Osama’s Legacy
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One of the great outlaw-on-the-dodge stories of all time.
Seven years and near-a-month after the 9/11 attacks, the supposedly-master-brain behind the operation, Osama bin Laden, the Saudi prince of terror, is still floating around out there in the ether, whether he’s kicking up Pakistani daisies or not.
Now he’s one of the most-celebrated celebrities of our time, like it or not, and because Decider George is an inept, creepy-crawler kind of guy, Osama’s countenance has become a poster-model’s ideal — encouraging way-more recruits to enlist in his struggle than that scrab-coated, financially insolent Uncle Sam, stabbing that hard-cut fingernail in US faces.
And in a sordid case of horrible historical irony, Osama cut his fighting teeth, gained his experience and grew in terror-making capabilities under the tutelage of the US while engaged in an Afghan/US proxy war with the old USSR.
(Photo found here).
In the true account of things, Decider George’s so-called legacy is tied directly to Osama’s coattails, and it ain’t pretty.
Poll out today indicates Decider George sucks really, really big time.
From ABC News:
- With the current economic situation, a record 70 percent of Americans disapprove of George W. Bush’s job performance; a career-low 26 percent approve.
Just two presidents have had lower approval (Richard Nixon and Harry Truman) than President Bush, and none has had higher disapproval in polls since 1938.
And even upon Decider George’s warmongering ways.
Last week, another poll indicated US peoples have gone south on the Iraq/Afghan wars and the whole Osama bullshit.
- A new Ipsos/McClatchy online poll finds a solid majority of 57 percent thinking that the country can win the war on terrorism but a similar majority of 54 percent saying that the country is NOT winning it.
…
The survey also found that Americans think by 57-43 percent that Afghanistan is now a more important front in combating terrorists than Iraq.
…
By 66-34 percent, Americans oppose proposals to send more troops to Afghanistan, either redeployed from Iraq or sent from elsewhere.
Rather, Americans favor gradually withdrawing troops from both countries by 74-26 percent.
Among those most in favor of getting out of both countries were women, young people, those who make less than $50,000 a year and Northeasterners.
Finally, given four options, 57 percent said they wanted to gradually withdraw troops from both countries and bring them home, 21 percent want to redeploy some troops now from Iraq to Afghanistan, 12 percent want to keep troop levels the same in Iraq while sending new troops to Afghanistan, and 10 percent want to keep troop levels the same in Iraq until the country is secure and then redeploy them to Afghanistan.
One mixed-up, freakin’ mess.
And the legacy of Osama continues to burn.
Gareth Porter, noted historian and a detailed military investigative journalist, has put together a good description of Decider George’s non-approach to killing or apprehending Osama, but all that oil, and all those empire-dreams were in Iraq.
Maybe the first real-time disaster in the legacy-list of disasters over the past near-eight years.
Decider George and his boys had no plan whatsoever in any form to snag Osama and his boys if they fled Afghanistan into right-there Pakistan.
Although there was a possible military set-up through Pakistan, implementing the operation meant a delay until spring 2002.
Decider George and his boys were too itchy, though, and invaded Afghanistan without a clue — Osama and few of his boys then slipped away and rode into folk history:
- That failure was directly related to the fact that top administration officials gave priority to planning for war with Iraq over military action against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
…
The views of Bush’s key advisers, however, ruled out any such plan from the start.
During the summer of 2001, Rumsfeld had refused to develop contingency plans for military action against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan despite a National Security Presidential Directive adopted at the Deputies’ Committee level in July and by the Principles on Sept. 4 that called for such planning, according to the 9/11 Commission report.
Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz resisted such planning for Afghanistan because they were hoping that the White House would move quickly on military intervention in Iraq. According to the 9/11 Commission, at four deputies’ meetings on Iraq between May 31 and July 26, 2001, Wolfowitz pushed his idea to have U.S. troops seize all the oil fields in southern Iraq.
Even after Sept. 11, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Vice President Dick Cheney continued to resist any military engagement in Afghanistan, because they were hoping for war against Iraq instead.
Porter’s full piece ran today at antiwar.com.
Legacy has a double-edged point.
‘Watching Gidget address the Reichstag’
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Near, so near to conclusion of the extreme-worse of all US presidential administrations, we find ourselves also with a view of the extreme-worse of all presidential candidates — Jackboot John McCain is the most retarded (not PC, we know), shameless incompetent ever to attempt the White House.
(The above pix from bewarethemarketplaceidols).
One gut-clenching, hands-over-face experience is Jackboot John’s heir apparent Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric — whimsical, Gracie Burns-funny while shitting-the-pants scary — all at once.
If Sarah wasn’t on a possible path to the Oval Office, if she was just maybe a freakin’ governor of a state being interviewed on CBS, if a lot of shit…
This entire scenario would then be black-humored, Dr. Strangelove-like-hilarious.
Watch the incredible Tina Fey as Sarah on Saturday night’s SNL via HuffPost here.
And for the real thing: Sarah interviewed by Couric last week (Amy Poehler plays Couric in the above skit) also via HuffPost here.
This evening Couric interviewed Jackboot John and Sarah, together again for the first time — “gotcha journalism” the scapegoat for Sarah’s foreign policy quip about tracking militants into Pakistan.
Jackboot John has got to be the most-dumb-ass man to ever hold himself up for president.
