban, Bad Taliban, and the Plain Ugly Taliban.’ As stated by Karzai on Meet the Press on May 10, 2009, not all Taliban are equal!!

And the following related news came out this past week:

Afghan Taliban to Open Office in Turkey 
Voice of America

The Turkish foreign minister has confirmed that preparations are underway for opening an office in Turkey for the Afghan Taliban.  During a recent visit to Turkey, the president of Pakistan, together with his Turkish counterpart, made a commitment to support political initiatives to end the war in Afghanistan. Ankara has been calling for talks with the Taliban, and having strong ties with both Afghanistan and Pakistan is seen as a key element in facilitating talks.

Turkey says it is willing to host a political office for Taliban militants from Afghanistan in order to promote talks to end the war there. An unnamed Afghan official is quoted as saying that planning for the office is already in progress.

…

But wait, that’s not the most noteworthy aspect of this news. You know how they say the devil is in the details? Well, here is the ‘devil’ in this development [emphasis all mine]:

Last week, a senior Afghan official, Mohammad Massoom Stanekzai, secretary of the Afghan High Peace Council and an adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, announced a US$50 million donation from the United States government to the council – the body responsible for seeking peace talks with the Taliban – in support of reconciliation efforts.

This is the beginning of official; up-front peace negotiations with the Taliban, which to date have taken place in backrooms. However, in stark contrast to US hopes, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that al-Qaeda was gradually returning to the eastern Afghan provinces of Nuristan and Kunar, setting up bases for the first time in years in the wake of the withdrawal of US troops from the area to more populated centers.

Okay, let’s ask it out loud: who exactly have we been bombing in Afghanistan? Pakistan? Al-Qaeda? Taliban? Only the Bad Taliban?  All of the above? None of the above? A mixture of good, bad, and [plain ugly Taliban? And, which Taliban are we funding and opening international offices for? I have a pretty good theory (maybe a hypothesis) on this, but that will have to wait for another time and another article…

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The Devolution of the People & the Government of the Czars

Language and words people use tell a lot about their culture, values, even geographic characteristics and forms of government under which they live. But then again the situation, circumstances, change or evolve, and with them the language and the use of some words. Once upon a time, here in our country, government workers were referred to as public servants, and it wasn’t that unusual to hear expressions like ‘government of the people, by the people…’ Back then, people hated words associated with kings, queens, emperors … But then, things devolved. Really, devolved big time. We went from a small government to a gigantic one; from public servants to czars and czarinas. And, looking at the frequent and accepted usage of words reflecting this devolution, our society seems to have accepted the position of servants ruled by their masters…Here is what I had to say in an article:

I can go on listing cases of Mr. Obama’s change on change. Whether it is his reversal on protection for whistleblowers, despite his campaign promise to the contrary, or his expansion of the Un-American title of ‘Czardom,’ where we now have more czars than ever: Border Czar, Energy Czar, Cyber Security Czar…Car Czar…maybe even a Bicycle Czar!

…

President Obama Won’t Abide by Provision in Budget Bill
Jake Tapper, ABC News

In a statement issued Friday night, President Obama took issue with some provisions in the budget bill – and in one case simply says he will not abide by it.

…

One rider – Section 2262 -- de-funds certain White House adviser positions – or “czars.” The president in his signing statement declares that he will not abide by it.

“The President has well-established authority to supervise and oversee the executive branch, and to obtain advice in furtherance of this supervisory authority,” he wrote. “The President also has the prerogative to obtain advice that will assist him in carrying out his constitutional responsibilities, and do so not only from executive branch officials and employees outside the White House, but also from advisers within it. Legislative efforts that significantly impede the President's ability to exercise his supervisory and coordinating authorities or to obtain the views of the appropriate senior advisers violate the separation of powers by undermining the President's ability to exercise his constitutional responsibilities and take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

…

During his presidential campaign, then-Senator Obama was quite critical of the Bush administration’s uses of signing statements telling the Boston Globe in 2007 that the “problem” with the Bush administration “is that it has attached signing statements to legislation in an effort to change the meaning of the legislation, to avoid enforcing certain provisions of the legislation that the President does not like, and to raise implausible or dubious constitutional objections to the legislation.” Then-Sen. Obama said he would “not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law.” 

…

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And here are a few more links and excerpts for you:

Halfhearted Gestures & Another Case of a For-Show-Only Congressional Performance

Rep. Chaffetz seeks to limit pat-downs of children after new TSA controversy
Pete Kasperowicz, the Hill

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) on Wednesday introduced legislation that would prohibit Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials from conducting pat-downs on minors without consent from a parent. 

Chaffetz's bill, H.R. 1510, was spurred by video footage posted online over the weekend of a 6-year-old girl being patted down at an airport gate by a TSA official as her mother objected. Chaffetz wrote to TSA chief John Pistole on Wednesday to complain about what he called an "invasive pat-down at the hands of TSA personnel."

…

Chaffetz, who chairs the Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, warned Pistole that he would be introducing legislation, and said the agency "must get serious" about how it tries to balance national security and personal privacy."At the very least, it cannot continue to operate under the belief that little girls and handicapped children pose such a serious threat that [TSA officials] must abandon all manner of decency when interacting with them,” he wrote.

…

Okay, do you want to know what triggered this latest for-show-only performance; soon to be forgotten ultimatum? Here it is, watch it.

Obama’s Drone Obsession: They say a man obsessed with really big cars has a small…But what do they say about a man obsessed with drones?

US Ignores Pakistan Warning, Continues Drone Strikes
Jason Ditz, AntiWar.Com

Though Pakistani officials were quite clear on Monday in their demand that the US put its entire drone strike program “on hold” for the foreseeable future, drones were active again today in South Waziristan, attacking a village and killing at least six people.

…

The latest strike spawned another quick rebuke from officials, who insisted the attacks are “counterproductive” and are indeed being used as a recruitment tool by militant factions. The US has launched scores of such strikes since President Obama took office, killing massive numbers of people, many of them civilians.

…

The continued strikes had previously been done in the context of some backdoor agreements with officials to keep them going, but in the absence of those it seems the Obama Administration is betting Pakistan just doesn’t care enough about the constant bombardment of their tribal areas to actually do anything about it.

…

What Could Halt US Arms Sales to Any Middle Eastern Country? Nothing, really.

U.S. reviewing Mideast arms sales
Andrea Shalal-Esa, Reuters

The U.S. government is reviewing arms sales to Middle Eastern countries on a “case-by-case basis” given turmoil in the region, and has already halted some sales, a Pentagon official said on Monday.

Richard Genaille, deputy director of the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency, said that two of the biggest deals on the table have been cleared to proceed: a $29.4 billion sale of 84 Boeing Co F-15 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia and a $7 billion sale to the United Arab Emirates of an advanced missile defense system built by Lockheed Martin Corp.

A team of officials from his agency, the State Department, military commanders and the White House National Security Council were carefully reviewing planned arms sales to the region, Genaille told Reuters in an interview after a speech at the annual Navy League conference.

Unrest and violence spreading across the Middle East have sparked questions about U.S. arms sales to the region, deals that many U.S. defense companies had hoped would offset an expected decline in U.S. defense spending in coming years.Genaille said the current reviews affected specific parts of arms sales that had already been approved by Congress and were being readied for delivery to Middle Eastern countries.

…

Earlier, Genaille told the conference that he expected continued strong foreign demand for U.S. weapons, predicting that the overall level of foreign military sales could exceed the currently forecast level of $46 billion in fiscal 2011, which ends on September 30, buoyed by the Saudi arms sales.The agency that oversees foreign arms sales reported $31.6 billion in new sales in fiscal 2010, according to its website.

The Saudi arms sales are likely to buoy sales in 2011, although the overall level will likely drop off and stabilize between $30 billion and $40 billion for several years.In October, the Obama administration notified Congress of a proposed arms sale to Saudi Arabia worth up to $60 billion over 15 to 20 years. It would be the largest arms deal on record if all purchases are made, including 84 Boeing F-15 fighter jets and upgrades to 70 more F-15s that the Saudis already have.

…

Hope you all had a nice weekend so far; enjoy the rest of it 

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has chosen a new special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan: a long-time controversial neocon, a man who has been famous for parading as a foreign agent in the lobby circuit, the scandalous former diplomat Marc Grossman. The not-so-gradual resurrection of the old neocon cabal under the Obama administration, led by Hillary Clinton, should not come as a surprise. According to Washington insiders, Richardl Perle and Douglas Feith have been consulted more than a few times in their ‘unofficial’ capacity, but are not far down in the queue to receive ‘official’ acknowledgement. This shouldn’t come as a surprise; at least to those who’ve been following the steady momentum building at the Obama White House towards a soon-to-come Neocon Easter.

Hillary Clinton appointed Dennis Ross as Special Advisor for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia; a man well-known as a hard-core neocon,  Paul Wolfowitz’ protégé, cofounder of the AIPAC sponsored Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and one of the loudest advocates for the Israel lobby. A man who is known to consider himself more Israeli than American; a Jewish American who is known to have spent ‘a lot of time’ in Israel to find his real identity-nationality.

We had Frederick Kagan, a neocon of choice for Mr. Obama, who was hired to manage General Petraeus on Afghanistan. A man whose father was born into a Jewish family in Lithuania; a man cherished by his bosses at the American Enterprise Institute; a man who authored the book, While America Sleeps, arguing in favor of a large increase in military spending and warned of future threats, including the imaginary WMD program in Iraq. We are talking about the man who was one of the main signatories of Project for the New American Century manifesto – the Neocon Bible. The man who was one of the Bush-Cheney administration’s favorite masterminds when it came to perpetual wars.

Let’s jump to our newest and by far the boldest Neocon addition to the Obama-Clinton Whitehouse. Marc Grossman is chosen by the administration to fill the seat vacated by Richard Holbrooke; another Jewish American Neocon who had been a man of choice for every administration in the last four decades. I suggest you read the article titled ‘Obama’s Neocon’ if you want to know a bit more about the old neocon shoes Mr. Grossman will be filling. As for our media’s usual sanitized version for Mr. Grossman’s background, the following by the neocon circle PR machine, the Washington Post, sums it up well:

In a nearly three-decade career at the State Department, Grossman served as assistant secretary of state for Europe and ambassador to Turkey. His last assignment, before retiring from the foreign service in 2005, was undersecretary for political affairs during the first administration of George W. Bush.

He now is vice chairman of the Cohen Group, which advises international business clients on overseas enterprises. Although the consulting group, headed by former defense secretary William Cohen, has several clients with contracts in South Asia, administration officials said they did not foresee any problem in clearing Grossman for the post.

…

From the mainstream media reporting similar to the above, ordinary Americans should at least gather this much:

Mr. Grossman had to be a Bush-Cheney administration favorite to be appointed as the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the State Department’s third-ranking official, in 2001. In 2004, Grossman attained the Foreign Service’s highest rank when the President appointed him to the rank of Career Ambassador.

Grossman works for the sin city’s (Washington DC) lobby industry. Not only that, he actually represents foreign governments, foreign businesses and interests. The Cohen Group represents some of the country’s largest weapons manufacturers, companies that stand to benefit from weapons sales: Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Sikorsky…among others. Their list of controversial and or criminal entities includes companies such as DynCorp International. Through their partnership with DLA Piper, the Cohen group also serves foreign clients such as the Turkish government and business interest groups, Australia’s scandalous AWB, India and UAE. 

And here is what many Americans won’t be getting from the US media:

-  The investigative reports on Marc Grossman and his role in planting moles in US nuclear facilities:

An unnamed high-ranking State Department official helps a nuclear smuggling ring connected to Pakistani nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan and Pakistan’s ISI to plant “moles” in US military and academic institutions that handle nuclear technology, according to FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. The State Department official apparently arranges security clearance for some of the moles, enabling them to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities, including the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent. The high-ranking State Department official who is not named by Britain’s Sunday Times is said to be Marc Grossman…

 
- John M. Cole, a former FBI Counterintelligence and Counterespionage Manager, has publicly confirmed FBI’s decade long investigation the former State Department Official, Marc Grossman:

John M. Cole, a former FBI Counterintelligence and Counterespionage Manager, has publicly confirmed the FBI’s decade long investigation of the former State Department Official Marc Grossman. Cole worked for 18 years in the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. According to Cole, as in over one hundred cases involving Israeli espionage activities directed against the US government, the Grossman case was covered up and buried despite mountains of evidence that was collected.

Here is the public response from John Cole after the publication of The American Conservative magazine’s cover story:

“I read the recent cover story by The American Conservative magazine. I applaud their courage in publishing this significant interview. I am fully aware of the FBI’s decade-long investigation of the High-level State Department Official named in this article, Marc Grossman, which ultimately was buried and covered up. It is long past time to investigate this case and bring about accountability…”

-Marc Grossman was the originator of the Plame Leak:

Marc Grossman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, prepares a memo about former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger to ascertain the truth or falsity of claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from that nation (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). The memo refers explicitly to Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, as a CIA official and identifies her as Wilson’s wife, using the name “Valerie Wilson.” The second paragraph of the memo is marked with an “S,” denoting that Wilson is a covert operative for the agency.

-In late December 2005, Grossman joined Ihlas Holding, a large and alleged shady Turkish company which is also active in several Central Asian countries. Grossman is reported to receive $100,000 per month for his advisory position with Ihlas.

-In May 2010, DLA Piper, one of the world’s largest international lobby-law firms, hired Marc Grossman as their front man for their Turkish operations. The man in charge of one of DLA Piper major accounts-Turkey is none other than our good ole Dennis Hastert. That makes two former FBI criminal targets for one firm;-)

Now, with all these murky qualifications, you’d think the mainstream media would have a field day with Marc Grossman’s appointment by the Hillary-Obama administration; right? Wrong. So far, not a peep from the US media and that includes both the ‘R’ and the ‘D’ fronts. Same goes for the quasi alternatives. Not even a word about the ‘revolving door’ aspect of this scandalous appointment: A Foreign Agent, A Lobbyist, A man on the payroll of a shady foreign company for over $1 million a year…But then again, less than a month ago we witnessed another envoy, another appointment, with a major ‘CONFLICT OF INTEREST’ flag rising to its top that went completely censored in the US media. The scandal was widely reported by foreign media, such as the Independent, who actually broke the story, and even after that, we barely heard a peep:

Frank Wisner, President Barack Obama’s envoy to Cairo who infuriated the White House this weekend by urging Hosni Mubarak to remain President of Egypt, works for a New York and Washington law firm which works for the dictator’s own Egyptian government.

The US State Department and Mr Wisner himself have now both claimed that his remarks were made in a “personal capacity”. But there is nothing “personal” about Mr Wisner’s connections with the litigation firm Patton Boggs, which openly boasts that it advises “the Egyptian military, the Egyptian Economic Development Agency, and has handled arbitrations and litigation on the [Mubarak] government’s behalf in Europe and the US”. Oddly, not a single journalist raised this extraordinary connection with US government officials – nor the blatant conflict of interest it appears to represent.

