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

MEDIA ROOTS — RT reported yesterday how Israeli “Mossad intelligence officers posed as CIA agents in order to recruit and train Iranian terrorists…”  This comes after reports surfaced of Obama deploying thousands of troops to Israel in apparent preparation for a potential standoff with Iran. 

Both Israel and its Mossad are funded billions of dollars annually by the U.S. and CIA.  As the U.S. Empire projects its hegemony across the globe under pretext of humanitarian intervention, U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel routinely engage in atrocities and crimes against humanity, revealing the hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy. 

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald wrote about the recent murder of multiple Iranian scientists by “some combination of Israel and the U.S.”  Western forces have a long history of disruptive intervention against Iranian sovereignty, including the CIA coup against Mosaddegh in ’53. 

The current killing of Iranian nuclear scientists in the midst of sanctions, threats, and intimidation against Iran amounts to covert warfare.  Then Obama signs the NDAA provisions, among other things, barring transfer of detainees and insuring Gitmo’s operations bolstering perpetual war.  One detects an overarching theme to Obama’s Presidential leadership and Executive decision-making, namely—imperialism and covert warfare abroad and class warfare domestically.

MR

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RT — The buddy-buddy relationship between American and Israel could falter as it is revealed that Mossad intelligence officers posed as CIA agents in order to recruit and train Iranian terrorists, all unbeknown to US authorities.

American intelligence officials have come clean with details surrounding Israel’s attempt to infiltrate the network of the Iranian terrorist group Jundallah. According to internal memos just released, Washington was initially unaware that agents working for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, were recruiting Iranian terrorists under the guise that they would be hired and trained by the CIA.

The memos that reveal the CIA’s then discovery of the program come from the last year of the George W Bush administration, and it is unsure if such campaigns still exist overseas today. What is known, however, is that Mossad — who is largely funded by the CIA and typically works hand-in-hand with their American counterpart — did not approach American officials for authorization in fronting as US agents in their attempt to infiltrate Jundallah.

“It’s amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with,” an intelligence officer speaking on condition of anonymity tells Foreign Policy’s Mark Perry. “Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn’t give a damn what we thought.”

The account has been confirmed to Foreign Policy by four retired intelligence officers who have either worked with the CIA or in conjunction with Mossad.

Read more about Israeli agents posed as CIA to recruit terrorists.

© 2005-2012 Autonomous Nonprofit Organization ‘TV-Novosti’

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SALON — Several days ago I referenced a controversy that arose in 2007 when the law professor and right-wing blogger Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds criticized President Bush for not doing enough to stop Iran’s nuclear program and then advocated that the U.S. respond by murdering that nation’s religious leaders and nuclear scientists. “We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and Iranian atomic scientists…” he argued. The backlash against Reynolds’ suggestion was intense, especially among progressive writers.

Back then, I wrote about Reynolds’ suggestion several times, but I was far from alone. Law Professor Paul Campos wrote a column in the Rocky Mountain News denouncing Reynolds for publicly advocating “murder,” which, he pointed out, is exactly what this would be given that the U.S. is not at war with Iran (he went on to suggest that targeting civilian religious leaders and scientists would still be murder even if the U.S. were at war with Iran); Campos added: “government-sponsored assassinations of the sort Reynolds is advocating are expressly and unambiguously prohibited by the laws of the United States.” Law Professor Kevin Jon Heller documented with absolute clarity that such assassinations would be illegal in the absence of a formal war.

But the angriest reactions came from progressive bloggers, who widely denounced Reynolds as “contemptible” for suggesting this; one progressive writer, Lindsay Beyerstein, was horrified that one could even suggest such a thing, explaining that she “despair[s] for our society when it’s necessary to supply a rigorous analytical exposition of why our government shouldn’t have scientists and religious leaders whacked.” Scott Lemieux railed against what he called Reynolds’ “kooky scheme for illegal death squads” as “crackpot,” “dumb” and “nuttier than a Planters factory.” And Kevin Drum, then of Washington Monthly, went the furthest of all — in a post he entitled “Terrorism” — branding the killing of Iran’s scientists as “Terrorism”:

I imagine a lot of people agree with [Reynolds], but his recommendation really demonstrates the moral knot caused by George Bush’s insistence that we’re fighting a “war on terror.” After all, killing civilian scientists and civilian leaders, even if you do it quietly, is unquestionably terrorism. That’s certainly what we’d consider it if Hezbollah fighters tried to kill cabinet undersecretaries and planted bombs at the homes of Los Alamos engineers.

If you think Iran is a mortal enemy that needs to be dealt with via military force, you can certainly make that case. But if you’re going to claim that terrorism is a barbaric tactic that has to be stamped out, you can hardly endorse its use by the United States just because it’s convenient in this particular case.

Read more about More murder of Iranian scientists: still terrorism?

© 2012 Salon Media Group, Inc.

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Photo by AP/Fars News Agency, Mehdi Marizad

MEDIA ROOTS- It’s hard to take the government’s talk of “shared sacrifice” amidst our debt crisis and economic hardships seriously, when there isn’t more than a peep about sacrificing dough from the most overfunded department of all: defense. The US government spends half of all taxpayer revenue on war. Yet, instead of acknowledging how the department’s increasingly bloated budget (which has doubled since 2001) might have something to do with the fact that our country is broke, the debt deal is set to mostly make cuts to severely depleted social programs.

Cutting a significant fraction of military spending isn’t even on the table, because of the western world’s blind acceptance to needing a global “war on terrorism.” Therefore, the cost of imperialism trumps the needs of the middle and working class once again.

However, maintaining American hegemony does not just mean strategically occupying resourceful Middle Eastern countries– it also means the funding and training of extensive special operations armies that are currently engaged in over 120 countries in the world, carrying out covert missions such as “assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.” Alternet takes a look at an under reported element of US imperialism that isn’t on too many Americans’ radars: the secret forces that are currently interfering with 120 other countries’ political processes and democratic evolutions– all at the expense of the US taxpayers.

Abby

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ALTERNET– Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission.  Now, say that 70 times and you’re done… for the day.  Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries.  This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed, until now.

After a U.S. Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden’s chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the American military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight.  It was atypical.  While it’s well known that U.S. Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has remained deeply in the shadows.

Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency.  By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120.  “We do a lot of traveling — a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq,” he said recently.  This global presence — in about 60% of the world’s nations and far larger than previously acknowledged — provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

The Rise of the Military’s Secret Military

Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight U.S. service members died, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987.  Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate.  Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions.  Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Army’s “Green Berets” and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialized helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States’ most specialized and secret missions.  These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.

Read more about Our Commando War in 120 Countries: Uncovering the Military’s Secret Operations In the Obama Era.

© 2011 AlterNet

Photo by Flickr user world_armies