Marc Ambinder’s blog at The Atlantic has a section of convoluted dialogue between the three — Couric finally being a journalist, Sarah following Jackboot John’s interruptions — the whole scene written-out is reminiscent of a parlor-room scene in a freaked-out ‘Father Knows Best‘ episode.
However, it’s hobbed-about that CBS might have more of Katie’s interview with Sarah from the other night, according to the Washington Post, And the worst may be yet to come for Palin; sources say CBS has two more responses on tape that will likely prove embarrassing. (Hat tip to dailykos.)
As was said above with a sitting-on-the-shitter-grimace, Jackboot John’s run for the White House is probably the worse in US history — way-badder than Thomas E. Dewey in 1948, even Michael Dukakis in ’88 — and Sarah is just a horror extension of the McCain presidential campaign.
Sarah is just the obvious lie.
Matt Taibbi, the always-interesting political writer for Rolling Stone, offers up a view of the RNC and Sarah Palin as a reflection of the floating-toward-the-abyss USA — fat, sassy, and from-the-looks-of-it, dumb-ass blind.
- Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States.
As a representative of our political system, she’s a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove.
But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power.
Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she’s the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV — and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way.
All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.
And Sarah’s RNC speech:
- It was a virtuoso performance.
She appeared to be completely without shame and utterly full of shit, awing a room full of hardened reporters with her sickly sweet line about the high-school-flame-turned-hubby who, “five children later” is “still my guy.”
It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.
…
Here’s what Sarah Palin represents: being a fat fucking pig who pins “Country First” buttons on his man titties and chants “U-S-A! U-S-A!” at the top of his lungs while his kids live off credit cards and Saudis buy up all the mortgages in Kansas.
Read Taibbi’s entire shit-knuckled, right-on piece at AlterNet.
When Jackboot John and Sarah’s flippant gotcha on the worsening Afghan/Pakistan crisis is coupled with now-global-domino collapse of the world’s financial markets, the couple appear like a dream — they just can’t be real.
And the shit goes on…
War as ‘Obscene Brutality’
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“[The Iraq war] broke his heart. … It wasn’t until the Iraq war and the end of his life that he became sincerely gloomy.”
– Mark Vonnegut, introduction to “Armageddon in Retrospect,” by Kurt Vonnegut (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008)
All Vonnegut people know he was a POW in Dresden, spinning experience into “Slaughterhouse Five,” a most-anti-war work (probably the best, though, others might argue about “Catch 22,” but of course, that wasn’t Vonnegut).
He died in 2007, and his son, Mark Vonnegut, has since discovered some of dad’s unpublished papers/letters/reflections which eventually bled into just about all of Kurt’s enormous, multi-genre portfolio.
In this particular one, and after being led through 1945 Dresden, we cut to the chase:
- The night they came over, we spent in an underground meat locker in a slaughterhouse.
We were lucky, for it was the best shelter in town.
Giants stalked the earth above us.
First came the soft murmur of their dancing on the outskirts, then the grumbling of their plodding towards us, and finally the ear-splitting crashes of their heels upon us – and thence to the outskirts again.
Back and forth they swept: saturation bombing.
“I screamed and I wept and I clawed the walls of our shelter,” an old lady told me.
“I prayed to God to ‘please, please, please, dear God, stop them’.
But he didn’t hear me.
No power could stop them.
On they came, wave after wave.
There was no way we could surrender; no way to tell them we couldn’t stand it any more.
There was nothing anyone could do but sit and wait for morning.”
Her daughter and grandson were killed.
Read the whole piece — back story and its ‘wink, wink” at timesonline.
While we’re on the subject, let’s NOT change the subject…
Review of Armageddon in Retrospect from New York City’s, The Indypendent:
- “It is these short, pithy, bon mots that gave Vonnegut his shine throughout his writing career and his talents are on luminous display here.
Even after he focused on his art (the sketches in Armageddon deserve a separate review altogether), the wisdom kept flowing as in Confetti #46: “In the U.S.A. it’s winners vs. losers and the fix is on.”
Armageddon can be recommended to all who felt that Vonnegut articulated their frustrations with the world, and to those who haven’t, this is an entertaining gateway book to the rest of his work.”
Some hard-case, dumb-ass general reportedly once said, “War is Hell” — obviously the clown didn’t fully understand obscene brutality as nightmare in a meat locker.
Interestingly Grim Part Deux: ‘This sucker could go down’
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This afternoon, reports surfaced of a little dust-up between US-led forces and Pakistani troops.
Although there’s been no US confirmation, supposedly US and Afghan GIs exchanged fire with Pakistani guards near/on/at the border between the two countries.
From antiwar.com:
- NATO has issued a statement today saying that Pakistan troops opened fire on two helicopters near the Afghan border.
This is the third such incident reported in the past two weeks, with the other two reports involving US helicopters in South Waziristan.
This report is unique, however, in that it did not come from anonymous officials over the denials of their military, but rather was an official statement issued by NATO itself later confirmed by the US military.
…
He (a US military spokesman) insists “they did not cross the border and they did not fire back.”
And this from Reuters via wiredispatch:
- U.S. and Afghan troops exchanged fire with Pakistani forces after they shot at two U.S. helicopters near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border Thursday, a U.S. military official said.
The official with U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, said there were no reports of casualties from the exchange of fire, which lasted about five minutes. U.S. and Afghan forces were about one mile inside Afghanistan at the time, he said.
This is a hard-case spot, this South Waziristan, one of those wild-n-woolly Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) Pakistani must officially maintain only because FATA does as FATA wants, and has done it a long time.