…

Mr Wisner is a retired State Department 36-year career diplomat – he served as US ambassador to Egypt, Zambia, the Philippines and India under eight American presidents. In other words, he was not a political appointee. But it is inconceivable Hillary Clinton did not know of his employment by a company that works for the very dictator which Mr Wisner now defends in the face of a massive democratic opposition in Egypt. So why on earth was he sent to talk to Mubarak, who is in effect a client of Mr Wisner’s current employers?

…

Patton Boggs states that its attorneys “represent some of the leading Egyptian commercial families and their companies” and “have been involved in oil and gas and telecommunications infrastructure projects on their behalf”. One of its partners served as chairman of the US-Egyptian Chamber of Commerce promoting foreign investment in the Egyptian economy. The company has also managed contractor disputes in military-sales agreements arising under the US Foreign Military Sales Act. Washington gives around $1.3bn (£800m) a year to the Egyptian military.

Mr Wisner joined Patton Boggs almost two years ago – more than enough time for both the White House and the State Department to learn of his company’s intimate connections with the Mubarak regime. The New York Times ran a glowing profile of Mr Wisner in its pages two weeks ago – but mysteriously did not mention his ties to Egypt.

…

I find this sentence in the above quotes really funny: “Oddly, not a single journalist raised this extraordinary connection with US government officials” As far as our media goes, what’s odd about that?! They’ve been really consistent at remaining very ‘odd’ when it comes to reporting on ‘crucial, troublesome & very relevant’ facts like this one. And, Marc Grossman’s recent unofficial appointment to be official this Friday is another perfect example:

A long-time neocon, a Jewish-American with questionably strong ties to Israel, a long-term target of FBI counterespionage and counterintelligence investigations, a lobbyist, a foreign agent, an employee of a shady foreign business, a man associated with major treason scandals, Marc Grossman, is making his way back to the ‘new’ administration, following his several other co-species who’ve been sitting inside, leading the way for the rest of the co-species who’ve been eagerly waiting to be granted official entry cards. Thanks to the media, while the public is sitting in the dark, the Obama-Hillary White House is changing color to pastels,  getting ready for their Neocon Easter and the resurrection of the previously, and dubiously, advertised as long-gone and dead breed – Neo-cons.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

In February 2004 Behrooz Sarshar provided the 9/11 Commission’s investigators with specific documents and names of the related witnesses, including the full name and contact information of the key “FBI Asset/Informant” in an FBI case titled ‘Kamikaze Pilots.’ However, the commission chose not to contact or interview any of these witnesses, including FBI Director Robert Mueller. The Commission’s final report did not mention a single word of this documented testimony, and their recently released memorandum omitted the entire interview with no explanation provided.

The following information was provided by Mr. Sarshar to several Congressional offices and investigators, including staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Committee’s leading Democrat at the time, Senator Patrick Leahy, and the Justice Department’s Inspector General Office.  I was present during at least four meetings where the briefings were recorded and documented. While working at the Bureau I was briefed on this case by not only Mr. Sarshar but another firsthand witness, and I saw the actual 302 forms filed with the unit’s squad supervisor (FBI language specialists get to keep a copy of their reports/forms). Further, I personally briefed the 9/11 commission investigators on the details of this particular case, which is confirmed by the commission’s memorandum.

I have only deleted sensitive personal information related to the FBI informant-Asset, and as you’ll see every single deleted item (by me-indicated as S.E.) has been indicated in bold-italics. Other than that, the information below is exactly what was recounted by Mr. Sarshar on four occasions:

FBI File Name: “Kamikaze Pilots”

In the early 90s the Bureau hired an Iranian man as an informant, placed him on its payroll at approximately fifteen hundred dollars per month, and used him and his information in several criminal, counterintelligence and counterterrorism operations and investigations. Over time this informant, a man in his (Informant’s Age Information Deleted by S.E.), proved to be extremely reliable, and his information was found to be trustworthy.

This man had been the head of SAVAK, Iran’s main Intelligence agency, counterintelligence unit during the Shah’s regime. His area of operations involved the East and Southeastern region of Iran, and the countries under him were Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. He also managed the unit’s intelligence gathering operations in Sistan and Baluchistan, two semi-independent regions on the border with Afghanistan. Unlike U.S. agencies, the intelligence agency in Iran conducted most, if not all, of its surveillance and information gathering operations via human intelligence and sources. The man, the informant, was very good at what he did; he had established a large number of sources and informants scattered in the strategically most important areas within these countries.

Immediately after the Islamic Revolution, he planned his escape out of the country. All former SAVAK and military intelligence had been placed on the black list of the new regime, and death warrants had been issued for them. He successfully escaped Iran, and then spent several years in (Names of the informant’s previous residences/countries deleted by S.E.) where he tried to obtain a U.S. visa and come to the states, where many of his relatives and friends had already settled. In the late (date of Informant’s US entry deleted by S.E.) he succeeded and moved to the United States.

His reputation and his fame of having a wealth of resources for information all over the world had somehow reached the FBI by the early 1990s – around 1991-1992. Via a middleman, the Bureau was able to contact the man and persuade him to become an informant. He was placed on the payroll and began providing the Bureau with extremely useful and reliable information. The Bureau was so pleased with his performance that it began using him both as an informant and as an asset. On a regular basis, almost monthly, agents from the FBI HQ and WFO would meet with him at … and …and … (Meeting locations Deleted by S.E.) to obtain information and intelligence on various on-going operations and investigations.

Since the informant didn’t speak English very well, was by no means considered fluent, often if not always, the agents took an interpreter, a translator, with them to these regular monthly meetings. This is where Amin and I came into the picture. For these sessions the agents would have either Amin or me accompany them. By sheer coincidence, I happened to recognize the man during the first meeting from a gathering I frequented. I knew where he lived, and I had his phone number.

Around the end of April, 2001, I was asked to accompany two special agents from the FBI-WFO, Tony and John, to a meeting arranged with this informant; we hooked up with him somewhere near the (Meeting Location Deleted by S.E.). The agents and I were working on a particular criminal investigation that was going to court in (Possible sensitive date deleted by S.E.), and the informant’s information played an extremely important role in building the case.

We met the informant in this park-like area and spent nearly an hour discussing the case, asking detailed questions, and of course, with me translating the communication which went back and forth. Once we were finished with the session and ready to head back to the WFO, the informant urged us to stay for a few minutes and listen to something very important and alarming he had recently received from his sources. We looked at one another and sat down on the bench; we were all ears.

The informant said:

‘Listen, I was recently contacted by two extremely reliable and long-term sources-neither one Iranian; one in Afghanistan; the other in Pakistan’s border region with Afghanistan. In the past, these guys had provided me with inside information and intelligence that was extremely hard to come by, considering the tightly-based networks and groups they were able to enter and penetrate. They notified me that an active mujahideen group led by Bin Laden had issued an order to attack certain targets in the United States, and were planning the attack as we spoke.’

Now the informant had our full attention; the agents seemed very alarmed, since their main unit of operation was under the WFO Counterterrorism division. They asked the guy to stop, asked him to repeat that again, and ordered me to take verbatim notes as I translated. They too took notes.

The informant continued:

‘According to my guys, Bin Laden’s group is planning a massive terrorist attack in the United States. The order has been issued. They are targeting major cities, big metropolitan cities; they think four or five cities; New York City, Chicago, Washington DC, and San Francisco; possibly Los Angeles or Las Vegas. They will use airplanes to carry out the attacks. They said that some of the individuals involved in carrying this out are already in the United States. They are here in the U.S.; living among us, and I believe some in US government already know about all of this (I assumed he meant the CIA or the White House).’

Tony, one of the agents asked ‘did they say when? Did they give any specific dates? Did they say how they were going to use airplanes; bombs or high jacking?’

The informant paused for a second:

‘No specific dates; not any that they were aware of. However, they said the general timeframe was characterized as ‘very soon.’ They think within the next two or three months.’ He then added: ‘As far as how they are going to use the planes to attack; your guess is as good as mine. My bet, it will be bombs; planting bombs inside these planes, maybe the cargo, then have them blown up over the populated cities.’

The agents nodded and took extensive notes. I took my notes in Farsi; I usually did that, and later after returning to the office, sat down and translated them verbatim. We stood up and were ready to leave, when the informant urged us to report this immediately and act on it:

‘If I were you guys, I’d take this extremely seriously. If I had the same position I had in SAVAK, I’d put all my men on this around the clock. I can vouch for my sources; their reliability. Make sure you put this in the hands of the top guys in Counterterrorism.’

The agents nodded and thanked him for the information. We drove back in silence. After we parked the car, while walking to the elevators, the agents were discussing the best person, the top person; they should submit this warning to. They decided on Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Thomas Frields, who was in charge of the WFO Counterterrorism division and who used to lead the division that dealt with Iran’s Hostage Crisis in 1980s. I reminded them that although the informant was Iranian, his sources were not; and that they were in Pakistan and Afghanistan; not in Iran; Bin Laden was not Iranian but a Saudi. They acknowledged that, but made the point that Frields was in charge of the Counterterrorism unit in the WFO.

Once we got to the office, I went straight to my cubicle and began translating the entire conversation verbatim and typing it into a formal report. The agents went to their section and filled out the necessary 302 forms. These forms, the 302s, are forms used by agents to report information gathered from the Bureau’s assets and or informants. The agents, Tony and John, filled out two sets of 302 forms; one for the ongoing criminal case and the informants’ information related to that; the other, on the warning, with the initial code name ‘Kamikaze Pilots,’ as information related to Counterterrorism operations.

The agents called me up on my extension and asked me to escort them inside the language unit. I walked them over to my desk, where we sat, compared notes, and finalized and coordinated our report. They had me make several copies of the translation report for them to be submitted with their report. I took it upon myself to make a set of copies of their 302 forms for my own file; my own record. At the end of the day, around five o’clock, they submitted the 302 forms and my translation report. They submitted the warning report to SAC Frields; with a note, a yellow stick-up, on the top saying ‘VERY URGENT: Kamikaze Pilots’

Neither of us heard back from Frields or the Counterterrorism division. No one asked for any follow-ups or additional information. Two months went by. Around the end of June 2001, I accompanied the two agents to another meeting with the Iranian Informant. This time we met in (Location Details Deleted by S.E.).

After going over the target criminal investigation; now only …(Specific Date Deleted by S.E.), as we were ready to turn around and leave, he stopped us:

‘What did you do with the information I gave you two months ago? Did you report it to your bosses?’

The agents nodded. One of them said: ‘Yes; we sent it up. We submitted it to the top guy.’

The informant was animated now,

‘Well; are they going to do something about it? Because, three days ago I heard back from one of those two sources; in Pakistan. He swore the attack was on its way; any time now; a month or two max.’

Tony said: ‘I know; I hear what you are saying, man; but doing something about this won’t be up to us. Plus, we don’t have enough information to take any action here. We don’t know when, how, or exactly where. The only thing we have is: Mujahideen, Kamikaze Pilots, Bin Laden, five cities, and airplanes. That ain’t enough.’

The informant reasoned:

‘I’ve been thinking about this; trying to make more sense out of it myself. The source mumbled something about tall buildings. Maybe they will blow up the plane over some tall buildings; I don’t know. Maybe the FBI can get more specifics from the Pakistanis; ISI. Have they tried? After all they are your guys, and they already know all about this.’

The agents were getting exasperated and impatient, ‘We’ve got to go; we have a lot of work back there. We have done all we could. We reported it to the guy in charge; now, it is up to them.’

As we turned around and walked away, the informant yelled in Farsi:

‘Why don’t you discuss it with the CIA? They know. Tell the White House. Don’t let ‘them’ sit on this until it is too late…’

I asked Tony, ‘Maybe sharing this with other agencies is not a bad idea. What do you think?’

He rolled his eyes ‘not up to us Behrooz. As far as the White House goes, the HQ guys will include it in their briefings; I’m sure they’ve already done so. Frields is obligated to submit what he got, everything he gets under Counterterrorism, to the HQ guys in charge of Whitehouse National Security Briefings. He always does. So, the White House and other agencies have already heard about this. Let’s drop this man; will ya?’

That was the last time we ever discussed this case before the 9/11 attacks took place. The only other person I told this to and showed the 302 forms and the translation report, before September 11, was Amin here. Then, on that Tuesday morning on September 11 everything came back to me and hit me on the head like several tons of bricks.

That morning, we heard the news, and all of us ran out to the next unit to watch the CNN footage on the TV screens installed out there. As soon as I saw the planes hitting those buildings I said to myself: ‘Oh my God, oh dear God; we were warned about this; we were told about this; very specifically’ I almost fainted; I kept hearing the informant’s words; I kept hearing his last warnings begging us to do something fast. And we had done NOTHING. Now it was already way too late. I felt nauseous; I felt sick.

A few minutes later I saw one of the two agents; I started making my way into the crowd gathered in front of the TV screens, hundreds of people, and walked toward the agent. He spotted me before I got to him; we locked eyes; knowing eyes. He felt what I was feeling; he knew what I knew; he thought what I was thinking; we were responsible for this. Someone in the FBI would be hung for this.

When I got close to him I asked ‘what are we going to do? What should we do next?’ He shook his head and whispered: ‘I don’t know. I cannot even think straight right now. I don’t know Behrooz. We fucked this up; the Bureau fucked our country. Why?! Oh God; we let this happen.’ With that said he ran out of the room. I went back to check my drawer and make sure that I still had everything: the 302 forms, from both meetings, my translation reports; both of them. They were all there.

A few days later, when I got together with both agents and Amin to go over an assignment, I brought up the topic. They avoided eye contact with me. I asked the agents what they were going to do; if they’d already done something. At first they were evasive. Then, after I insisted, one of them, Tony, said: ‘Listen; Frields called us into his office and gave us an order; an absolute order.’ I asked them what the order was. He said ‘we never got any warnings. Those conversations never existed; it never happened; period. He said this is very sensitive…and that no one should ever mention a word about this case; period.’

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A belated happy new year to all our readers and friends here at Boiling Frogs Post. As you can tell I am just coming up for air. The holiday season happens to be the busiest time for my part-time work which involves a retail business, and my full-time motherhood task which has gotten at least three-fold harder during this not-so-terrible-twos stage. You see I say harder, but I’ll never call it ‘terrible’ because despite the tasking aspect it still remains the best and most rewarding role I’ve ever had; ever. My daughter is now 2.5 years old, and I’m happy to report: she is outspoken, highly opinionated, and on her way to becoming a real activist. She is already stopping those engaged in littering in their tracks for an earful lecture, and orders them to stop, ‘Go home, time out, and take bath!’ I am sharing a few of her recent pictures here. Many of you know all about my ‘no venture into my private life’ over here at BFP…except for an occasional relevant experience(s), or, like these here and the ones from last year to mark a new year at Boiling Frogs Post. Again, Happy New Year.

For the past two months I’ve been collecting and saving lots of articles to share with you here at BFP. The collection kept getting larger, the list of links grew longer, and I kept falling behind and unable to post regular BFP Round Ups. Some of those articles were time sensitive so they got discarded as ‘stale and no longer relevant’. Some are still sitting on the list waiting for the addition of my comments and analyses. And here are a few important and interesting ones from the past few weeks without much need for added sound bites:

Obama’s Whistleblower-Hunt: Whistleblowers Long for Bush-Cheney Era Leniency?

