MEDIA ROOTS – Upon returning home from his second tour in Afghanistan, Lt. Colonel Daniel L. Davis unloaded several truths that exposed continued deception by multiple senior military officials.  The 17-year Army veteran describes, in an 84-page “open-source” report, an increasingly bleak reality for soldiers while chronicling specific episodes of personal gain from top military leaders.

“No one expects our leaders to always have a successful plan,” he explains in a recent summary of the report in Armed Forces Journal.  “But we do expect – and the men who do the living, fighting, and dying deserve – to have our leaders tell the truth about what’s going on.”

Prior to informing his chain of command, Davis met with six members of Congress and a New York Times reporter, to submit two documents – one classified and one not – to the Pentagon for internal review.  However, upon learning that there would be a delay in the release of the unclassified report, Davis decided to go public last week in the nation’s premier independent military periodical.  “How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding?”

The next day, the Times covered the story, but only to appear backpaged on A13.  Then, last Friday, Rolling Stone released it in an article written by Michael Hastings, the journalist that wrote the bombshell article that lead to General McChrystal’s premature retirement in 2010.

With specific evidence of industry actually impeding military development, hundreds of billions of dollars being wasted, and virtually no accountability of top decision-makers, some generals continue to deceive Congress and the U.S. people.  But with the ongoing expenditure of “blood, limbs, and lives of tens of thousands” of service members and only small gains for the country, “deception reach[ed] an intolerable low,” Davis writes. “If the public had access to these classified reports they would see the dramatic gulf between what is often said in public by our senior leaders and what is actually true behind the scenes.”

While assigned to the Future Combat Systems (FCS) organization in Fort Bliss, Texas, Davis discovered that deception was not isolated to one base or division but had become Army-wide.  Starting in 1999 and lasting nearly a decade, the FCS organization cost nearly $20 billion dollars of taxpayer monies.  Despite the Government Accountability Office documenting consistently significant problems with the agency, senior leaders routinely downplayed failures and often gave the impression of success to Congress.  To date, none of these officials involved in these deceptions have been held accountable.  Instead, one proponent, Major General Charles Cartwright, was promoted Vice President of Advanced Programs at Raytheon upon retirement.  Raytheon was a primary supplier of the FCS blunder that was eventually canceled by the Defense Secretary.

The report also offers an extensive review of the 2007 Iraqi troop surge and the misplaced credit given to CIA Director General Patreaus.  Several perspectives of the surge are featured that mention how, prior to the surge, the Iraqi Sunni community had already decided to revolt against their Al-Qaeda allies.  This shifted momentum and left some Iraqi officials perplexed at why the U.S. was sending additional battalions after they had specifically requested that U.S. troops stay on the bases outside of conflict areas.

The allegations make a clear distinction between criticism for military officials and the presumed naivety of the President and Congress.  According to Obama’s Wars by Bob Woodward, the Commander-in-Chief asked many difficult questions prior to ordering the 30,000-troop surge in Afghanistan that ultimately failed.  Obama was still in his first year of the presidency, had no personal military history, and was outnumbered in opinion by senior security advisors.  Additionally, several misleading testimonies from top brass are provided, with context and factual disparity, that exemplify the rampant deceit offered to Congress and major media outlets.

The report goes on to suggest several areas where the U.S. has lost credibility.  Davis cites how many mid-grade officers are now retiring early within the Army, due to increased disenfranchisement, and warns of a future military with dwindling respect for the chains of command.  Also, as Congress continues to remain unaware of some classified intelligence, several defense contractors are able to study such material at their convenience.  Davis recommends a bipartisan Congressional investigation of all the leaders involved to respond to these allegations, under oath.

When questioned why he felt compelled to come out with these accusations despite the fact he was going to be flamed by Army brass, Davis replied, “I believe that with knowledge comes responsibility; I knew too much to remain silent.”

Oskar Mosquito is a veteran of the U.S. Army and a producer at truth-march.

Picture provided by Flickr user hectorir

TRUTHDIG– Chris Hedges made these remarks about Osama bin Laden’s death at a Truthdig fundraising event in Los Angeles on Sunday evening.

I know that because of this announcement, that reportedly Osama bin Laden was killed, Bob wanted me to say a few words about it … about al-Qaida. I spent a year of my life covering al-Qaida for The New York Times. It was the work in which I, and other investigative reporters, won the Pulitzer Prize. And I spent seven years of my life in the Middle East. I was the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. I’m an Arabic speaker. And when someone came over and told Jean and me the news, my stomach sank. I’m not in any way naïve about what al-Qaida is. It’s an organization that terrifies me. I know it intimately.

But I’m also intimately familiar with the collective humiliation that we have imposed on the Muslim world. The expansion of military occupation that took place throughout, in particular the Arab world, following 9/11—and that this presence of American imperial bases, dotted, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Doha—is one that has done more to engender hatred and acts of terror than anything ever orchestrated by Osama bin Laden.