This from Arab News on Monday:
- The border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is 1,640 miles long, much of it virtually inaccessible remote and mountainous, with only the locals able to move freely on goat and footpaths. This is the distance between New York and New Mexico.
It contains the warlike Pashtuns who provide nearly all the Taleban insurgents.
The 25 million Pashtuns are one of the largest tribal groups in the world.
In fact, they are the largest ethnic group without a state of their own.
Pakistani and Afghan government institutions have never been able to gain a foothold in these areas.
Taxes are not paid and outsiders repulsed.
This goes back to the time of Macedonian would-be conqueror Alexander. The British likewise were defeated. So were the Soviets.
The latter killed more than a million Pashtuns and drove three million into exile in Pakistan and Iran and still they were compelled to retreat.
As for post-independence Pakistan, it has never controlled more than 100 meters to the left and right of the few paved roads.
In the wilds, and in Islamabad, the Pakistanis don’t need US help.
- Pakistan on Sunday rejected a U.S. offer to help investigate the weekend suicide bombing that killed at least 53 people and destroyed the Islamabad Marriott, this capital city’s best-known hotel.
“We do not need help. We are competent. We reject it,” Interior Ministry adviser Rehman Malik told reporters Sunday after the U.S. offered FBI help in pursuing the terrorists behind the attack.
The Marriott bombing is the latest in a series of terrorist attacks across Pakistan and will likely intensify debate within the country over Pakistani support for the U.S. war on terror, says Samina Ahmed, South Asia director for the conflict prevention, non-profit International Crisis Group.
As this little South Asian tea pot simmers into boiling, Decider George went all-politics this afternoon drooling after Jackboot John McCain’s bright idea of holding a photo-op at the White House with everybody who’s anybody in this Wall Street bail out craziness.
Jackboot John is one nut-case dude.
The guy is so obvious, one wonders how anyone can take him seriously at all.
This meeting, however, once behind closed doors became a little contentious, with all kinds of egos head-bounced around the room — Jackboot John stood above the draw.
From HuffPost:
- Inside an intense White House meeting over the financial crisis on Thursday, where nearly every key player came to an agreement on the outlines of the bailout package, Sen. John McCain stuck out.
The Republican candidate, according to sources with direct knowledge, sat quiet through most of the meeting, never offered specifics, and spoke only at the end to raise doubts about the rough compromise that the White House and congressional leaders were nearing.
McCain’s reluctance to jump on board the bailout agreement could throw the entire week-long negotiation into a tailspin.
…
According to the source with knowledge of the White House gathering — which featured both presidential candidates, congressional leaders and the President — virtually ever key figure in the room, save McCain and GOP Sen. Richard Shelby, were in agreement over a revised version of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s plan.
Decider George, gifted with a gift of a second asshole for a mouth, blubbered out the truism for the last near-eight years, not only for this current shitfire on Wall Street, but in every segment of his administration.
The HuffPost piece continues:
- Paulson, however, argued directly against the conservative proposal.
“He said that he did not think it would work,” according to the source.
At another point in the meeting, President Bush chimed in, “If money isn’t loosened, this sucker could go down” — and by sucker he meant economy.
Yet ‘sucker’ is everything Decider George has touched, or even thought about touching.
And that’s grim in a real bad way.
Interestingly ‘Grim’
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Amazing how much is going on right now — a mother of a financial meltdown, a most-bizarre presidential election inundated with so much rhetorical, nonsensical bullshit, oil prices acting bi-polar, even global warming is apparently worse than just this past weekend.
- Global warming could rapidly accelerate as millions of tons of methane escape from beneath the Arctic seabed, scientists warned today.
Huge deposits of the greenhouse gas – 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – are rising to the surface as the Arctic region heats up, according to preliminary findings.
Read more of this “ultimate gas leak” here and here.
And the horror! Jackboot John McCain jacked David Letterman for Katie Couric.
Jackboot John instantly needs to save the Republic! — see Letterman’s superbly-funny response via HuffPost and a right-on Top 10 List here.
So in the face of all this grim shit — not including each individual’s own personal emotionally stressful events, like losing the house, job, wife/husband, death and dying, daughter on meth, etc., etc. — the situation in the Middle East is starting to also get grim, especially in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.
And speaking of “grim,” this from ABC News:
- US intelligence analysts are putting the final touches on a secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Afghanistan that reportedly describes the situation as “grim,” but there are “no plans to declassify” any of it before the election, according to one US official familiar with the process.
Officials say a draft of the classified NIE, representing the key judgments of the US intelligence community’s 17 agencies and departments, is being circulated in Washington and a final “coordination meeting” of the agencies involved, under the direction of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is scheduled in the next few weeks.
According to people who have been briefed, the NIE will paint a “grim” picture of the situation in Afghanistan, seven years after the US invaded in an effort to dismantle the al Qaeda network and its Taliban protectors.
Another damn NIE!
Decider George most likely has a sour, hateful feeling for a NIE.
Except maybe for the 2002 version, which has since been shone to be pretty-much bogus, NIEs have caused much public grief for him and his immoral, criminal invasion of Iraq, and how incompetent the White House performed in attempts to correct horrible mistakes.
In the 2004 NIE, the ugly end started, and two years later, the NIE reported the war in Iraq is “breeding” terrorists.
While last year, the 2007 version noted al-Qaeda was stronger and able to do a whole lot of shit, even hitting the ole US homeland, security in place or not.