You thought the Bush-Cheney administration was bad? Think again; especially if you happen to be a whistleblower. Despite its awful record, the current administration witch-hunt like pursuit of whistleblowers and truth-tellers has many whistleblowers and truth-telling advocates longing for the Bush era climate. After all, everything is relevant, right? There was the bad, now it is the worse, or probably worst ever. Despite all the threats and muscle-flexing not a single whistleblower, including myself, got arrested or even pursued criminally under the previous regime. With Obama the era of threats has changed into an era of Punishment-Imprisonment and in some cases even torture. Here is one of the latest:

Former CIA officer indicted for leaks to reporter 
Peter Haldis, RCFP

A former CIA officer was indicted last month for allegedly providing a New York Times reporter with classified information. He is the latest in a string of leakers prosecuted by the Obama administration.

Jeffrey Sterling, 43, of O’Fallon, Mo., was indicted on 10 counts, including six counts of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and one count of obstruction of justice. He was arrested Thursday in St. Louis.Sterling was indicted Dec. 22, 2010, and the indictment was unsealed Thursday.

…

Sterling is the fifth leaker to be prosecuted by the Obama administration. The others include: former National Security Agency official Thomas Drake, who allegedly sent classified information to an unknown newspaper reporter; Stephen Kim, a former Department of State analyst who allegedly leaked an intelligence report to an unidentified reporter; Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army private alleged to have leaked classified information to Wikileaks; and Shamai Leibowitz, a former FBI linguist who was convicted in May 2010 of charges related to the leaking of classified information to an unidentified blogger and sentenced to 20 months in prison.

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 ‘Rent-A-Generals’ Consulting Firms: An Industry in Its Own

Last month I came across the following coverage at War Is Business by Corey Pein. This Monday Peter and I will be interviewing Mr. Pein, meanwhile if you haven’t seen this great website check it out now, and put it in your ‘Favorite’ list of websites. I am really looking forward to this interview, too many topics of interest to cover!

‘Rent-A-Generals’ & ‘the Militarization of Economy’ 
By Corey Pein, War Is Business

This man is William B Burdeshaw, a retired US Army Brigadier General and founder of what the Boston Globe, in its must-read investigation of rampant corruption in Pentagon procurement, calls “one of the oldest ‘rent-a-general’ consulting firms” in the country.

His company, Burdeshaw Associates Ltd, is essentially a fixer for corporations looking to land military contracts. The firm is apparently so good at this, its influential “associates”—mostly retired, high-ranking officers—can sell the Pentagon things it didn’t even know it needed.

Read Globe reporter Bryan Bender describe how Burdeshaw cleverly wrung $109 million from the Pentagon for the firm’s client, Northrop Grumman, which wanted to build a remote-controlled helicopter called the Fire Scout.

…

The Army wouldn’t comment. Northrop Grumman wouldn’t comment. Burdeshaw’s chief executive, retired Army General William Hartzog, wouldn’t comment. Bender did a remarkable job of putting this story together despite such obstacles.

Clearly, no one gained from this episode—except Northrop Grumman, the third-largest US military contractor, and Burdeshaw Associates. The firm’s eponym seems to be doing well for himself. Burdeshaw and his wife, Monica, own a massive $2 million home near the Potomac River in Maryland. Give the size of his firm, his personal wealth is likely many times that amount.

…

In its conclusion, Bender explains the growing demand for rent-a-generals as a consequence of “the increasing importance of the military to America’s industrial base.” Retired Army General and former Presidential candidate Wesley Clark calls it “the militarization of the economy.”

Too see what the militarization of the economy looks like, visit a discount grocer in any American city and count how many people pay with food stamps. Then ponder William Burdeshaw’s mansion.

Too see the effects of a simultaneous process—the commodification of the military—look no farther than Afghanistan, where contractors outnumber uniformed soldiers.

…

Read the rest of this well-done coverage here.

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A Great Example of Intentionally Awful Journalism by New York Times … Again

The following story, titled ‘Propping Up a Drug Lord, Then Arresting Him’ by the New York Times is another perfect example of purposefully awful journalism. For some reason we get to see this trend ‘awfully’ a lot in Times’ coverage of Afghan Heroin related topics (which they rarely cover). When you are reading it think of a badly made B grade movie by a bunch of amateurs (but in this case switch the amateurs with pretenders); think about some of those home-made films where bits and pieces are copied and pasted into a hodgepodge of a documentary with no beginning (it starts in the middle omitting the intro/history) ending with a never-kept promise of ‘to be continued;’ think about a bunch of main actors being taken out with their empty spots still hanging in the picture like big gaping holes, and think about sci-fi elements such as real-life people mixed with fiction characters making it neither a documentary nor a fiction film. Okay?

Now, why am I covering this intentionally awful junk? 1- The topic itself is EXTREMELY important; 2- The main character is a crucial key to many censored facts regarding our ‘real’ activities and operations; 3- Turkey is mentioned is passing (must be a major unintended slip by the Times’ stenographers); 4- Our readers here know how to read in between the lineJ So here it is [Emphasis in Bold are mine]:

Propping Up a Drug Lord, Then Arresting Him
By James Risen, New York Times

When Hajji Juma Khan was arrested and transported to New York to face charges under a new American narco-terrorism law in 2008, federal prosecutors described him as perhaps the biggest and most dangerous drug lord in Afghanistan, a shadowy figure who had helped keep the Taliban in business with a steady stream of money and weapons.

But what the government did not say was that Mr. Juma Khan was also a longtime American informer, who provided information about the Taliban, Afghan corruption and other drug traffickers. Central Intelligence Agency officers and Drug Enforcement Administration agents relied on him as a valued source for years, even as he was building one of Afghanistan’s biggest drug operations after the United States-led invasion of the country, according to current and former American officials. Along the way, he was also paid a large amount of cash by the United States.

At the height of his power, Mr. Juma Khan was secretly flown to Washington for a series of clandestine meetings with C.I.A. and D.E.A. officials in 2006. Even then, the United States was receiving reports that he was on his way to becoming Afghanistan’s most important narcotics trafficker by taking over the drug operations of his rivals and paying off Taliban leaders and corrupt politicians in President Hamid Karzai’s government.

…

By 2004, Mr. Juma Khan had gained control over routes from southern Afghanistan to Pakistan’s Makran Coast, where heroin is loaded onto freighters for the trip to the Middle East, as well as overland routes through western Afghanistan to Iran and Turkey. To keep his routes open and the drugs flowing, he lavished bribes on all the warring factions, from the Taliban to the Pakistani intelligence service to the Karzai government, according to current and former American officials.

The scale of his drug organization grew to stunning levels, according to the federal indictment against him. It was in both the wholesale and the retail drug businesses, providing raw materials for other drug organizations while also processing finished drugs on its own.

…

While the C.I.A. wanted information about the Taliban, the drug agency had its own agenda for the Washington meetings — information about other Afghan traffickers Mr. Juma Khan worked with, as well as contacts on the supply lines through Turkey and Europe.

One reason the Americans could justify bringing Mr. Juma Khan to Washington was that they claimed to have no solid evidence that he was smuggling drugs into the United States, and there were no criminal charges pending against him in this country.

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The following is a decent piece by Spiegel on the US courtship of Azerbaijan’s corrupt regime:

The US Befriends Azerbaijan’s Corrupt Elite

By Gregor Peter Schmitz, Spiegel

Azerbaijan is rife with corruption and comparisons to European feudalism in the Middle Ages are hardly a stretch. But with vast reserves of oil and natural gas at stake, the US is willing to risk the embarrassment that comes with courting the country.

…

Azerbaijan, which lies in the Caspian basin and has a population of 9 million, is one of the US’s strategic energy partners, despite being located within Russia’s sphere of influence. The country boasts proven energy reserves of roughly 7 billion barrels of oil and 1.3 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. Millions of barrels of these natural resources flow to the West each year via a pipeline connecting the Azerbaijani capital with Ceyhan, a Turkish port on the Mediterranean Sea.

…

The “Great Game” is what the 19th century battle between the British and the Russians over Central Asian influence was called. These days, the Americans are also on the frontlines of this battle — and the potential rewards are much larger. Unfortunately, as the State Department’s classified documents make clear, the price that American diplomats have to pay is also much greater.

Like the other oil-producing countries around the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan is an embarrassing partner to have. The country’s corrupt institutions are unable to deal with the oil boom and the billions of dollars it brings into the county, while the average annual growth rate of almost 15 percent is a much higher priority than enforcing and improving law and order. Independent media outlets are restricted, and dissidents are violently suppressed. Shortly before his death, Heydar Aliyev, the dictator who ruled Azerbaijan from 1993 to 2003, naturally handed over power to his son Ilham, who does things exactly the way his father did.

…

While a few Azerbaijani clans are getting richer and richer, thanks to all the dollars pouring into the country, the rest of the population is barely scraping by. Over 40 percent of the country’s inhabitants are living in poverty; the average monthly income is just €24. As Lala Shevkat, the leader of the Liberal Party of Azerbaijan, says: “Oil is our tragedy.”The Americans, however, have not let such problems frighten them away. On the contrary, they are even pushing for greater cooperation on security. Following the visit of an American envoy to Baku, one diplomat noted with satisfaction that he “underscored to President Aliyev the value that the US government attached to the relationship with Azerbaijan.”

…

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The following two pieces are related to our continuing ‘Police State’ series:

Terrorist watch list: One tip now enough to put name in database, officials say
By Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post

A year after a Nigerian man allegedly tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, officials say they have made it easier to add individuals’ names to a terrorist watch list and improved the government’s ability to thwart an attack in the United States.

The failure to put Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on the watch list last year renewed concerns that the government’s system to screen out potential terrorists was flawed. Even though Abdulmutallab’s father had told U.S. officials of his son’s radicalization in Yemen, government rules dictated that a single-source tip was insufficient to include a person’s name on the watch list.

Since then, senior counterterrorism officials say they have altered their criteria so that a single-source tip, as long as it is deemed credible, can lead to a name being placed on the watch list.

…

But civil liberties groups argue that the government’s new criteria, which went into effect over the summer, have made it even more likely that individuals who pose no threat will be swept up in the nation’s security apparatus, leading to potential violations of their privacy and making it difficult for them to travel.

“They are secret lists with no way for people to petition to get off or even to know if they’re on,” said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Officials insist they have been vigilant about keeping law-abiding people off the master list. The new criteria have led to only modest growth in the list, which stands at 440,000 people, about 5 percent larger than last year. The vast majority are non-U.S. citizens.

…

A Nation of Paranoids?

Florida Professor Arrested for Having a “Suspicious” Bagel on a Plane
By Todd Wright, NBC-Miami

A Florida professor was arrested and removed from a plane Monday after his fellow passengers alerted crew members they thought he had a suspicious package in the overhead compartment.

That “suspicious package” turned out to be keys, a bagel with cream cheese and a hat.

Ognjen Milatovic, 35, was flying from Boston to Washington D.C. on US Airways when he was escorted off the plane for disorderly conduct following the incident.

Monday’s incident is another example of other passengers essentially becoming the authority on terrorist activity on planes.

…

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I just finished reading an interesting article at Asia Times on the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which is characterized by some as Central Asia’s most aggressive militant group. The main focus of the article is placed on the status, recent expansion and transformation of IMU: The IMU is no longer a small band of militants focused on taking down the Uzbek regime and replacing it with an Islamic state. Today, it has a much wider reach and more ambitious goals, and has underlined its revival with attacks that suggest a presence across a wide swathe of South and Central Asia.

Considering my own focus, which I am sure many of you are pretty familiar with by now, the following bits and pieces, none of which happen to receive any elaboration or even a slight explanation by the author, deserve the real attention:

The IMU or its affiliates have been named in connection with a number of recent attacks at home and abroad. One, the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), has been blamed for attacks in Uzbekistan in May 2009 and made headlines around the world this fall after Western intelligence determined they were planning Mumbai-style attacks on European soil… The IJU, considered a more radical affiliate of the IMU, attracts recruits from Germany’s burgeoning Turkish Diaspora and Turkic nations, leading observers to suggest that it is driven by pan-Turkic aims.

…

And this:

“The most essential things that need to be addressed are the control of the movement of militants and the control of their finances,” Babar says. “What finances them? We believe that the drug trade is financing them…

As you can see in the article the Central Asian context-states-players are: Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan-Tajikistan along Afghanistan’s northern borders, and with that we are back to my previous coverage of the trio in terms of unwritten and unspoken US foreign policies:

Things certainly haven’t been looking up for our MIC, Oil, and related mega companies in that part of the world. And this kind of situation puts our ‘real’ foreign policy makers in their ‘enemies-of-our-enemies’ are needed mode. And when that happens the rest will follow: contracts for our good ole Mujahideen friends, convenient terrorism related incidents and pipeline sabotages right and left, a more aggressive control of the opium trade to finance unwritten-unspoken foreign policy practices …

…

I suggest you read the recent article by Asia Times, and please keep in mind the cases of Mysterious Helicopter Activities in Northern Afghanistan and BF Post’s coverage  here and here. Because when it comes to answering the ‘real’ questions, the questions of funding and sponsorship, we need context, historical records, and a bit of critical thinking, and that my friends, has been largely missing in this article and similar media coverage. And finally, keep an eye on the upcoming Wikileaks’ cables for 1996-2001 Central Asia & Caucasus related goodies…that is, if they are included, or, if they are not among ‘insurance files,’ or, if the internet is not filtered & controlled by then, or…

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I go on line and check out the major newspaper headlines, and to my delight there is a TSA related headline or two in every one. In the last few days two in every three e-mails I’ve received (and I receive hundreds a day) carry TSA related heads up or action items in their subject lines. The blogosphere has been simmering with the same outrageous issue. Yet the entire thing gives me pause. A long one. The pattern, the order, the intensity, the lingo, the reaction…all remind me of something or some things. It is a bit, maybe more than a bit, like a sense of déjà vu. The feeling that we’ve been here; more than once, actually many times. Make that too many times. I keep thinking of a yoyo. In fact, I can’t get the image of a yoyo out of my head. I am asking myself, and you, the following question: Are we Americans exhibiting yoyo-like and short-lived reactions? In short-lived jerky motions?

Let’s step back for a second and take a look at this consistent pattern:

NSA illegal wiretapping of American citizens is exposed. We, some of us, are outraged. We can’t stop reading about it. We write about, talk about it, and blog about it nonstop. For a while. The media waits a little, then takes the cue, decides to ride the same wave, however selectively and reluctantly. For a while. The Congress follows the fashion. They are into fashion. They wear this particular fashion like a Halloween costume, over the top of their usual long-term clothing, with every intention of shedding it off at the end of the parade, as soon as it is announced out-of-fashion.