And the killing of bin Laden, who has absolutely no operational role in al-Qaida—that’s clear—he’s kind of a spiritual mentor, a kind of guide … he functions in many of the ways that Hitler functioned for the Nazi Party. We were just talking with Warren about Kershaw’s great biography of Hitler, which I read a few months ago, where you hold up a particular ideological ideal and strive for it. That was bin Laden’s role. But all actual acts of terror, which he may have signed off on, he no way planned.

I think that one of the most interesting aspects of the whole rise of al-Qaida is that when Saddam Hussein … I covered the first Gulf War, went into Kuwait with the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, was in Basra during the Shiite uprising until I was captured and taken prisoner by the Iraqi Republican Guard. I like to say I was embedded with the Iraqi Republican Guard. Within that initial assault and occupation of Kuwait, bin Laden appealed to the Saudi government to come back and help organize the defense of his country. And he was turned down. And American troops came in and implanted themselves on Muslim soil.

When I was in New York, as some of you were, on 9/11, I was in Times Square when the second plane hit. I walked into The New York Times, I stuffed notebooks in my pocket and walked down the West Side Highway and was at Ground Zero four hours later. I was there when Building 7 collapsed. And I watched as a nation drank deep from that very dark elixir of American nationalism … the flip side of nationalism is always racism, it’s about self-exaltation and the denigration of the other.

And it’s about forgetting that terrorism is a tactic. You can’t make war on terror. Terrorism has been with us since Sallust wrote about it in the Jugurthine wars. And the only way to successfully fight terrorist groups is to isolate [them], isolate those groups, within their own societies. And I was in the immediate days after 9/11 assigned to go out to Jersey City and the places where the hijackers had lived and begin to piece together their lives. I was then very soon transferred to Paris, where I covered all of al-Qaida’s operations in the Middle East and Europe.

So I was in the Middle East in the days after 9/11. And we had garnered the empathy of not only most of the world, but the Muslim world who were appalled at what had been done in the name of their religion. And we had major religious figures like Sheikh Tantawi, the head of al-Azhar—who died recently—who after the attacks of 9/11 not only denounced them as a crime against humanity, which they were, but denounced Osama bin Laden as a fraud … someone who had no right to issue fatwas or religious edicts, no religious legitimacy, no religious training. And the tragedy was that if we had the courage to be vulnerable, if we had built on that empathy, we would be far safer and more secure today than we are.

We responded exactly as these terrorist organizations wanted us to respond. They wanted us to speak the language of violence. What were the explosions that hit the World Trade Center, huge explosions and death above a city skyline? It was straight out of Hollywood. When Robert McNamara in 1965 began the massive bombing campaign of North Vietnam, he did it because he said he wanted to “send a message” to the North Vietnamese—a message that left hundreds of thousands of civilians dead.

These groups learned to speak the language we taught them. And our response was to speak in kind. The language of violence, the language of occupation—the occupation of the Middle East, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—has been the best recruiting tool al-Qaida has been handed. If it is correct that Osama bin Laden is dead, then it will spiral upwards with acts of suicidal vengeance. And I expect most probably on American soil. The tragedy of the Middle East is one where we proved incapable of communicating in any other language than the brute and brutal force of empire.

And empire finally, as Thucydides understood, is a disease. As Thucydides wrote, the tyranny that the Athenian empire imposed on others it finally imposed on itself. The disease of empire, according to Thucydides, would finally kill Athenian democracy. And the disease of empire, the disease of nationalism … these of course are mirrored in the anarchic violence of these groups, but one that locks us in a kind of frightening death spiral. So while I certainly fear al-Qaida, I know its intentions. I know how it works. I spent months of my life reconstructing every step Mohamed Atta took. While I don’t in any way minimize their danger, I despair. I despair that we as a country, as Nietzsche understood, have become the monster that we are attempting to fight.

Thank you.

© 2011 TRUTHDIG

TARPLEY.NET– After two weeks of imperialist attack, Libya is being mangled by al Qaeda terrorists, civil war, NATO air raids, cruise missiles, Predator drones, and C-130 gunships – all made possible by the CIA-backed al Qaeda rebels of Cyrenaica. US, British, French, and Dutch commandos have taken leadership of the rebel forces, and are arming them with modern weapons in flagrant violation of the arms embargo specified in UN Security Council resolution 1973. Al Qaeda is also stealing heavy weapons on its own, as the president of Chad has reported. The singing tomorrows of the fatuous US-UK color revolution rhetoric have dissolved, exposing the hideous reality of a brutal, cynical, imperialist drive to destroy the modern nation-state itself.