No surprise the war in Afghanistan is going south, and fast, but it has failing for quite some time, but Decider George has had his head up Saddam’s dead ass in Iraq.
Now the whole shit-boat could be literally blown away.
An interesting twist to the growing Afghan/Pakistan nightmare developing along their common border was the truck-bombing last weekend of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, killing nearly 60 people, including a couple of US citizens.
The suicide bombing of a major gathering spot for foreigners — US Adm. Mike Mullen, top dog of the Joint Chiefs, met with Pakistani military officials there last week.
Defense Secretary Bob Gates stays there; the Czech ambassador to Pakistan lived at the Marriott and unfortunately died in the explosions.
No only is the shared border a dangerous place — more than just insurgent/militant attacks, the tension between the US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan and the Pakistani military has been building to an out-of-control point for some time.
The conflict has spread within instead of without and since now the US wants full control of the Afghan war, the problems will only increase.
Just take the case this week of the mysterious, downed man-less drone.
On Tuesday, the Pakistani military reported a drone had been shot down with wreckage strewn on the ground at the village of Jalal Khel in South Waziristan after circling the area for several hours.
However, yesterday the US military confused the whole incident.
- A U.S. military drone went down in eastern Afghanistan with engine problems Tuesday but was recovered immediately and was never near the Pakistan border, a military spokesman said Wednesday.
…
News of the problem drone coincided with Pakistani reports that a suspected pilotless U.S. drone crashed in northwestern Pakistan near the border village of Angor Adda, where U.S. commandos launched a raid on Sept. 3.
A U.S defense official responded to the reports of a downed drone in Pakistan on Tuesday by saying there were no reports of a missing Pentagon drone.
Wired’s Danger Room blog had this:
- It’s an odd reaction, despite the obvious diplomatic sensitivities.
American officials have confirmed drone crashes in Pakistan before.
Stranger still, Pakistani television ran footage today of wreckage bearing the insignia of “Aeronautical Systems.”
That’s the name American defense contractor General Atomics — the company behind the Predator UAV — used to employ for its drone-making division.
[UPDATED: One of the images shows a piece of wreckage marked "on-board starter unit." Its part number matches the number for the Predator's "on-board starter unit" in a logistics database.]
Danger Room also asks then who owns the drone — maybe Turkey, the UK, Italy?
And why the denial?
The US military in Afghanistan seem as befuddled as Jackboot John.
The attack on the Marriott Hotel, however, is the most interestingly grim aspect of this growing meltdown in US/Pakistan relations.
First reports indicated al-Qaeda was responsible, or some other militant group, but a couple of days later, a different brand was to blame.
- A shadowy group calling itself “Fedayeen of Islam” has claimed responsibility for the deadly bombing of Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel in a telephone call to Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television, the channel said on Monday.
Its correspondent in the Pakistani capital said he received a text message on his mobile phone showing a telephone number, which he called and then heard a recording in which the group admitted launching Saturday’s attack.
The speaker on the recording spoke in English “with a south Asian accent,” he said.
And this from Reuters via wiredispatch:
- The group calling itself Fedayeen Islam (Partisans of Islam) called Arabiya’s correspondent in the Pakistani capital and issued several demands including for Pakistan to stop its cooperation with the United States, Arabiya television said.
The television said the group played a recording to the reporter in which a group spokesman said there had been 250 U.S. marines and NATO officials at the hotel.
Arabiya said the authenticity of the tape could no be verified and the group is not known to have claimed other attacks.
The Czech ambassador and at least three other foreigners were among the 53 people killed in Saturday’s blast, Islamabad’s worst bomb attack.
The bombing wounded 266 people and security officials said it bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda.
And yesterday, another follow-up call:
- A militant group that claimed to be behind the deadly Marriott Hotel bombing in Pakistan’s capital threatened more attacks Wednesday, warning again that Pakistanis should stop cooperating with the United States.
In a cell phone message to reporters, the little known group calling itself “Fedayeen al-Islam” — “Islam commandos” — referred to the owner of the Marriott by name.
“All those who will facilitate Americans and NATO crusaders like (owner Sadruddin) Haswani, they will keep on receiving the blows,” said the message, which was in English.
It was impossible to verify the identity of the group or say whether it was in a position to make good on the threat.
Pakistani officials were not immediately available for comment.
Is it ‘Partisans’ or ‘warriors’ for Islam?
This group, however, has a history spanning back to mid-1940s Tehran, Iran.
According to noted Middle Eastern/South Asian expert and a pioneer in terrorism studies, Martha Crenshaw, this group, originally called Fedayeen-i Isalam, has a strong tendency to an enraged kind of violence to make a point.
The Fedayeen played a part in the free-wheeling, turbulent days in Iran prior to the arrival of Mohmmed Reza Pahlavi, the dreaded Shah, in 1953.
From Crenshaw’s 1995 book, Terrorism in Context (page 561):
- “During this period Islamic fundamentalism became to grow in influence throughout the country.
Most notable among fundamentalist groups, from the perspective of terrorist activities, Fedayeen-i Isalam, which was founded in 1946 by a twenty-two-year-old theology student in Tehran named Sayyid Navab Safavi.
…
Their significance lies in the fact that as an avowedly terrorist group their activities became part of the mainstream of Iranian political life.
That is, terrorism became a common and “normal” facet of political expression in Iran.