Within a few weeks the media goes back to ‘normal,’ and acts as if ‘it’ never happened, or, it happened but no longer carries newsworthiness since ‘it’ has become another ordinary fact of life to live with and forget it is even there. The Congress likes to remain fashionable. When the media stops, the costume is out-of-fashion; to be discarded. Their usual clothing underneath are ‘classics,’ politically that is, the kind that never go out of fashion, politically, that is. So they go back to the good old classics until the next fashion trend breaks in the news. During this phase, we the people gradually stop reading, talking, writing, and blogging about ‘it.’ We are exhausted from over-excitement. Frankly, we are bored with the topic. For weeks we all had run in the same direction; fast and furious. Everyone within our circle had covered the same ‘topic,’ and the topic started getting too familiar, too common, too ordinary, too tedious and too massive to go against. All in a very short time, but nonetheless.

…and this when the next ‘scandalous’ issue hits. Hooray! We have another scandal and another cause; another outrage. Maybe it is torture, and thousands of documented pictures and reports to go along with it; all committed in our name and with our money. Maybe it is the FBI raiding peaceful protestors’ homes for exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights. Maybe it is major intentional falsifications of facts to drag us all into another war, where we spend billions, kill, and get killed for some made-up cause enriching a few cause-makers. Maybe it is the TSA fondling, groping, and pretty much raping we the people on a daily basis for some made-up, perceived secuity.

No matter what the ‘current,’ or, ‘fashionable,’ or ‘newsworthy’ cause, scandal, or issue, we run back and forth like yoyos, run towards the ‘new cause,’ hold on to it for a short-while, repeat the above steps with the media taking up the trend and Congress sporting the fashion, blogs fuming collectively… basically going around the same circle, completing the same short-lived cycle, then eventually we retreat, and after that, another case of major violation or abuse breaks or gains momentum, we run towards it, pose to confront and challenge it, write-talk-blog about it…

You do see the yoyo I am talking about here, don’t you? What happened to our outrage, a handful of posturing lawsuits, and relentless pledges declared in the face of being illegally wiretapped and spied upon? How long has it been since we found out and became outraged, signed on to hundreds of petitions against it, bombarded the ‘fashionable’ representatives with mails-e-mails and calls? How long has it been since we’ve seen it covered in bold by our media? How long has it been since we’ve heard it discussed or even referred to by those elected as ‘an issue’ or ‘problem’? Here is the most important question of all:

How long has it been since we have either acknowledged or consciously thought about the fact that we are actively, unconstitutionally, and belligerently under surveillance by our government and their plentiful contractors and collaborators?

Please don’t take me wrong. I stand by my word in the introduction section of this article. I am truly delighted by what I see in terms of movements in reaction to TSA’s raping of our rights and dignity. It is just that I see this particular abuse-violation as one of many symptoms of our broken system, suspended Constitution, and a corrupt and abusive system of No-Checks & Many-Imbalances. The real diseases are not getting much, if any, attention. And we the people seem to be inflicted by a chronic case of a symptoms-chasing yoyo syndrome. It is way past time to look to curing and rehabilitating ourselves from this freedom-threatening syndrome, and go after the real diseases and causes.
 

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Largely as a result of the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” the traditional framework of the East-West political dialogue has broken and fallen entirely under the spell of the extremists on both sides. Since much of the West’s relationship was based on Cold War and Neo-colonial relationships to begin with it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it finally broke. Yet nothing new and as powerful has come along to replace it. Now what we see is confusion in the West as declining powers like the U.S. attempt to rig the international system to ensure some role in a future where they cannot control events as they had. The U.S. failure in Afghanistan is largely due to an inability to switch its thinking from the Cold War to a multi-polar world while it had the authority and power to do so. Instead, as the result of manipulation by right wing and neoconservative intellectuals, the U.S. simply substituted Islam for communism and went on with an aggressive strategy as before.

It hasn’t worked and the evidence mounts that a political, economic and or military catastrophe approaches for which the West is not intellectually prepared. By continuing to support Pakistan’s military the U.S. works against its own interests in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. By backing rigged elections with pre-selected candidates that the Afghan people don’t want and by continuing its war on political Islam through predator drones and special operations, the West commits itself to a fight it cannot win. Western intellectual circles have known this for some time but it would now appear as evidenced by the controversy surrounding the recent release of recommendations made to the Obama administration by the Afghanistan Study Group that the consequences of current policy are finally sinking in. As the next stage of recommendations is formulated it is imperative that genuine new thinking gets into the process.

Breaking this chain of institutional thinking is essential to solving the Afghan problem. But most suggestions to “think outside the box” aren’t really intended to create new thinking as much as they are to try and maintain the same old thinking with a different approach. What is needed now is a wholly different way of thinking and a whole new group to do it. To do this the issue of Islam needs to be moved off center stage where the current acrimony has been intentionally focused and replace it with another model that incorporates ideas, histories and enduring beliefs that link humanity together in a common struggle and a better life for all.

Resetting the clock in Washington and Afghanistan

Afghanistan’s tribal system has strong ties to Islam, but the center of tribal life is not the Mosque but the secular local community center. The political Islam of today’s Taliban extremists is neither native to Afghanistan nor is it consistent with the traditions of the Pashtun tribal code known as Pashtunwali. As stated by Selig Harrison in his extensive document  Pakistan, the State of the Union, “The coexistence and interaction of the ancient tribal code with religious traits is a very interesting phenomenon that is indispensable for understanding the Pashtun national culture. On the one hand, it explains the inevitable and ritualistic religiosity of the Pashtun, and on the other hand it explains the futility of efforts to inject religious fundamentalism in Pashtun social and political culture as it stands in contradiction to Pashtunwali. In fact, the Islamic identity of the Pashtuns is only one thousand years old whereas Pashtunwali is reportedly five thousand years old.”

According to Vartan Gregorian in his 1969 study, The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan, prior to the British military invasions of the mid-19th century, the Afghans were not hostile to the European powers. In 1809, Scottish statesman and historian Mountstuart Elphinstone and his “retinue of some 400 Anglo-Indian soldiers were well received by the Afghans.” So too were others in 1810, 1815, and 1826, when Sunni Afghans were reported to have expressed an open tolerance toward Christians. British explorer Charles Masson “was well treated by Muslim religious men and Afghan tribesmen.” Of his stay in Kabul in 1832, he reported that a Christian was respectfully referred to as a “Kitabi” or “one of the Book.”

Renowned adventurer and East India Company political officer Alexander Burnes wrote home in May of 1832, “The people of this country are kind hearted and hospitable. They have no prejudice against a Christian and none against our nation.”  Burnes argued correctly that the strong Afghan Amir, Dost Mohammed, “could keep the country together and resist Russian or Persian encroachment, but a country split into feudal principalities and tribes would invite Russian intrigue aimed at picking them off piecemeal with no great difficulty.”  Yet, his argument and the goodwill of the Afghan people were lost when London acquiesced to the conquest of Afghanistan through what is known as the “Forward Policy,” setting the stage for three Anglo-Afghan wars, an endless low-intensity conflict, and a century and a half of political instability.

For centuries prior to the current era, Afghanistan set itself apart as a crossroads of trade and as an example of moderate Islam. It must do so again today not only for the sake of its own people, but as an example of the kind of moderate and progressive Islam the world will lose by allowing the forces of extremism to set the public agenda and rule.

Europe and the United States have a responsibility to Afghanistan. But public opinion is badly informed and disconnected from Afghan culture while governments remain encumbered with colonial mentalities that will deal only with their own vital interests and dismiss any chance for a restoration of Afghan society.

A new and shocking departure from the existing narrative is needed to change the tone of the Afghan crisis and reorient the world’s thinking, but efforts to think outside the box must also be subject to the reality that the box itself is no longer of any value in solving the problem.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration. Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story published by City Lights, January 2009 chronicles their three-decade-focus on Afghanistan and the media. Their next book Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire will be published February, 2011.

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Here is one of the latest on China-Turkmenistan Pipeline deals:
China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has announced the discovery of yet another gas field on the right bank of the Amu Darya River in Turkmenistan, holding in excess of 100 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas.
Separately, Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow inaugurated a new compressor station at the Bagtiyarlyk fields, estimated by Chinese engineers to hold 1.6 trillion cubic meters of natural gas.

In June this year, Ashgabad and Beijing agreed to increase Turkmen exports to China above the agreed level; the new compressor station will eventually raise the existing capacity to 22 bcm/y from the 6 bcm/y estimate of Chinese consumption of Turkmenistan-sourced gas for 2010.

Reports in the Indian press over the past month indicate that New Delhi is now following through strongly on its earlier expression of interest. Most interesting is the report that the four partners are seeking to recruit a major international energy firm to discuss costs in greater detail, with a view towards actual construction. The name, or even the nationality, of this firm has not even been hinted at openly.

            …

Okay, you can read the rest here.

As we all know the Cold war may be over, kinda, but not the fierce competition over natural resources. And the new battle grounds?  Forget the Old Middle East; I am talking about the New Energy Territories. I am going to use the following introduction paragraph from an article published by Central Asia- Caucasus Institute:

The U.S. has started to formulate and implement more comprehensive policies for Central Asia. The deepening involvement in the war in Afghanistan is the principal, but not sole cause for this policy initiative. Russia’s attempts to impose its hegemony upon Central Asia and oblige the U.S. to recognize it have triggered a reaction in Washington. Likewise, China’s completion of the pipeline to Turkmenistan and major investment projects in Central Asia forced the U.S. to devise new ways to enhance its energy and economic profile there as well. As a result, in early 2010, we now see the elements of a new and stronger policy initiative towards Central Asia.

…

The above paragraph, the introduction, is the only frank and sound point made in the article. Without going into the typical bologna-ridden point-making fluff used in the rest of the piece I’ll have you jump to the summation of their ‘analysis’:

CONCLUSIONS: The Obama Administration has evidently decided to make an important policy stand in Central Asia beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan. Moreover, it is likely to invest more high-level political resources there and actively promote expanded economic ties between the U.S. and Central Asian states. While those governments will undoubtedly welcome this support and investment of those resources because they add to their room for maneuver among their neighboring great powers, Russia and China will obviously strive to minimize the U.S. presence, thrust, and impact. But they will also simultaneously be competing against each other; a fact that can only contribute to the greater independence and freedom of action of Central Asian states, a primary goal of U.S. policy. To the extent that the U.S. deems it necessary to expand its presence in Central Asia to shore up its campaign in Afghanistan it will in many ways, both foreseen and possibly unforeseen, contribute to the ability of these states to stand on their own feet, an outcome that is necessary both in regard to the threat of terrorism emanating from Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and their affiliates, and also in regard to the threat to their effective independence coming from Moscow and/or Beijing.

You see we have two types of foreign policies when it comes to our pursuit of badly needed resources and crucial delivery arteries in our intended regional colonies:

1- The Written Policies (above example): to be used and promoted as marketing tools, yet to remain only as melodically written policy literature. This is where you hear phrases like cooperation on security and against terrorism, or better, democratization.

2- The Unwritten and Unspoken Policies: to be secretly, vigorously, and ferociously practiced and implemented, under the self-created carte blanche ‘The End Justifies the Means’

Think about it, wasn’t this how we carried out almost all our foreign policies during the Cold War? And what’s the difference now? The same competition, only now three-way, and the same objectives regardless of the fluffy and phony descriptions used in the ’written policies.’ 

Based on our consistent and ‘known’ history, my bet goes to the following predictions when it comes to our real foreign policy measures and responses to the latest developments on the Central Asia-Caucasus front:

Despite the absence of religious extremism and related terrorist groups, mysteriously (as far as our beneficiaries are concerned: Miraculously!), we’ll start reading terrorism related news headlines and incidents in this region, with some specifically targeting ‘pipelines.’ Here is a past example incident in Turkmenistan:

On 13 September 2008, the law enforcement agencies fought a bloody battle with a large gang of well trained and heavily armed drug dealers. The gang was finally suppressed but the toll was heavy: According to independent estimates, some 18 officers and troops may have lost their lives.

And this is how ‘they,’ people from those parts of the world who are familiar with our ‘real’ foreign policy practices in the past, question the above incident:
 

Is there any country that feels particularly frustrated by the gas deals that Turkmenistan signed recently with Russia and China?

Is there any country or countries that would benefit from terror and disorder in Turkmenistan?

Is there any country that routinely spreads disorder and chaos around the world, the most current examples being Bolivia and Venezuela?

Considering the timing, more importantly, considering our known M.O., who could blame those asking the above questions? As for our own policy-makers, this is how they played it:

The report mentioned the September 2008 violence in the Khitrova district of Ashgabat, where a protracted gun battle took place under circumstances that remain murky. The incident “forced the [g]overnment of Turkmenistan to reevaluate its counterterrorism program, training partners, and readiness,” the report said, without providing details.

Boooooooohhhh, the infamous ‘murky’ line: hmmmmm we wonder who did it and how.  And the wishful self-serving conclusion they drew, which is expressed as: ‘Turkmenistan to reevaluate its counterterrorism program, training partners, and readiness.’ Meaning, ‘we taught them a good lesson here…now they should know who they should choose as their partner…now they should dive into accepting our base ‘erection’ over there…’

…………………………………………………………………………

So, since this is not a licensed gambling site we won’t be taking monetary bets. But nonetheless it will be interesting. My bet: welcome a new wave of US- Mujahideen contracts, terrorism incidents along the Turkmenistan borders, and of course an explosion or two targeting the pipelines. Where do you place your bet? Please bring in your predictions.
# # # #

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In the last few weeks I’ve been reading and talking about the latest developments in Central Asia and the Caucasus. I am planning to post a few updates on the status of the score board in this region (pipeline rivalries, military base ‘erection’ scores- and what-not). Meanwhile, as I am dealing with all this I keep ending up with riddle-like situations. And instead of trying to solve or get out of these riddles, I’m going to give up and instead share one of them with you, my blogosphere friends.

Our enemies’ enemies are our friends. Many of our nation’s enemies are the enemies of our enemies, so that makes them what? Friends? Enemies? It depends? Both? And what would all this make our ‘real’ foreign policy makers? Enemies? Friends? Both? What?

Seriously! Think about it.