According to the London Daily Telegraph of March 26, Darna (also transliterated as Derna or Darnah), a key city in the rebel heartland between Benghazi in Tobruk, is commanded by al-Hasidi, an al Qaeda terrorist controller who trained and hobnobbed with Osama bin Laden at the Khost terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. Hasidi boasts of having sent 25 fighters to fight US and NATO forces in Afghanistan; one wonders how many they managed to kill. Hasidi was a US prisoner of war after being captured by the Pakistanis, but tells the Wall Street Journal of April 2 that he now hates the US only “less than 50%” hinting that Americans can redeem themselves by appeasing Al Qaeda with arms, money, political power, and diplomatic support. At his side in the city leadership is Sufian bin Kumu, Osama bin Laden’s chauffeur, another terrorist who was an inmate at Guantánamo Bay for six years. Also among the Darna city fathers is al-Barrani, a devoted member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which merged with Al Qaeda in 2007.

This gaggle of fanatics, psychotics, and criminals is billed by the CIA media as an effective ruling elite for the future democratic governance of Libya. In reality, the Benghazi rebel council, heavily larded with al Qaeda terrorists, could only preside over the descent of the country into a chaos of tribalism, warlords, and criminal syndicates which would spell the end of civilization itself in the area. Precisely this appears to be the goal of US policy, and not just in Libya.

Read more about Al Qaeda: Pawns of CIA Insurrection from Libya to Yemen

© 2011 Tarpley.net

Written by Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D

Photo by flickr user brqnetwork

WASHINGTON POST– Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.

Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.

Commanders are developing plans for increasing the use of such forces in Somalia, where a Special Operations raid last year killed the alleged head of al-Qaeda in East Africa. Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group.

The surge in Special Operations deployments, along with intensified CIA drone attacks in western Pakistan, is the other side of the national security doctrine of global engagement and domestic values President Obama released last week.

One advantage of using “secret” forces for such missions is that they rarely discuss their operations in public. For a Democratic president such as Obama, who is criticized from either side of the political spectrum for too much or too little aggression, the unacknowledged CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, along with unilateral U.S. raids in Somalia and joint operations in Yemen, provide politically useful tools.

Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed “things that the previous administration did not.”

Continue reading about the U.S. ‘secret war’ expanding globally as Special Operations forces take a larger role.

Photo by Flickr user DVIDSHUB

© COPYRIGHT WASHINGTON POST, 2011

RAW STORY– How can a company allegedly responsible for killing 17 unarmed civilians in Baghdad in 2007 continue to get State Department and CIA contracts? CIA Director Leon Panetta says there is “not much choice” because few companies have the capabilities of Blackwater.

“Since I have become director, I have asked our agency to review every contract we have had with Blackwater and whatever their new name is now — Xe — to ensure first and foremost that we have no contract in which they are engaged in any CIA operations. We’re doing our own operations. That’s important that we not contract that out to anybody,” Panetta told ABC’s Jake Tapper Sunday.

“But at the same time I have to tell you that in the war zone, we continue to have needs for security. You’ve got a lot of forward bases. You’ve got a lot of attacks on some of those bases. We’ve got to have security. Unfortunately, there are few companies that provide that kind of security,” Panetta continued.

“State Department relies on them. We rely on them to a certain extent. So, we’ve bid out some of those contracts. They provided a bid that underbid everyone else by about $26 million and a panel that we had said that they can do the job, that they’ve shaped up their act,” he said.

“There was really not much choice but to accept that contract,” said Panetta.

“But having said that, I will tell you that I continue to be very cautious about any of those contracts and we’re reviewing all of the bids that we have with that company,” he concluded.

The CIA recently signed a new $100-million contract with Blackwater to guard its facilities in Afghanistan.

50 TO 100 AL QAEDA IN AFGHANISTAN

Panetta also told ABC’s Jake Tapper that he estimates there are somewhere in the vicinity of 50 to 100 Al Qaeda operatives inside Afghanistan.

“There’s no question that the main location of Al Qaeda is in the tribal areas of Pakistan,” he said.

Faiz Shakir at ThinkProgress notes that, with approximately 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan, that works out to 1,000 troops per Al Qaeda agent.

FEDS WON’T CHARGE BLACKWATER IN ATTEMPT TO BREAK SANCTIONS

The US won’t charge Blackwater over its attempts to secure security contracts in restive southern Sudan, even though the company’s attempts evidently violated sanctions placed on Sudan by the US, McClatchy news service reports.

The effort to drum up new business in East Africa by Blackwater owner Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL who had close ties with top officials in the George W. Bush White House and the CIA, became a major element in a continuing four-year federal investigation into allegations of sanctions violations, illegal exports and bribery.

The Obama administration, however, has decided for now not to bring criminal charges against Blackwater, according to a U.S. official close to the case.

Had the company been indicted, it could have been suspended from doing business with the U.S. government, and a conviction could have brought debarment from all government contracts, including providing guard services for the CIA and State Department in war zones.

© COPYRIGHT RAW STORY, 2010