Fedayeen, Crenshaw says, practically disappeared as it became increasingly isolated in the early 1950s within Iran’s political power struggles when people realized these guys were just too violent, and too, in trying for retribution, Fedayeen itself came to understand “that they could not kill everybody…” (page 563).
The boys seem to be back, however, and back with a bang.
Interestingly grim the future of just about everything.
‘Yes, you are the biggest asshole I have ever met’
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UPDATE: This now Tuesday evening and it might appear the story posted below might/might-not be bogus.
Interesting tale to it.
Link to counterpunch.org listed below has been broken.
The story now can be found here.
The story seems true to me — fits Jackboot John’s real-life profile of nasty-mouth asshole that’s been published in the mainstream press — and maybe I wanted to believe it as just another, though seemingly worse, example of the senator’s way of life.
***
This is a must-read for all US peoples.
Jackboot John McCain is and has been an asshole all his entire, worthless life.
At counterpunch.org, Anasuya Dubey, a clinical psychologist from California, recalls a vacation from the outer banks of hell all because Jackboot John was there.
The recollection ran this morning and you can read the entire piece here.
One great, deciding graph, however:
- My final encounter with McCain was on the morning that he was leaving Turtle Island.
Amy and I were happily eating pancakes when McCain arrived and told Amy that she shouldn’t be having pancakes because she needed to lose weight.
Amy burst into tears at this abusive comment.
I felt fiercely protective of Amy and immediately turned to McCain and told him to leave her alone.
He became very angry and abusive towards me, and said “don’t you know who I am” and I looked him in the face and said “yes, you are the biggest asshole I have ever met” and headed back to my cabin.
I am happy to say that later that day when I arrived at lunch I was given a standing ovation by all the guests for having stood up to McCain’s bullying.
The US, the World, is in for some real, bad shit if Jackboot John makes the White House.
Winning Fantasy — Again
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In the wake of the bombing of Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel — killing from 53 to 60 people, depending on the news outlet — the crisis in making war in Afghanistan comes under a deeper blanket of loss, a war that in the end will be un-winnable.
Today, US helicopters were fired on again — the second time in less than a week — at the Afghan/Pakistan border, making the stilted effort at fighting the Taliban/al-Qaeda even much more dense.
And the end is — Loser!
History repeats itself in the lovely wilds of Afghanistan.
UK’s Robert Fisk pens a good look at the status of the Afghan war and how the US-led coalition there is doomed to failure.
Fisk’s commentary ran Saturday in UK’s The Independent and brings together the loose strings in Afghanistan which will in the end cause a strangle hold on US intentions there.
History knows what is on the road ahead despite the looniness of more is less.
A couple of snippets:
- We, of course, have been peddling this crackpot nonsense for years in south-west Asia.
First of all, back in 2001, we won the war in Afghanistan by overthrowing the Taliban.
Then we marched off to win the war in Iraq.
Now – with at least one suicide bombing a day and the nation carved up into mutually antagonistic sectarian enclaves – we have won the war in Iraq and are heading back to re-win the war in Afghanistan where the Taliban, so thoroughly trounced by our chaps seven years ago, have proved their moral and political bankruptcy by recapturing half the country.
It seems an age since Donald “Stuff Happens” Rumsfeld declared, “A government has been put in place (in Afghanistan), and the Islamists are no more the law in Kabul. Of course, from time to time a hand grenade, a mortar explodes – but in New York and in San Francisco, victims also fall. As for me, I’m full of hope.”
Oddly, back in the Eighties, I heard exactly the same from a Soviet general at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan – yes, the very same Bagram airbase where the CIA lads tortured to death a few of the Afghans who escaped the earlier Russian massacres.
Only “terrorist remnants” remained in the Afghan mountains, the jolly Russian general assured us. Afghan troops, along with the limited Soviet “intervention” forces, were restoring peace to democratic Afghanistan.
…
And Obama and McCain really think they’re going to win in Afghanistan – before, I suppose, rushing their soldiers back to Iraq when the Baghdad government collapses.
What the British couldn’t do in the 19th century and what the Russians couldn’t do at the end of the 20th century, we’re going to achieve at the start of the 21 century, taking our terrible war into nuclear-armed Pakistan just for good measure.
Fantasy again.
Joseph Conrad, who understood the powerlessness of powerful nations, would surely have made something of this.
Yes, we have lost after we won in Afghanistan and now we will lose as we try to win again.
Stuff happens.
Read Fisk’s whole piece here.
What happens when fantasy meets facts?
Another Afghan ‘Mistake’
Filed Under Just Plain War, Musings | Leave a Comment
Just when it was thought to be safe to venture over to a relative’s house in Afghanistan:
- An Afghan district governor and two of his bodyguards have been killed by mistake in a Nato raid on a house in Uruzgan province, police say.
Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, expressed sorrow over the killing, which he called a “misunderstanding,” and said the district chief, Rozi Khan, was his close associate.
Khan was allegedly killed on Wednesday when he went to the aid of a friend who had called for help believing the Taliban had surrounded his home, Uruzgan police chief, Gulab Khan, said.
The forces outside the man’s home were however international troops, who in turn mistook the governor and his men for Taliban fighters, Gulab Khan said.
And while Adm. Mike Mullen, big cheese of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Pakistan Tuesday to piece together a plan with the Pakistani military to coordinate US-led strikes into their country, and mainly to soothe rumpled Pakistan egos, a couple of US unmanned drones struck at the South Waziristan Agency, near the Afghan border — scene of several major military ‘incidents’ in the last few weeks — and killed seven people.