By now we all know, or should know, about our government and mainstream media’s past almost romantic relationship with the Mujahideen, Taliban-al Qaeda, during the 80s. Back then, in the 80s, they were fighting the Soviets, they were the enemies of our enemies, thus, our beloved friends, our trusted, financed and backed allies. Here are a few excerpts from what I wrote and quoted on this topic a while back:

Now let’s go back and search U.S. press coverage of Afghanistan’s ‘Freedom Fighters’ during the 80s and try to find any coverage related to these U.S. backed and supported operations’ intersection with the global narcotics trade. Are there any? I’m afraid we know the answer to this question. Here is further coverage based on the report by FAIR:

“The press coverage of this era was overwhelmingly positive, even glowing, with regard to the guerrillas’ conduct in Afghanistan. Their unsavory features were downplayed or omitted altogether…Virtually all papers favored some amount of U.S. military support; and there was near unanimous agreement that the guerrillas were “heroic,” “courageous” and above all “freedom fighters.“”

“According to the L.A. Times (6/23/86): “The Afghan guerrillas have earned the admiration of the American people for their courageous struggle…. The rebels deserve unstinting American political support and, within the limits of prudence, military hardware.“”

And here the axis of U.S. Government-U.S. Press- and the information spin or black-out:

“Another problem was direct manipulation of reporting by the U.S. government, which was supporting the Mujahiddin guerrillas during both the Carter and Reagan administrations. (Indeed, we now know that U.S. aid to the Mujahiddin was secretly begun in July 1979, six months before the Soviets invaded–International Politics, 6/00.) This press manipulation began early in the conflict. In January 1980, the New York Times (1/26/80) reported that the State Department had “relaxed” its accuracy code for reporting information on Afghanistan. As a result, the Carter administration generated “accounts suggesting Soviet actions for which the administration itself has no solid foundation.“”

During the 80s our ‘real’ foreign policymakers couldn’t care less about adjectives such as extremists, terrorists, fanatics, anti-west…They were the beloved enemies of our enemies, and we’d do anything to support and use them. And this wasn’t necessarily about we the people of the US or our benefits or our best interests. After all, in the end the American people were the ones to pay the price for those unholy alliances where we selected, trained and backed the evildoer Bin Laden, our enemies’ enemy, thus, our beloved friend:

Our enemies’ enemies were our friends. Many of our nation’s enemies were the enemies of our enemies back then, so that made them our beloved friends.

Now, you may say, ‘that was a long time ago, it had to do with the Cold War, and it is simply not fair to criticize and judge based on this particular example…’And, I’d say, okay. Let’s fast forward. Let’s look at what we did with these same groups, in the 90s, after the wall came down and the Soviet empire collapsed.

The problem is this: without the Cold War excuse our foreign policymakers had a real hard time justifying our joint operations and terrorism schemes in the resource-rich ex Soviet states with these same groups, so they made sure they kept these policies unwritten and unspoken, and considering their grip on the mainstream media, largely unreported. Now what would your response be if I were to say, on the record, and if required, under oath:

Between 1996 and 2002, we, the United States, planned, financed and helped execute every single major terrorist incident by Chechen rebels (and the Mujahideen) against Russia

Between 1996 and 2002, we, the United States, planned, financed and helped execute every single uprising and terrorism related scheme in Xinxiang (aka East Turkistan and Uyghurstan)

Between 1996 and 2002, we, the United States, planned and carried out at least two assassination schemes against pro Russia officials in Azerbaijan

…

Those of you who are truly familiar with our real history and foreign policy making past would yawn, and say, ‘but of course. That has been our modus operandi for many decades.’ Unfortunately, the great majority would either be shocked if open minded, or shake their head in disbelief and write it off as another ‘conspiracy theory;’ well, thanks to our mainstream media.

You may remember one of these foreign policy makers from my State Secrets Privilege Gallery and my under oath testimony in the Krikorian case. Here is a quote from Graham A. Fuller, former Deputy Director of the CIA’s National Council on Intelligence:

‘The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia.’

And this goes to the heart of our ‘real’ foreign policy practices showing our ‘real’ stand on Taliban years after the end of the Cold War and the first World Trade Center bombing:

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on South Asia, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher – former White House Special Assistant to President Reagan and now Senior Member of the House International Relations Committee – declared that ‘this administration has a covert policy that has empowered the Taliban and enabled this brutal movement to hold on to power’. The assumption is that ‘the Taliban would bring stability to Afghanistan and permit the building of oil pipelines from Central Asia through Afghanistan to Pakistan’. US companies involved in the project included UNOCAL and ENRON. As early as May 1996, UNOCAL had officially announced plans to build a pipeline to transport natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through western Afghanistan.

And Chechens are good friends since they are the enemies of our enemy, Russia:

From the mid-1990s, bin Laden funded Chechen guerrilla leaders Shamil Basayev and Omar ibn al-Khattab to the tune of several millions of dollars per month, sidelining the moderate Chechen majority. US intelligence remained deeply involved until the end of the decade. According to Yossef Bodanksy, then-Director of the US Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Washington was actively involved in ‘yet another anti-Russian jihad, ‘seeking to support and empower the most virulent anti-Western Islamist forces’. US Government officials participated in ‘a formal meeting in Azerbaijan’ in December 1999 ‘in which specific programmes for the training and equipping of mujahidin from the Caucasus, Central/South Asia and the Arab world were discussed and agreed upon’, culminating in ‘Washington’s tacit encouragement of both Muslim allies (mainly Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) and US “private security companies”… to assist the Chechens and their Islamist allies to surge in the spring of 2000 and sustain the ensuing jihad for a long time.’ The US saw the sponsorship of ‘Islamist jihad in the Caucasus’ as a way to ‘deprive Russia of a viable pipeline route through spiraling violence and terrorism’.

…

Okay, so the partnership and joint operations between our operatives and the Mujahideen (including the Taliban & al Qaeda) continued after the Cold War, and even after the first World Trade Center bombing, Khobar Towers, and the 1998 Embassy Bombings. On one hand we were declaring these people as our enemies, on the other hand, in Central Asia-Caucaus-Balkans and Xinxiang, they were the enemies of our enemies , thus our good partners and dear old friends. Except, by this time, the majority of us had stopped considering the Russians and Chinese enemies, instead they were viewed as mere competitors. And with that, the riddle slightly changes here:

Our competitors’ enemies were our friends. Many of our nation’s enemies were willing to become the enemies of our competitors, so that made them our dear friends.

You’d think after the September 11 Terrorist Attacks our foreign policy makers would seriously rethink their past M.O. and cease certain friendships and unholy alliances, despite the severe monetary consequences for a handful in the oil and MIC industries. But no. That doesn’t appear to be the case. And, as always, you won’t get the ‘real’ stories on this from the MSM. Here is a recent example:

Persistent accounts of western forces in Afghanistan using their helicopters to ferry Taleban fighters, strongly denied by the military, is feeding mistrust of the forces that are supposed to be bringing order to the country.

One such tale came from a soldier from the 209th Shahin Corps of the Afghan National Army, fighting against the growing insurgency in Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan. Over several months, he had taken part in several pitched battles against the armed opposition.

“Just when the police and army managed to surround the Taleban in a village of Qala-e-Zaal district, we saw helicopters land with support teams,” he said. “They managed to rescue their friends from our encirclement, and even to inflict defeat on the Afghan National Army.”

This story, in one form or another, is being repeated throughout northern Afghanistan. Dozens of people claim to have seen Taleban fighters disembark from foreign helicopters in several provinces. The local talk is of the insurgency being consciously moved north, with international troops ferrying fighters in from the volatile south, to create mayhem in a new location.Helicopters are almost exclusively the domain of foreign forces in Afghanistan – the international military controls the air space, and has a virtual monopoly on aircraft. So when Afghans see choppers, they think foreign military.

“Our fight against the Taleban is nonsense,” said the soldier from Shahin Corps. “Our foreigner ‘friends’ are friendlier to the opposition.”

…

Let’s take a look at certain important northern neighbors in Afghanistan where our ‘real’ policymakers have been facing…hmmm… frustration, thus, in need of friends to get back at those who’ve been causing this…hmmmmm… frustration:

Previously close to Washington (which gave Uzbekistan half a billion dollars in aid in 2004, about a quarter of its military budget), the government of Uzbekistan has recently restricted American military use of the airbase at Karshi-Khanabad for air operations in neighboring Afghanistan.

The relationship between Uzbekistan and the United States began to deteriorate after the so-called “colour revolutions” in Georgia and Ukraine (and to a lesser extent Kyrgyzstan). When the U.S. joined in a call for an independent international investigation of the bloody events at Andijon, the relationship took an additional nosedive, and President Islam Karimov changed the political alignment of the country to bring it closer to Russia and China, countries which chose not to criticise Uzbekistan’s leaders for their alleged human rights violations.

In late July 2005, the government of Uzbekistan ordered the United States to vacate an air base in Karshi-Kanabad (near Uzbekistan’s border with Afghanistan) within 180 days. Karimov had offered use of the base to the U.S. shortly after 9/11. It is also believed by some Uzbeks that the protests in Andijan were brought about by the U.K. and U.S. influences in the area of Andijan. This is another reason for the hostility between Uzbekistan and the West.

…

And this to sweeten the deal, or is it turning it into a rather strong vinegar, at least for the ones who count in making and implementing our unwritten and unspoken foreign policy practices:

The leaders of Uzbekistan and China on Wednesday said they had signed deals aimed at increasing cooperation on energy and regional security. Speaking ahead of an annual meeting of the Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Tashkent, Chinese President Hu Jintao and Uzbek President Islam Karimov pledged closer ties, particularly on nuclear fuel.

“One of the question we discussed was that of long-term and stable cooperation in the field of … uranium. It’s necessary to work in such a way to develop natural uranium and uranium fields,” Hu told reporters.

Although the leaders said they had signed a number of agreements regarding the purchase of energy from Uzbekistan, including uranium and natural gas, they declined to provide specifics details on the deals.

…

Okay, so you get the general picture on Uzbekistan. Right?

Next, let’s take a quick look at Turkmenistan:

Turkmenistan ranks fourth in the world to Russia, Iran and the United States in natural gas reserves. The Turkmenistan Natural Gas Company (Türkmengaz), under the auspices of the Ministry of Oil and Gas, controls gas extraction in the country. Gas production is the most dynamic and promising sector of the national economy. Turkmenistan’s gas reserves are estimated at 3.5-6.7 mcubic meters and its prospecting potential at up to 21 trillion cubic meters. In 2010 Ashgabat started a policy of diversifying export routes for its raw materials.

China is set to become the largest buyer of gas from Turkmenistan over the coming years as a pipeline linking the two countries, through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, reaches full capacity. In addition to supplying Russia, China and Iran, Ashgabat took concrete measures to accelerate progress in the construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan and India pipeline (TAPI). Turkmenistan has previously estimated the cost of the project at $3.3 billion. On May 21st, president Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov unexpectedly signed a decree stating that companies from Turkmenistan will build an internal East-West gas pipeline allowing the transfer of gas from the biggest deposits in Turkmenistan (Dowlatabad and Yolotan) to the Caspian coast. The East-West pipeline is planned to be around 1000 km long and have a carrying capacity of 30 bn m³ annually, at a cost of between one and one and a half billion US dollars.

…

And, this is the latest to truly pi.. off our ‘real’ foreign policy beneficiaries:

China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has announced the discovery of yet another gas field on the right bank of the Amu Darya River in Turkmenistan, holding in excess of 100 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas.

Separately, Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow inaugurated a new compressor station at the Bagtiyarlyk fields, estimated by Chinese engineers to hold 1.6 trillion cubic meters of natural gas.

These fields feed the Turkmenistan-China pipeline, which traverses Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and was opened in December 2009 with a projected capacity of 40 billion cubic meters per year (bcm/y) by 2015, with some of that volume being consumed in southern Kazakhstan. (See Gas pipeline gigantism, Asia Times Online, July 17, 2008.)

In June this year, Ashgabad and Beijing agreed to increase Turkmen exports to China above the agreed level; the new compressor station will eventually raise the existing capacity to 22 bcm/y from the 6 bcm/y estimate of Chinese consumption of Turkmenistan-sourced gas for 2010.

…

And here, a brief snapshot of where Tajikistan stands:

Tajikistan is ready to further improve its cooperation in various fields with China, and make joint efforts to ensure the continued success of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), President Emomali Rakhmonov said in a recent interview with Chinese media.

The establishment of a friendly relationship with China was one of the great achievements that Tajikistan had made since its independence nearly 15 years ago, he said in his interview shortly ahead of the summit of the SCO heads of state to be held in Shanghai.

…

He mentioned in particular the opening of the Karasu pass on the Tajik-Chinese border.

“It is an important event in the history of the Tajik-Chinese relations, since it was the first time that the two countries were linked by motor traffic,” Rakhmonov said.

Trade between the two countries was developing rapidly and China’s influence on the Tajik economy was also growing, he said.

The president expressed satisfaction with the Tajik-Chinese trade volume which was increasing every year. In 2005, bilateral trade between the two countries had doubled from the previous year, he said.

…

And finally, if you’ve been following the recent turmoil and elections in Kyrgyzstan, you’d know that things haven’t been looking up for US business and bases over there:

In a surprise result which underscores what remains an extremely divided electorate in Kyrgyzstan, the parliamentary vote has led to the victory of the nationalist Fatherland Party (Ata-Jurt) and a very unclear road to a coalition government.

…

A Fatherland dominated government might bode ill for the Obama Administration’s designs on keeping a military base in Kyrgyzstan, as the party has spoken out against extending the US lease on the base past 2011.

…

Things certainly haven’t been looking up for our MIC, Oil, and related mega companies in that part of the world. And this kind of situation puts our ‘real’ foreign policy makers in their ‘enemies-of-our-enemies’ are needed mode. And when that happens the rest will follow: contracts for our good ole  Mujahideen friends, convenient terrorism related incidents and pipeline sabotages right and left, a more aggressive control of the opium trade to finance unwritten-unspoken foreign policy practices …

In the coming days I’ll be posting more updates and brief (not like this one!) commentaries and analysis on this topic, meanwhile, let’s round up our confusing but pretty much on target foreign policy riddle for the post 9/11 decade:

Our competitors’ enemies are our friends. Our nation’s government designated terrorist enemies are willing to become our competitors’ enemies, and that makes them our foreign policymakers’ convenient good friends while they remain our nation’s enemies. And that, my friend, makes our real foreign policy makers our (?)…

I’ll leave the solving and perfection of the above riddle to you. Please keep them coming.

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Please take a moment and look at these pictures. Really look at them. Not just a cursory glance or a rushed and distracted glance.

Isn’t it heartbreaking looking at them? Isn’t it revolting and outrageous? 

Next, please read, process, and think about the following few lines. I mean, really take them in and truly process their meaning and implications.

The severely injured and crippled children in these pictures are innocent victims of ‘our’ bombings in Afghanistan.

We, you and I, paid for every miniscule molecule of the bombs that brought this horror upon these innocent children. We financed the entire assault with our tax money, so are rightfully considered the financiers of what fell upon these innocent children.

Our representatives, the ones we elected and gave power to, decided upon and sanctioned these atrocities on our behalf, and in our name. We, you and I, likewise sanctioned them, and consented to become the financiers of their implementation.

We, you and I, are directly responsible for what you see in these pictures, and much worse and more, and implicating many more.

We, you and I, did ‘this’, and we are still doing it.

Now please tell me, should it matter whether you are pro-choice or pro-life when it comes to ‘this’ and your reaction to ‘this’?

Because if you are prochoice I doubt you’d make ‘this’ a choice of yours; as a decent human being. Or, if you are prolife I seriously doubt you’d sanction and finance ‘this,’ – do ‘this’ to other fellow human beings. After all, isn’t ‘a life a life…’?

Please tell me, should it matter whether you are a conservative or a liberal when it comes to ‘this’ and your reaction to ‘this’?

Because if you are a true conservative I believe you would be pro-defense not pro-offense, and offenses such as ‘this’ would offend you a great deal. And if you consider yourself a liberal, then I assume you hold high a human’s right to live and exist with dignity, no matter who or where they are.