- And while negative reactions from Pakistan’s government and military are nothing new the latest attack, coming as it did just hours after Admiral Mullen promised that the US would respect Pakistan’s sovereignty, has further undermined American credibility in the nation.
Pakistani Defense Minister Ahmad Mukthar said Admiral Mullen had appeared “very understanding” during their meeting, and that the latest air strikes “have come as a surprise.”
‘Surprise‘ might be an understatement of a word.
Peoples of the world must come to understand the US lies — and tortures, and will invade your ass if you don’t do as they say, and they will lie to you face-to-face so you will have a ‘surprise’ — even when they don’t have to, but it’s political, so world don’t take it personally.
Yet, a certain part of the world knows Decider George and all his dark, ugly misadventures the past near-eight years, and the world takes a collective shudder at though of Jackboot John McCain slowly dying in the Oval Office.
The BBC reported this morning:
- Pakistan was not warned about a suspected US missile strike in the north-west on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said.
Such attacks were “counter-productive” and reflected an “institutional disconnect” on the US side, he said.
…
Last week, it emerged in Washington that President George Bush had authorised cross-border attacks by US troops based in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s army has warned that the aggressive US policy will widen the insurgency by uniting the tribesmen with the Taleban.
Not only is there an “institutional disconnect,” Mr. Qureshi, the US military is now just lobbing rockets at a particular spot and see what happens.
Yesterday, CIA chief Michael Hayden, another Mullen-like liar, at an Air Force Association conference let drop some hints about the hi-tech bullshit now employed in the Wide World War on Terror.
And from the great Danger Room blog at wired.com:
- “Today, we routinely use kinetic force [bombs-and-bullets attacks] not just for its own effect, but to create a response that will allow us to collect more intelligence. We use military operations to excite the enemy, prompting him to respond,” Hayden said.
“We create and benefit from a highly virtuous cycle: Operations generate opportunities to learn more about the enemy, the intelligence gained creates opportunities for follow-on operations, and so on.”
And so it goes…
Tora Bora Blowback
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As the nation seemingly ponders the application of lipstick on various barnyard animals and the financial IED on Wall Street, long-simmering Afghanistan has finally boiled over onto Pakistan.
Near seven years ago, this little conflict was indeed a “slam dunk” win — the original Taliban routed, Osama and a few of his boys corralled in the Tora Bora Mountains –all this in just a few short weeks of work by a fired-up, muscle-flexed US military working really without much of a clue.
After a horrific sidebar in Iraq for more than five years, draining US peoples and treasure, Afghan shit is ready to hit the old fan.
Military operations in Afghanistan are coming apart at the seams, and despite what Barack Obama and Jackboot John McCain blubber, no amount of additional troops — another “surge” Afghan style, if you will — sent to the region will help.
A case of even more troops too late.
Today Defense Secretary Bob Gates was in Kabul attempting a ‘I’m sorry’ pitch for the US-led coalition’s slaughter of civilians.
- Mr. Gates accepted a proposal from Afghan officials to establish a permanent joint investigative group to determine the facts surrounding civilian casualties more quickly. And he pledged that even before all the facts are known, the United States would apologize for civilian casualties and offer compensation to survivors.
“I think the key for us is, on those rare occasions when we do make a mistake, when there is an error, to apologize quickly, to compensate the victims quickly, and then carry out the investigation,” Mr. Gates said, speaking after meeting with President Hamid Karzai here.
However, Bob just couldn’t let it go.
- “While no military has ever done more to prevent civilian casualties, it is clear that we have to work even harder,” Mr. Gates said.
Hey, Bob, you’re full of shit.
Only just yesterday did senior American military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan, said rules for air operations would be “tightened” in an effort to reduce civilian casualties.
Too little, too late.
The UN says that from January to August this year, 1,445 civilians were killed — a rise of 39 percent from the same period in 2007.
Last week, Human Watch released a 43-page report, “Troops in Contact: Airstrikes and Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan,” and the bottom line is air power has its limits.
And the limit is reaction — planned airstrikes had less “collateral damage” than unplanned ones.
Duh!
As the Afghan war degenerated, attacks from a much-more vicious and sophisticated Taliban, with help by a resurgent al-Qaeda, became overwhelming, the tendency/panic response was for GIs to call in air support — termed ‘rapid-response airstrike.’
Capt. Dan‘s plea — but a lot of women, children die in the process.
The US should have some compassion, the report reported.
- “Rapid response airstrikes have meant higher civilian casualties, while every bomb dropped in populated areas amplifies the chance of a mistake,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
“Mistakes by the US and NATO have dramatically decreased public support for the Afghan government and the presence of international forces providing security to Afghans.”
…
Human Rights Watch criticized the poor response by US officials when civilian deaths occur.
Prior to conducting investigations into airstrikes causing civilian loss, US officials often immediately deny responsibility for civilian deaths or place all blame on the Taliban.
US investigations conducted have been unilateral, ponderous, and lacking in transparency, undercutting rather than improving relations with local populations and the Afghan government.
A faulty condolence payment system has not provided timely and adequate compensation to assist civilians harmed by US actions.
“The US needs to end the mistakes that are killing so many civilians,” said Adams. “The US must also take responsibility, including by providing timely compensation, when its airstrikes kill Afghan civilians. While Taliban shielding is a factor in some civilian deaths, the US shouldn’t use this as an excuse when it could have taken better precautions.
It is, after all, its bombs that are doing the killing.”
And the seething vapor from the Afghan pot is burning Pakistan.
Decider George in his deep-as-a-well wisdom had secretly ordered last July that it’d be Okay if US troops chased down those Taliban/al-Qaeda/terrorists/militants, whatever, into Pakistan.
Although apparently (hopefully) the jackass did get some kind of approval from the Pakistani military for those hot pursuits, so to speak, but the orders didn’t make it down to the ground level.
Monday morning some US choppers were fired upon by some supposedly Pakistani soldiers during a raid similiar to another operation that went bad earlier this month.
The choppers were forced to return back into Afghanistan.
According to Reuters via WireDispatch:
- The incident took place near Angor Adda, a village in the tribal region of South Waziristan where U.S. commandos in helicopters raided a suspected al Qaeda and Taliban camp earlier this month.
“The U.S. choppers came into Pakistan by just 100 to 150 metres at Angor Adda.
Even then our troops did not spare them, opened fire on them and they turned away,” said one security official.
The U.S. and Pakistani military both denied that account, but Angor Adda villagers and officials supported it.
…
One official told Reuters by telephone that “the troops stationed at BP-27 post fired at the choppers and they turned away”.
Two Chinook helicopters appeared set to land when troops began shooting, alerting tribesmen who also opened fire on the intruders, said a senior government official in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province.
A resident described the tension in the village through the night.
“We saw helicopters flying all over the area. We stayed awake the whole night after the incident,” he said.
The fiercely independent tribesmen of the region carry weapons regardless of whether they are militants.
And also yesterday came reports the Pakistani military will indeed start shooting at NATO troops skirmishing across the Afghan border into Pakistan — creating another conflict hotspot in a nation of hotspots.
- General Athar Abbas, an army spokesman, told the Associated Press that after a cross-border assault in the south Waziristan region earlier this month, the military told its field commanders to take action to prevent any similar raids.
“The orders are clear,” Abbas said in an interview. “In case it happens again in this form, that there is a very significant detection, which is very definite, no ambiguity, across the border, on ground or in the air: open fire.”
The remarks mark a sharp deterioration in military relations between the US and Pakistan, which have been close allies in the “war on terror” since the September 11 attacks seven years ago.
…
As the US steps up its military activity in the sensitive tribal area, Pakistani officials have warned that an increase in cross-border raids will achieve little and fuel the insurgency in Pakistan. Some complain that the country is being made a scapegoat for the failure to stabilise Afghanistan.
These orders apparently come from the top as Pakistan proclaimed its right/ability to handle the militants gathering, fighting and controlling the western provinces.
- Acting President Dr Fehmida Mirza on Sunday said Pakistan would resolve the problem of militancy on its own, adding that the government was committed to safeguard the sovereignty and geographical frontiers of the country.
She was talking to journalists after addressing a ceremony at the Frontier House here to distribute cheques among the displaced people of Bajaur Agency.
Dr Fehmida Mirza said, “Our security forces are effectively combating militancy and there is no need of any foreign force to fight terrorism in our country.”
Yeah right.
While Gates tried to apologize in Kabul, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Pakistan on Tuesday in an attempt to defuse all this bluster/fuck-up on the conduct of the mishandled, mucked-up Afghan war — those nasty border problems.
Which means interal strife for Pakistan.
Writer, journalist, filmmaker Tariq Ali has a good view of the impact of these US-related incidents at tomdispatch.
A couple of snippets:
- Its effects on Pakistan could be catastrophic, creating a severe crisis within the army and in the country at large.
The overwhelming majority of Pakistanis are opposed to the U.S. presence in the region, viewing it as the most serious threat to peace.
…
The neo-Taliban now control at least twenty Afghan districts in Kandahar, Helmand, and Uruzgan provinces.
It is hardly a secret that many officials in these zones are closet supporters of the guerrilla fighters.
Though often characterized as a rural jacquerie they have won significant support in southern towns and they even led a Tet-style offensive in Kandahar in 2006.
Elsewhere, mullahs who had initially supported President Karzai’s allies are now railing against the foreigners and the government in Kabul.
For the first time, calls for jihad against the occupation are even being heard in the non-Pashtun northeast border provinces of Takhar and Badakhshan.
What a complicated mess effecting an entire region.
And all because Decider George only had eyes for Baghdad.
Therefore, we return to December 2001 and those beautiful, but villainous Tora Bora Mountains.
Osama bin Laden, the supposed master-chef of the 9/11 attacks, had retreated into the mountain’s bowels to escape the oncoming US troops and its Afghan allies — those many anti-Taliban factions that cared not much for jihad.
Veteran Middle East correspondent Mary Ann Weaver covered those days in an interesting, finely-researched article, which ran Sept. 11, 2005, in the New York Times Magazine.
A long piece, though, well worth the full read and can be found here.
Weaver paints a frenzied, byzantine-like situation in Afghanistan in late 2001 as saturation bombing began to mash Osama out of the mountains, but the only thing that really happened was hundreds of civilians died:
- And yet, one American intelligence official told me recently, if any one thing distinguished Osama bin Laden on that cold December day, it was the fact that the 44-year-old Saudi multimillionaire appeared to be supremely confident.
…
One evening earlier this summer, I asked Masood Farivar, a former Khalis officer who had fought in Tora Bora during the jihad, to tell me why the caves were so important.
“They’re rugged, formidable and isolated,” he said.