Please tell me, should it matter whether you are a Christian, Jew, Muslim, or Buddhist when it comes to ‘this’ and your reaction to ‘this’?

Because if you truly have faith in the teachings of either Jesus, Moses, Mohammad, or Buddha, you go by their universal teaching and common proclamation that ‘Thou Shall Not Kill,’ not ‘thou shall sanction and condone violence like ‘this’ on ‘innocent lives’ in the name of false security and under the excuse of terror.’

Should it matter whether the children above are Afghans, Mexicans, or Americans? Are these lives worth less than others; less than ours? Wouldn’t have we been livid, fuming with rage and determination to seek justice, even if only one of these innocent children was on our soil attacked by foreign mighty powers, intentionally or not?

So please tell me, why do we stand divided when it comes to ‘this’?

Why is it that we go on sanctioning and financing ‘this,’ these outrageous and revolting offenses that are being brought upon real lives; innocent human lives?

Why can’t we unite on ‘this,’ a truly significant issue that deals with life and death?

Why don’t we put aside other differences, and jointly take a stand, as pro-choice, pro-life, conservative, liberal, Christian, Jew, Muslim, and Buddhist, who should all consider ‘this’ a significant violation of what we believe in?

Isn’t it time? Looking at these pictures, I say it is way past time. Don’t you?

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According to news reports, the Obama administration is once again reevaluating how to deal with Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai out of fear that it may now be holding him to unrealistic standards of U.S. law enforcement. This comes after a summer of news that Karzai continues to find new ways of resisting Washington’s efforts to rein in rampant corruption in his government.  Now we hear from legendary Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward that the U.S. has intelligence showing Hamid Karzai is under medication for manic depression and that Obama’s national security team doubts that “his strategy in Afghanistan” (whatever that may be at the moment) can work. The tug of war between Kabul and Washington has become so desperate, former CIA Near East, South Asia Chief Dr. Charles Cogan recently opined that the situation was fast approaching a “Diem Moment.” Cogan even suggested that while Diem’s removal had been “horribly botched,” “a removal of Mr. Karzai might turn out to be more straightforward.” Given the similarities to America’s quagmire in Vietnam, invoking Diem raises more than a few dark memories. Yet despite vast differences in the two wars another even more deeply unsettling similarity is emerging. Hamid Karzai is in a political fight for his life like South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem. But (strange as it might seem) his contradictory behavior and the chaos and corruption surrounding it may be no accident. In fact it could be exactly the consequence that his main neoconservative backer, former RAND director, U.S. Ambassador and Special Presidential Envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, had long intended.

According to Thomas Ruttig, a United Nations official present at the mid-2002 Kabul Loya Jirga that installed Karzai, “Khalilzad was the driving force behind THE mistake committed in the post-Taleban period that basically and fundamentally undermined the – possible! – emergence of a stable Afghanistan by bringing in the warlords again and allowing them unrestricted access to the new institutions…  Re-empowered militarily and politically, the warlords expanded the realms of their power into the economy. With their [U.S. Special Forces] Alpha Team seed capital they took over that part of the economy that matters in Afghanistan, the poppy and heroin business. With the profits from this they expanded into what remains of the licit economy: import of luxury goods, cars, spare parts, fuel and cooking gas [and] real estate often by occupying government-owned land…”

When asked in the spring of 2010 whether Khalilzad should be invited back to assist the Obama administration, former Special Assistant to President Reagan, Reagan-Doctrine Architect and honorary Afghan “Freedom Fighter,” California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher told Huffpost interviewer Michael Hughes, “He [Khalilzad] oversaw the establishment of a government that was unable to function in Afghan society. And on top of that he browbeat people into accepting Karzai. He even browbeat the ex-King of Afghanistan Zahir Shah into accepting him. Khalilzad was not in the anti-Taliban camp in the 1990’s, so why the hell would we bring him in now? By forcing Karzai into office, Khalilzad snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory because the Taliban were beaten at that point.”

To both Ruttig and Rohrabacher, Khalilzad’s ultimate crime – like the U.S. manipulation of the Ngo Dinh Diem regime in Vietnam – was that his corruption of the Karzai regime had created so much internal chaos that no amount of outside effort could undo it. Yet the idea that chaos, as a form of extreme social engineering, may have actually been the plan cannot be ignored.

If anyone embodies the Cold War neoconservative philosophy that came to dominate American foreign and military policy from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush, it is Zalmay Khalilzad. Khalilzad first came to the United States as a high school exchange student.

He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from American University in Beirut and his doctorate degree from the University of Chicago where he met and studied along with Paul Wolfowitz under the RAND nuclear warfare theorist, former Trotskyite and father of neoconservatism, Albert J. Wohlstetter.  It was Wohlstetter’s early 1970s series of articles in the Wall Street Journal and Strategic Review that prompted the politicized CIA analysis known as the Team B experiment. It was the Team B’s adherents both inside and outside the Carter administration who set the stage for undermining détente and luring the Soviets into the Afghan trap and holding them there while Afghanistan disintegrated. And it was the same Team B brain-trust of Wohlstetter acolytes including Khalilzad that went on to provide the philosophical template for the politicized intelligence process that led to the strategic military disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan. 

In her 1972 book about Vietnam, Fire in the Lake, author Frances FitzGerald wrote of the perverse illogic of another of Wohlstetter’s onetime RAND protégés, Herman Kahn.

“Just before his departure for a two-week tour of Vietnam in 1967, the defense analyst, Herman Kahn, listened to an American businessman give a detailed account of the economic situation in South Vietnam. At the end of the talk – an argument for reducing the war – Kahn said, ‘I see what you mean. We have corrupted the cities. Now, perhaps we can corrupt the countryside as well.’ It was not a joke. Kahn was thinking in terms of a counterinsurgency program: the United States would win the war by making all Vietnamese economically dependent upon it. In 1967 his program was already becoming a reality, for the corruption reached even to the lowest levels of Vietnamese society.”

In a country as poor as Afghanistan after three decades of war it took little time and less effort to corrupt every level of Afghan society, but in Afghanistan, official corruption, both American and Afghan was built in. Overseen by Khalilzad, a bizarre marriage of America’s pro-business, neoconservative Washington and Afghanistan’s pro-business and often pro-Taliban right wing took root to direct and guide Afghanistan’s reconstruction.

A 2007 report by Canadian journalist Arthur Kent described the DNA that coursed through the bloodstream of the Bush administration’s Afghan agenda. Kent writes, “Within Khalilzad’s makeshift provisional authority in Kabul, he championed a creation called the Afghanistan Reconstruction Group. ARG, achieved two cherished goals for the administration: putting a select group of loyal American and Afghan-American business hawks in charge of US-funded development projects; and doing so while completely bypassing the State Department.”

Outside the boundaries of normal oversight procedures while under the auspices of Donald Rumsfeld’s office at the Pentagon, ARG became a watering hole of high priced contracts for well-placed friends of the Bush administration. In 2005, when Khalilzad’s successor, career diplomat Ronald Neuman tried to break up ARG and return contracting to the State Department, Khalilzad arranged for a “political audit.” The result was Neuman’s replacement by the White House.

In a U.S. Congressional report published in June 2010 titled  Warlord, Inc.,  Representative John F. Tierney’s Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs painted a sordid picture of the chaos, deception and corruption in Afghanistan that now stands as the legacy of America’s neoconservative brain trust. But given the history of America’s covert and overt involvement in Afghanistan, none of this should have come as a surprise. The U.S. fostered destabilization of Afghanistan’s governments in the 1970s, backed Pakistan’s ISI and their Islamist protégés, lured the Soviets to defeat and watched as the country descended into anarchy. It then hatched a Frankenstein movement called the Taliban together with the ISI – all the while pretending it was indigenous to Afghanistan. After 2001 it then allowed the movement to regroup and grow stronger as they slaughtered moderate Pashtuns and claimed the mantle of Pashtun nationalism for themselves. Whatever the future holds for Hamid Karzai, President Obama’s AfPak war was built upon a chaos, designed and programmed from its inception by the highest intellectual circles in the United States. As his administration approaches another winter trying to resolve it, it might as well face up to the fact that whether it likes it or not, it is getting exactly the chaos that it asked for.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration. Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story published by City Lights, January 2009 chronicles their three-decade-focus on Afghanistan and the media. Their next book Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire will be published February, 2011.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Tom Engelhardt discusses his latest book, The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s, Washington’s ongoing commitment to military bases to extend its empire, and the US empire’s deep historical roots that precede the former administration and strongly continue today into the Presidency of Obama. He talks about Central Asia & the goal to dominate the future’s main energy sources in this region, and expands upon an interesting title for one the chapters in the book- “garrisoning of the planet.”

Tom Engelhardt is a founder of Tomdispatch.com website, a project of The Nation Institute where he is a Fellow. He is the author of The American Way of War, The End of Victory Culture, and of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing, as well as a collection of his Tomdispatch interviews, Mission Unaccomplished. Before that he worked as an editor at Pacific News Service in the early 1970s, and, these last three decades, as an editor in book publishing. For 15 years, he was Senior Editor at Pantheon Books where he edited and published award-winning works ranging from Art Spiegelman’s Maus and John Dower’s War Without Mercy to Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire trilogy. He is now Consulting Editor at Metropolitan Books, as well as co-founder and co-editor of Metropolitan’s The American Empire Project.

Here is our guest Tom Engelhardt unplugged!

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Since the end of the cold war, the U.S. had been looking for an enemy to match the Soviet Union and came up empty handed until 9/11. Refocusing the efforts of the world’s largest and most expensive military empire on Al Qaeda would provide the incentive for a massive re-armament,  just the way the Soviet “invasion” of Afghanistan had done two decades before.  According to a Washington Post report within nine years of America’s invasion of Afghanistan, hunting Al Qaeda had become the raison d’être of the American national security bureaucracy employing 854,000 military personnel, civil servants and private contractors with more than 263 organizations transformed or created including the Office of Homeland Security.  The sheer scope of the growth and the extensive privatization of intelligence and security was so profound that it represented “an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in oversight.”

But the report admitted that after nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the labyrinth of secret bureaucracy put in place after 9/11 was so massive and convoluted that its ability to perform its stated function to keep America safe was impossible to determine. Even worse, it was becoming clear that the bureaucratic monster had taken on a life of its own with the U.S. lost in a maze of its own creation, trapped in an expanding web of spies and counter spies that far surpassed the worst paranoia of its old nemesis, the Soviet Union. The logic train of the war on terror and its fundamental rooting in Afghanistan had finally become clear. The perpetual Taliban/Al Qaeda threat fueled a perpetual war that could never be won, justifying an endless string of restrictions on civil liberties and governmental transparency, which then prevented Americans from seeing how their money was spent. Locked out of this “alternative geography of the United States,” Americans have become helpless to stop their democracy and their economy from being lifted right out from under them.

 Thanks to the revelations the word was finally out that whatever impact the “war on terror” had made on terror worldwide ( which many claimed it made only worse)  it was above all, a spectacular boondoggle. 

The shocking, Sunday July 25, WikiLeaks release of 92,000 documents by the New York Times  Der Spiegel and The Guardian, was the acid test for Washington’s beltway experts to square themselves with the fatal collapse confronting them and who was to blame for it. According to the New York Times , “Some of the reports describe Pakistani intelligence working alongside Al Qaeda to plan attacks.”  The documents also revealed numerous embarrassing specifics that had either been downplayed or avoided entirely by the U.S. military in the 9 year old war including: that the Taliban have used portable heat-seeking missiles against NATO aircraft; that the U.S. employs secret commando units to “capture/kill” insurgent commanders that have claimed notable successes but have at times also gone terribly wrong by killing civilians and stoking Afghan resentment; that the military’s success with its Predator drones has been highly over-dramatized. Some crash or collide forcing Americans to undertake risky retrieval missions before the Taliban could claim the drone’s weaponry.  In addition, the reports reveal that retired ISI chief, Lt. General Hamid Gul, “has worked tirelessly to reactivate old networks, employing familiar allies like Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose networks of thousands of fighters are responsible for waves of violence in Afghanistan.” If anything was a guide to who’d been drinking the Washington K Street Kool-Aid, it could be measured by the degree of acceptance to the new information. According to the Boston Globe, Congressman James McGovern, a Worcester Mass. Democrat maintained, “that the documents show a far grimmer situation than members of Congress have been told about in classified briefings,..” Mass. Senator John Kerry initially declared that the documents raised “serious questions,” about policy. But under pressure from the White House, by Monday, Kerry was echoing the official line, defending Obama administration policy while insisting there was little new in the documents. The reasons for Kerry’s second thoughts were obvious. Matt Viser of the Boston Globe writes, “Kerry has what is seen as a special relationship with Pakistan; he has welcomed the country’s army chief to his house for dinner and accepted flowers from the country’s president. ‘There’s no question that Senator Kerry was instrumental in leading the initiative to triple our economic assistance to Pakistan,’ said Molly Kinder, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Global Development, which tracks US aid to Pakistan.”

Left out of the release,  the Washington Post hissed and fumed, editorializing dismissively that the 92,000 documents contained little of interest while citing counter terrorism expert Andrew Exum as comparing the importance of the documents to the discovery that “Liberace was gay.”  Had the documents amassed an equal amount of evidence that Iran or Syria were working with Al Qaeda to carry out attacks on American troops in Afghanistan, the bombers would have been warming up on the flight decks by sundown. But when it came to Pakistan, there was only restraint. To the beltway insiders the actual revelations disclosed by the leaked documents were less important than the exposure of systemic failure they represented. The disclosures had taken the floor out from under the assumptions of the war on terror imposed following 9/11.  But to the beltway it was business as usual and reality had little if anything to do with it.

Little wonder that the world’s population had lost faith in the American enterprise in Afghanistan. Even the Afghan people themselves had come to believe the United States wasn’t really there to fight the Taliban, but pretended to fight as an excuse for remaining in the region. The WikiLeaks reports are the raw data from American troops fighting in the field.  But the reaction from official Washington was as if the U.S. had come to be ruled by a city of isolated mandarins from another planet, completely detached from the world they governed and dismissive of any efforts to bring them down to earth. 
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Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration. Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story published by City Lights, January 2009 chronicles their three-decade-focus on Afghanistan and the media. Their next book Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire will be published February, 2011.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

In the two years since the publication of our book Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story we have had the chance to address dozens of forums and radio audiences around the United States about Afghanistan. It has been an illuminating exercise, not so much in terms of what Americans understand about the Afghanistan/Pakistan region (which unfortunately isn’t very much) but by the way it reveals how Americans are struggling to catch up with a world that seems to have left them behind. A morning-drive-time radio talk show host in Chicago wanted to know whether a nuclear bomb dropped on the Hindu Kush wouldn’t solve the problem. When we replied that using a nuclear weapon to kill a few thousand suspected terrorists would kill millions of innocent people, he responded abruptly before cutting us off: The Japanese got the message when we dropped it on them.

Most people are confused about the America they find themselves in, in the 21^st century. They wonder where “their” America went. According to the popular mythology, the U.S. started the decade as the world’s lone hyper-power, beholden to none. It ends the first decade of the new millennium as a debt-hobbled-capitalist shell, beholden to a rising communist China and a host of oil-rich medieval Middle-East Sheikdoms.  Americans are frustrated and resentful, denying any responsibility for the ongoing Afghan fiasco while expressing anger and often disbelief that our leadership has refused to learn the lessons of Vietnam and taken us on yet another mindless ride into a hopeless quagmire.

When we are asked why the U.S. is still in Afghanistan after a decade, we explain that America’s DNA profile has been all over that country since 1973. While no one was looking, the CIA’s secret mission became entangled with Pakistan’s support for Afghanistan’s small core of foreign-trained right wing Islamic extremists. Thanks to President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, this entanglement blossomed into a marriage following the 1978 Marxist coup and a full-blown commitment to holy war and the Islamization of Pakistan – long before the Soviet invasion of 1979.

The United States continued to support the right wing extremists all through the 1980s and then (in order to serve the interests of Pakistan’s military and Saudi/American oil conglomerates) the CIA helped Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) to establish the Taliban. The Taliban’s inability to totally conquer Afghanistan and their close relationship with the Arab extremists known as Al Qaeda challenged this American relationship. But it was the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Nairobi and the near sinking of the U.S.S. Cole in Aden harbor in 2000 that strained U.S./Taliban relations to the breaking point.

We then explain that for very much the same reasons that the Soviet Union overreacted to extremist provocations on their southern border in December 1979, the United States invaded Afghanistan following the events of 9/11. The intention was to drive the Taliban out of power and root out, intercept, kill or capture Al Qaeda terrorists and their leader Osama bin Laden, the reputed 9/11 architect. 

This information usually produces audible groans and looks of profound despair, followed by the question, why has none of this happened? That answer we now believe has been revealed.

In A June 24, New York Times article titled, Pakistan Is Said to Pursue a Foothold in Afghanistan,[1][1] the authors maintain that according to Afghan officials, Pakistani Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani personally offered to broker a deal between Hamid Karzai and the Taliban leadership including Sirajuddin Haqqani’s terror network and his Al Qaeda allies. The report also maintained that Kayani and his spy chief, Lt. General Ahmad Shuja Pasha agreed with Afghan president Karzai that the U.S. effort in Afghanistan was doomed to fail “and that a postwar Afghanistan should incorporate the Haqqani network, a longtime Pakistani asset.”

Wiretaps long ago revealed General Kayani as an extremist sponsor playing a double game, who referred to the Haqqani network as a “strategic asset.” Both Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh have publicly linked Pakistan’s ISI to terror activities. Reports of Pakistani complicity in the events of 9/11 linger unresolved.  But does the Times’ revelation of an active Pakistani military collusion with Al Qaeda-conduit Haqqani and Washington’s admitted “nervousness” about it, mean that the U.S./Pakistani relationship has finally been pushed to the breaking point?

The United States has spent a decade and hundreds of billions of dollars chasing Osama bin Laden and his mysterious organization known as Al Qaeda around the world. It has given billions more to Pakistan’s military to fight Al Qaeda terrorism. The U.S. continues to trample standards of international law by executing suspected terrorists (including Americans) without trial and at the same time suspends civil liberties at home.  Pakistan’s offer and Hamid Karzai’s receptiveness to it represents a checkmate move. Whether anyone in Washington can admit it or not, Kayani has exposed the “war on terror” and its Bill of Rights-busting USA Patriot Act, as a tragic deception. A recent study by the Institute for the Study of War’s Jeffrey Dressler picked up on the glaring incongruities of the rapidly devolving scenario.

“The Haqqanis rely on Al Qaeda for mass appeal, funding, resources and training, and in return provide Al Qaeda with shelter, protection and a means to strike foreign forces in Afghanistan and beyond. Any negotiated settlement with the Haqqanis threatens to undermine the raison d’etre for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan over the past decade.”

But if the raison d’etre for American involvement over the last ten years has made the Haqqanis and Al Qaeda even stronger than they were before, then perhaps the time has come to consider that the raison for the war on terror has been revealed as a double-cross.

A May 31^st 2010 article in the London Sunday Times reports that $1½ billion dollars of Saudi Arabian money has flowed into Afghanistan from Haqqani and Al Qaeda controlled territory in North Waziristan over the past four years and the U.S. government knows it. In the 1980s the U.S. with Saudi Arabian backing went out of its way to finance and train the Haqqanis under the auspices of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and warlords like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. According to numerous sources, a good part of the ISI/Hekmatyar operation involved assassinating Afghan nationalists to ensure that a moderate coalition government in Kabul could never be achieved. According to declassified U.S. government documents from the early 1970s, the focus on controlling Afghanistan even then was viewed as centered on a “Chinese-Iranian-Pakistani-Arabian peninsula Axis with U.S. support.” Thanks to Pakistani General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, there is little reason to think that the Taliban, Haqqani network and Al Qaeda are any less connected to their ultimate goals today than they were forty years ago

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Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration. Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story published by City Lights, January 2009 chronicles their three-decade-focus on Afghanistan and the media. Their next book Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire will be published February, 2011.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

It seems that Afghanistan is a never ending font of surprises. For decades U.S. officials took the position that Afghanistan held nothing of value for the United States, especially in the form of vital strategic resources. That assumption was a major reason for America’s consistently dismissive attitude towards Afghanistan up until the Soviet invasion of 1979 and why the U.S. was content to turn the country over to Pakistan and Saudi Arabian interests following the Soviet departure. Then on June 13, 2010 the New York Times in a front-page story reported how a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists had suddenly discovered a vast treasure of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth worth nearly $1 trillion dollars.

But the story of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth isn’t a new one nor did the Pentagon just “discover” it. According to a Reuters report of March 16, 2009, over a year ago, Afghanistan’s minister of mines Mohammed Ibrahim Adel cited U.S. Geological Survey Data in declaring that “In the field of minerals, Afghanistan is the richest country in the region, much more, hundreds of times more.”

Even the New York Times’ story admits that the survey information, on which the Pentagon assessment was based, came from data collected by Soviet mining experts nearly 30 years ago. American geologists became aware of it in 2004, but the data languished until 2009.

But the most revealing quote in the Pentagon report wasn’t so much that Afghanistan did indeed contain a vast wealth of minerals or even that the U.S. had carelessly overlooked a vast source of wealth for an impoverished nation. No. The key to understanding the report was framed by the reference that “Afghanistan could become the ‘Saudi Arabia of lithium,’” and Saudi Arabia is where the real story behind the headlines begins. 

This is not the first time that Saudi Arabia has been used to as a model for Afghanistan’s future. One might go so far as to say today’s Afghanistan and its Taliban scourge already bears the stamp of being made in Saudi Arabia.

According to author, Gerald Posner in his book, Secrets of the Kingdom, the anti-Soviet Afghan war was as much a godsend for the Saudi Royal family as it was for the Afghan Islamists. “Some prominent Saudi officials, like Prince Bandar, as well as his father, defense minister Prince Sultan, saw the Soviet aggression as a chance to form a closer bond with Washington. It was a rare chance, they argued to other Saudi ministers, to replace Israel as America’s strategic partner in the Middle East. And as far as the Americans were concerned, the Saudis had suddenly become a cash cow.”

The term “Taliban” and the movement itself were unheard of in Afghanistan until 1994. Prior to the Soviet invasion, the Taliban mentality and the madrassa structure did not exist. As an invention of Pakistan’s military intelligence with outside help, the Taliban were not recruited from inside Afghanistan but from Pakistani madrassas. This process was funded, not by Afghans, but by the Saudis and other Arab countries who continue to seek the long term goal of a political and religious transformation of South Asia combined with the dissolution of Afghanistan as a nation state.

The Taliban version of Deobandi Islam practiced in Pakistan and the Wahhabism practiced in Saudi Arabia were both alien to Afghan practice. Suicide bombings did not exist in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation nor even when the Taliban took control in 1996. The Afghan people never willingly embraced extremist Islam. These ideas were forced upon them under circumstances beyond their control.

From the very beginning, the United States really had no conception of what to do in Afghanistan except to follow the lead of the Saudis, with some American diplomats benignly visualizing that a Taliban victory would simply turn Afghanistan into a miniature Saudi Arabia. In his book, Taliban, Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid quotes one diplomat as saying, “The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did. There will be Aramco, pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that.”

The Obama administration has nothing good to report to the American people on Afghanistan. New revelations of the hopelessness of government corruption arrive daily. Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai is in open confrontation with Washington on dozens of issues. Not only is reconstruction dead and the war failing, but so far, General McChrystal’s application of Counter Insurgency (COIN) has failed miserably. The heralded U.S. assault on Marja and the establishment of government control has come to a dead stop. According to the Washington Post, the failure at Marja has now caused the summer assault on Kandahar to be postponed indefinitely and threatens the Obama administration’s plans for a July 2011 drawdown of U.S. troops.  

So, without a legitimate rationale for staying in Afghanistan and no conceivable way of justifying countless more billions of dollars or American lives – Washington has finally admitted that the country is not only important, but is vital to the future of America’s strategic mineral interests. But even now as the Obama administration dredges up a new reason for staying in Afghanistan past the 2011 deadline, it appears that the old motivation of transforming Afghanistan into a Central Asian Saudi Arabia remains the real motivation underlying America’s war.

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Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration. Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story published by City Lights, January 2009 chronicles their three-decade-focus on Afghanistan and the media. Their next book Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire will be published February, 2011. 

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

The upcoming campaign for the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar will be the crucial test for the United States’ military and the Obama administration’s AfPak strategy. It will clearly be an epic military battle and a test of the intellectual movement for counterinsurgency within the military known as COIN. But, like the battle for Marja in February, will the battle for Kandahar be more about the “perceptions” of American victory than about real success? That battle featured what General Stanley McChrystal described as “government in a box,”  a kind of franchisable, political “happy meal” for Afghanistan with a pre-selected government administration, mayor and police force, ready to go the minute the shooting stopped.

In the end, General McChrystal’s government in a box turned out to be more like a government in a coffin. Dead on arrival.  Authors Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason  likened U.S. policy in Afghanistan to nothing less than British literature’s most famous pipe dream, Alice in Wonderland. “Lewis Carroll’s ironically opium-inspired tale of a rational person caught up inside a mad world with its own bizarre but consistent internal (il)logic has now surpassed Vietnam as the best paradigm to understand the war in Afghanistan.”

Johnson and Mason described Marja as nothing more than a massive exercise in public relations, with one intention only; “to shore up dwindling domestic support for the war by creating the illusion of progress,” while the media gulped down the bottle labeled “drink me,” and shrank into insignificance.

But what can the world expect of American policy in the aftermath of what promises to be an even larger opium-inspired tea party in Kandahar? And what happens if the U.S. achieves a military victory, but fails to address the gaping political vacuum necessary to keep the Taliban from returning?

It remains unclear exactly what the U.S. is trying to accomplish politically in Afghanistan with a Karzai government that neither Washington nor the Afghan population appears to want. According to experts, Washington remains divided over whether to engage with the Taliban leadership or follow the Pentagon’s line of fighting while talking. The Obama administration has narrowed its military objective down to ridding Pakistan and Afghanistan of Al Qaeda and finding Osama bin Laden. But that leaves a dozen affiliated radical groups like the Tehrik-i-Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Haqqani network to organize, train and expand their networks under the ponderous assumption that they can be cut from the influence of Al Qaeda and kept from them.

And what about NATO? Will a public relations victory be enough to convince an increasingly reluctant NATO to hang in for the long term? Absent from much of the public discussion is the growing schism between Washington and European capitals, with cold war hawks like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Madeleine Albright trying desperately to breath new life into what the U.S. military’s own thinkers describe as “a discredited Cold War rule set.”

Europe and the U.S. remain deeply divided over American policy toward Afghanistan and their role in it. In September 2009, former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski issued a somber admonition at a gathering of military and foreign policy experts in Geneva warning that the U.S. was running the risk of replicating the fate of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and that if Europe left the U.S. on its own there, “that would spell the end of the alliance.”

According to its latest mission statement,  written by a team headed by former U.S. secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, “NATO must win the war in Afghanistan, expand ties with Russia and even China, counter the threat posed by Iran’s missiles, and assure the security of its 28 members.”

But not everyone sees NATO’s demand for a European rededication to a cold-war-global-security-order ruled over by a diminished United States, as a desirable policy for what may lie ahead. Neither do they see a commitment to winning in Afghanistan as necessary to European security, as the political consensus for NATO’s expanded mission cracks apart.

Foreign policy commentator William Pfaff wrote on May 18, from Paris,   “The United States has, since the end of the Cold War, wanted NATO to become an American military auxiliary, largely under the sway of the Pentagon, and on the whole this has happened,.. At the NATO experts’ meeting Monday, which considered proposals for what NATO should become by 2020, former U.S. Secretary of  State Madeleine Albright asked why the Europeans should pay twice for their defense. I can think of one unspeakable but not unthinkable reason why European countries might wish to defend themselves. What if it should prove one day that the threat the Europeans need to defend themselves against is of American and Israeli origin?”

Pfaff admitted that his speculation of a European vs. American/Israeli conflict is an “Hysterical geopolitical fantasy.” Yet, the very idea that Pfaff should find such a development thinkable, is something Americans must open their minds to. In fact, the U.S. military’s own thinkers are preparing for a new world in which the U.S.’s containment policy folds in upon itself.

Nathan Freier of the Army’s Strategic Studies Institute writes, “Imagine, ‘a new era of containment with the United States as the nation to be contained,’ where the principle tools and methods of war involve everything but those associated with traditional military conflict. Imagine that the sources of this ‘new era of containment’ are widespread; predicated on nonmilitary forms of political, economic, and violent action; in the main, sustainable over time; and finally, largely invulnerable to effective reversal through traditional U.S. advantages.”

Following World War II, the U.S. built a cold war containment policy that straightjacketed its communist enemies as well as American thinking. Today, the word on the street is, if the U.S. can’t find a way to rethink this policy at a major turning point in its empire, it will soon find itself contained by a straightjacket of its own making.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration. Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story published by City Lights, January 2009 chronicles their three-decade-focus on Afghanistan and the media. Their next book Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire will be published February, 2011.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of the law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ‘round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast. Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of the law, for my own safety’s sake! A Man For All Seasons
 

With the U.S. already having cut down every law in the forest when it comes to terrorism in the last 9 years, there was nothing left for Barack Obama’s war cabinet to do but risk a hazardous new escalation of its AfPak war following the attempted bombing in Times Square by Pakistani Taliban-trained Faisal Shahzad.

The administration sold its own version of the Afghan war originally by narrowing it to hunting Al Qaeda in Pakistan regardless of the moral, ethical, legal or even political consequences. It continues to claim success in its greatly expanded use of Predator drone assassinations. But as the administration scrambles to counter something that was apparently beyond what it thought possible, it must now face the grim reality that warfare, no matter how high tech or expensive, is and will continue to be a two way street. It must also finally face up to the fact that its glaring lack of sophistication in its dealings with Afghanistan and Pakistan have made the U.S. more vulnerable to attack and not less.

The entire strategy for a draw-down of U.S. forces in 2011 rests on the blindly unrealistic assumptions that a NATO-trained Afghan Army and police force can somehow magically replace American “boots on the ground,” while the drone campaign will deter the enemy’s leadership from acting effectively and frighten away potential recruits. Up to now, the administration’s policy has rested on the claimed effectiveness of these strikes to weaken the Taliban and make them more receptive to a peace agreement that would bring them into the Afghan government. But in a gaping breach of logic, the possibility that they might actually retaliate on U.S. soil, was never even factored into the equation.

The efficacy of assassinating Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects with such weapons challenges at least two major assumptions. The first is that the weapons themselves are not a technically suitable replacement for human counterinsurgency forces (which in and of themselves are beset by problems). The second and perhaps more important, is whether high tech warfare – with all its imperial-death-from-above implications – isn’t actually self-defeating, given the negative political impact it has on the local population. Critics of the Predator attacks have warned of the potential blowback for years.

In 2004, Robert A. Pape, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago warned of the negative consequences of an over reliance on drone technology in a Foreign Affairs commentary. “Decapitating the enemy has a seductive logic. It exploits the United States’ advantage in precision air power; it promises to win wars in just days, with few casualties among friendly forces and enemy civilians; and it delays committing large numbers of ground troops until they can be welcomed as liberators rather than conquerors. But decapitation strategies have never been effective, and the advent of precision weaponry has not made them any more so.”

According to counterinsurgency experts David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum, the strategy of predator drone strikes in Pakistan fails on all counts by creating a siege mentality among Pakistan’s civilian population, “exciting visceral opposition across a broad spectrum of Pakistani opinion,” while actually being only a “tactic,” masquerading as a “strategy,” which only “encourages people in the tribal areas to see the drone attacks as a continuation of [British] colonial-era policies.”

Kilcullen and Exum explain the ill-logic of the U.S. Predator campaign. “Imagine, for example, that burglars move into a neighborhood. If the police were to start blowing up people’s houses from the air, would this convince homeowners to rise up against the burglars? Wouldn’t it be more likely to turn the whole population against the police? And if their neighbors wanted to turn the burglars in, how would they do that exactly? Yet this is the same basic logic underlying the drone war.”

Drone attacks and targeted assassinations have already opened a Pandora’s box of legal demons for the United States that will someday have to be faced. On February 14, 2010 the Washington Post reported on the gory details of how the administration had come to deal with the inflammatory legal issue of jailing terror suspects by choosing to kill, rather than capture those it deemed terrorists.  But, in the ten days following the failed terror attack in New York, instead of pausing to reconsider the consequences of  such draconian tactics, the U.S. responded by threatening Pakistan with a direct U.S. military “boots-on-the-ground” expansion  while accelerating pilotless attacks in the tribal area of North Waziristan even further, firing 18 missiles on May 10, alone.

That the Obama administration continues to believe its response to the “almost” Taliban attack in New York will “soften up” Pakistan’s Taliban after 9 years of softening, is a bad omen for America. Having already discarded the “benefit of the law,” for our own safety’s sake, it will only be a matter of time before the devil comes knocking again. 

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration. Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story published by City Lights, January 2009 chronicles their three-decade-focus on Afghanistan and the media. Their next book Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire will be published February, 2011.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

The region today delineated as both Afghanistan and Pakistan has known many borders over the millennia, yet none have been more artificial or contentious than the one today separating Pakistan from Afghanistan known as the Durand line but referred to by the military and intelligence community as Zero line. A funny thing happened to the United States when the Obama administration decided to cross Zero line and bring the Afghan war into Pakistan. Instead of resolution, after nearly two years into the administration’s AfPak strategy, it would seem the gap between reality and the Washington beltway has only widened.

Instead of moving into a new future that defused India and Pakistan’s nuclear rivalry and promised “a more capable, accountable, and effective government in Afghanistan that serves the Afghan people,” the U.S. is falling back on its old cold war relationships that created the problem in the first place. But as the costs of maintaining an archaic cold war posture mount, the world’s economy crumbles and the contradictions tear the war’s flimsy logic to shreds, it’s clear that, the U.S. is facing a bigger enemy than it ever imagined.

Before the Obama administration even set foot in office it promised to shift its attention, time, money and energy away from Iraq towards Afghanistan. The president’s AfPak policy was intended to correct the mistakes of the past while addressing the war in a more realistic fashion that focused as much on the actions of Pakistan’s military as it did the actions of the Afghan government.

The Obama administration’s decision to actively address Pakistan’s behavior emerged only after Washington’s military/intelligence community reluctantly accepted proof that Pakistan’s ISI was aiding Taliban actors such as Malawi Jalaluddin Haqqani. It also emerged after solid evidence suggested that Pakistan itself was on the verge of caving in to their own Taliban extremists, known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan or TTP .

Despite being the single largest focus of the American military, much of what the United States does in Afghanistan and Pakistan remains a military secret. A report issued by the Center For Strategic and International Studies by Anthony H. Cordesman in September 2008, declared alarmingly. “No country or international organization provides useful unclassified overview data on the developments in the fighting [in Afghanistan] in anything like the depth that the US Department of Defense provides in its quarterly reports on the Iraq war. The [limited] reporting that is available also decouples the fighting in Afghanistan from that in Pakistan. Accordingly, public official reporting on the growing intensity of the war since 2006 ignores one of the most critical aspects of the conflict.”

Evidence of the strain facing America’s cold war-trained bureaucrats now appears regularly as the contradictions deepen. Defense Secretary Robert Gates crossed his own personal zero line in an address to the National Defense University in February when he criticized Europe’s growing anti-war sentiment as a dangerous threat to peace. The Obama administration rails at the Karzai government’s corruption but denies it the guidance and expertise necessary to make it effective at governance. The U.S. then diverts power and money to regional tribal leaders whom many fear (including U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry) will simply become a new class of warlord, once the U.S. departs.

Since January 2009, U.S. Predator Drone strikes are reported to have killed at least 529 people in the tribal areas of Pakistan of whom 20 percent may have been civilians. Considered to be a clear violation of international law by American legal scholars, the cross border strikes inflame Pakistani opinion against the U.S. Yet, the Pentagon praises their new anti-terror weapon while at the same time continuing to deny that the program even exists.

As the Obama administration struggles to reconcile Washington’s special interests with those posed by Iran, Pakistan, India, China and Russia, it should be remembered that the Soviet Union faced a similar challenge in Afghanistan. But in the end the biggest enemy the Soviets faced was not the Stinger missiles or the disunited Mujahideen Jihadis. The Soviet Union’s biggest enemy was the archaic cold war structure of the Soviet system itself, and that is a lesson that Washington refuses to accept.

The United States has fought on both the Pakistani and Afghan sides of the Durand line. In the 1980s it fought on the side of extremist-political Islam. Since September 11, 2001 it has fought against it. But the border separating the two seemingly incompatible behaviors remains largely a dark mystery. It is therefore appropriate to think of Zero line as the vanishing point for the American empire, the point beyond which its power and influence disappears; the line where 60 year’s worth of American policy in Eurasia confronts itself and ceases to exist. The Durand line separating the two countries is visible on a map. Zero line is not.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration. Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story published by City Lights, January 2009 chronicles their three-decade-focus on Afghanistan and the media. Their next book Crossing ZeroThe AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire will be published February, 2011.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

I am thrilled to announce the addition of a new team member, Luke Ryland, a good friend and a partner whom I have known and worked with since 2006; please welcome Luke and here is his bio:

Luke Ryland is an independent political analyst and online journalist based in Australia. He has been an expert commentator on the Sibel Edmonds case and nuclear black market cases for various progressive radio shows and online publications. Mr. Ryland’s work focuses on the nuclear black market, the Turkish lobby in the US, the energy and geopolitical wars in Central Asia, and the corruption of US Congress. Mr. Ryland has an MBA and a Bachelors degree in Commerce from the University of Melbourne. Visit Luke Ryland’s website.

We recently published Luke Ryland’s expose on FBI documents confirming major criminal investigations of Turkish operatives and their US official friends in Chicago. And here is a link to a recent interview with Mr. Ryland conducted by Scott Horton of AntiWar.Org: Click here.

Starting this coming Wednesday I’ll be on the road for a few weeks, traveling for work and personal matters. I won’t be out of touch. We have three Boiling Frogs interviews, one of which will be posted every other week: Professor Francis Boyle, Naomi Wolf, and Peter Phillips. Meanwhile, Peter B Collins and I will find ways to overcome significant time zone differences and connection difficulties, and continue to conduct additional interviews. We will also have articles and analyses by our contributors, and of course Paul Jamiol’s great editorial cartoons.

Here is my list of noteworthy articles and links from this past week:

Let’s start with our President, since we’ve been keeping tabs on his changes on his promised changes. The following piece is also related to the Obama White House’s 180 degree turn on protection for national security whistleblowers, which we’ve been covering for over a week.

A little secret about Obama’s transparency
Andrew Malcolm, LA Times

The current administration, challenged by the president to be the most open, is now denying more Freedom of Information Act requests than Bush did.

The Democratic administration of Barack Obama, who denounced his predecessor, George W. Bush, as the most secretive in history, is now denying more Freedom of Information Act requests than the Republican did.

Transparency and openness were so important to the new president that on his first full day in office, he dispatched a much-publicized memo saying: “All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.”
One of the exemptions allowed to deny Freedom of Information requests has been used by the Obama administration 70,779 times in its first year; the same exemption was used 47,395 times in Bush’s final budget year.

An Associated Press examination of 17 major agencies’ handling of FOIA requests found denials 466,872 times, an increase of nearly 50% from the 2008 fiscal year under Bush.
…

We’ve been keeping tabs, and our list of ‘Bush-Like’ and ‘Worse-Than-Bush’ points has been expanding continuously. Mr. Obama’s love and usage of State Secrets Privilege, his position against government whistleblowers, his support for illegal domestic wiretapping, his passion for wars and drones, his kind-heartedness towards torturers & other criminals…During his first few months in office, a few of his previously duped supporters were too generous and maybe a bit too naïve to label him ‘Bush-Lite.’ How about now? Is it time to call the President ‘Bush-Dark’? You be the judge; what say you?

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 Karzai talks peace with militant group linked to Taliban
Deb Riechmann, AP

President Hamid Karzai held an unprecedented meeting yesterday with representatives of a major Taliban-linked militant group, boosting his outreach to insurgency leaders to end the eight-year war.

Less certain is whether the talks with the weakened Hizb-i-Islami faction represent a game-changer in the conflict, given its demand to rewrite the Afghan constitution and force a quick exit of foreign forces.

It is the first time that high-ranking representatives of the group, led by warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, have traveled to Kabul to discuss peace. The reconciliation offer from Hekmatyar contrasts with his reputation as a ruthless extremist.

Hekmatyar, who is in his 60s, was a major recipient of US military aid during the war against the Soviets in the 1980s but fell out of favor with Washington because of his role in the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal. The US government declared Hekmatyar a “global terrorist’’ in February 2003, saying he participated in and supported terror acts committed by Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Unless that tag is removed, the designation could complicate any move by the United States to sign off on a deal, even though in recent years Hekmatyar has expressed a willingness to negotiate with the Karzai government. A spokesman for Hekmatyar said the delegation had lunch with Karzai at the presidential palace and planned to meet with him again.

…

Last January our team member duo, Liz Gould and Paul Fitzgerald, wrote an excellent piece on this opium dealing terrorist, who happened to get his grooming from our very own CIA. If you haven’t read the Gould-Fitzgerald piece titled ‘Apocalypse of the American Mind’, click here. Was he ever off the CIA list of ‘operators’? I for one would certainly doubt it.

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NATO rejects Russia’s demand to destroy Afghan poppy fields
Deutsche Press-Agentur

 Brussels – NATO and Russia clashed on Wednesday over how to tackle the drug problem in Afghanistan, where Western nations have been fighting a Taliban-led insurgency for eight years.

The country is the world’s largest producer of poppy seeds, a key ingredient in the manufacture of heroin. Russia is keen to pursue an aggressive eradication strategy, while Western allies fear that such an approach risks antagonizing the local population, who rely on selling poppy crops to survive.

The different points of view came to a head at a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council attended by the head of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Agency (FSKN), Victor Ivanov and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

‘Afghan opiates led to the death of 1 million people by overdose in the last 10 years, and that is United Nations data. Is that not a threat to world peace and security?’ Ivanov asked journalists after the meeting.

…

Russians know very well what this is about. After all, they used to be a major player in ‘this’ particular field, and now a bit grumpy because…their share of this pie has been significantly reduced? Certainly it’s not about a million+ deaths caused by ‘overdose;’ of that much I can assure you. So maybe our guys will let their guys have a bit more; like this maybe:

However, he stressed that there was ‘a very positive mood’ in the talks with Ivanov and said that the two sides agreed to boost an already existing programme that involves joint training of Afghan counter-narcotics police.

…

Please bring in your two cents (and more).

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In the last few days there have been numerous articles portraying the White House as tough on Israel, and depicting Israel-US relations as severely strained. Coincidentally, two months ago similar articles were written in Turkey on endangered ties – Turkey-Israel. In Turkey this usually happens when elected officials see the need, that is, fulfilling public expectations, albeit cosmetically, to appear ‘a bit’ tough on Israel. While they do that, the business of kissing up to Israel continues behind the scenes; as always.

Here is how badly strained is the relationship between the White House and the Israeli bosses:

Exclusive / Despite row, U.S. and Israel sign massive arms deal
Amos Harel, Haaretz

As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington this week absorbing the full wrath of the Obama administration, the Pentagon and Israel’s defense establishment were in the process of sealing a large arms deal.

According to the deal, Israel will purchase three new Hercules C-130J airplanes. The deal for the three aircrafts, designed by Lockheed Martin, is worth roughly a quarter billion dollars. Each aircraft costs $70 million.

The aircrafts were manufactured specifically for Israeli needs, and include a large number of systems produced by Israel’s defense industry.

The deal will be covered by American foreign assistance funds. The Pentagon will issue a formal announcement on the matter on Thursday evening.

…

That’s right; that’s how strained things are! And here is another exposé on strained Obama-Israel relations; NOT!

Former Obama Aide New Head of AIPAC
Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, Israel National News

Lee “Rosy” Rosenberg, a jazz recording industry veteran capitalist who accompanied U.S. President Barack Obama on his campaign trip to Israel two years ago, takes over on Sunday as the new president of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Rosenberg also served on the president’s national campaign finance committee.

The new AIPAC president hails from Chicago, the home state of President Obama, and also is on first-name terms with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, President Obama’s senior advisor.

…

My advice? Next time you read bologna articles on the Obama White House being tough on Israel, don’t believe it, go do your own bit of research, and determine for yourself who is the ‘servant’ and who is the ‘boss’ in this (Israel Lobby-US President) relationship;-)

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And finally, two well-researched and nicely-written reports by my favorite publication, Asia Times:

‘Strategic depth’ at heart of Taliban arrests
By Shibil Siddiqi, ATimes