“If you know them, you can come and go with ease.
But if you don’t, they’re a labyrinth that you can’t penetrate.
They rise in some places to 14,000 feet, and for 10 years the Soviets pummeled them with everything they had, but to absolutely no avail.
Another reason they’re so important is their proximity to the border and to Pakistan” – less than 20 miles away.
Osama and some of his boys got away, all to return and fight another day.
And that day was today as the U.S. embassy in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a was attacked and although at least 16 people were killed, no US personnel.
State Department spokesman said the incident “bears all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda attack.”
A memory reaction from August 1998 and the al-Qaeda bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Does the US military ever learn?
Osama will never die, even if he’s been dead the last three years.
Sarah’s Surge to War
Filed Under Musings, Orwellian, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
As the absolute horror of Jackboot John McCain sitting in the Oval office becomes much-more intense with each passing white-collar lipstick smear the real repugnance lies in death and killing and suffering from the Tigris and Euphrates to the south Texas coastline.
And what about his Number One?
Earmark Sarah Palin will be worse than Jackboot John — and that’s a shitload of worse.
Earmark Sarah’s surge into the public eyeball is a perfect example of artificial bullshit gorged into a tight-fitting gloved fist.
Listening to Enigma‘s sweet, Return to Innocence, makes one almost cry at the very thought of the affright of US peoples if Jackboot John makes the White House, then freakin’ croaks.
Jackboot John hasn’t a clue to what’s happening in Iraq, blubbering about the “surge” and “victory” with Earmark Sarah proclaiming going into Iraq was part-n-parcel a “task that is from God.”
See the Sarah war gospel here.
She’d even go after Russia.
And she herself gushed forth with the oldest Decider George lie — linked Iraq to 9/11.
Anyone with any sense and serious about the Constitution will see through Earmark Sarah, but the fear is there are way-too many US peoples out there lacking much sense.
Even the Middle East peoples are scared of the Jackboot/Earmark White House.
- While talking heads have said they did not expect either administration to be more sympathetic to the Arab and Muslim causes, many are now saying that Obama would be the “lesser of two evils,” after having endured a George W. Bush administration that has launched an undefined and indefinite “war on terror” that is raging in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.
And what’s really going on in Iraq?
There’s no surge happening now, the country seems to be sliding back into oblivion without anyone knowing or caring, except maybe the Iraqi peoples.
People who have been following Iraq closely know the so-called “surge” alone didn’t bring down the violence this past year from being way-obscene to just horrifying nowadays.
Several factors — Sunni Awakening, Sadr ceased rabble-rousing, and according to Bob Woodward, assassinations — put together aided in reducing the Iraq carnage.
And even with the “surge” as a military operation being completed, there’s still more US GIs in Iraq than before the tactic was even started — the situation there is shit-on-a-stick.
The best journalist on the job in Iraq is UK guy Patrick Cockburn (see a neat interview video of Cockburn here), who has always been a step ahead of the pack in providing the real skinny on the shit in Iraq.
Cockburn says the surge was highly overblown and, too, if Jackboot John is elected in less than two months, the real-bad shit could spring up, again.
Perception of Sarah Palin’s surge has clouded the perception of what’s really happening in Iraq.
From Cockburn’s piece Sunday in the UK’s Independent:
- The perception in the US that the tide has turned in Iraq is in part because of a change in the attitude of the foreign, largely American, media.
The war in Iraq has now been going on for five years, longer than the First World War, and the world is bored with it.
US television networks maintain expensive bureaux in Baghdad, but little of what they produce gets on the air.
When it does, viewers turn off. US newspaper bureaux are being cut in size.
The result of all this is that the American voter hears less of violence in Iraq and can suppose that America’s military adventure there is finally coming good.
…
If McCain wins the presidential election in November, his lack of understanding of what is happening in Iraq could ignite a fresh conflict.
In so far as the surge has achieved military success, it is because it implicitly recognises America’s political defeat in Iraq.
Whatever the reason for President George Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein in 2003, it was not to place the Shia Islamic parties in power and increase the influence of Iran in the country; yet that is exactly what has happened.
…
General Petraeus has had a measure of success in Iraq less because of his military skills than because he was one of the few American leaders to have some understanding of Iraqi politics.
In January 2004, when he was commander of the 101st Airborne Division in Mosul, I asked him what was the most important piece of advice he could give to his successor.
He said it was “not to align too closely with one ethnic group, political party, tribe, religious group or social element”.
But today the US has no alternative but to support Mr Maliki and his Shia government, and to wink at the role of Iran in Iraq.
If McCain supposes the US has won a military victory, and as president acts as if this were true, then he is laying the groundwork for a new war.
Surge to the polls all you US peoples.
An extremely important election this year — might be the most-important yet.
Lift Hi The Voices
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A wonderful, ‘The Office’ cut of politics tempered with song.
See one of the best and most-different of a Obama video here.
Politics can be so BAD!
Wake-Up Call Plus Seven
Filed Under Orwellian, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
As I drove my oldest daughter to work Monday, Sept. 10, 2001, we discussed her upcoming marriage to a guy then in the Navy stationed in Virginia.
She was concerned about his safety being in the military service.
Even after seven years, I remember the reply: “He’ll be okay, he’ll be fine — unless there’s a war.”
Less than 24 hours later, there was indeed a war.
Now today 84 months later, plus a day, my daughter’s marriage has ended (lasted less than five tumultuous years), but that before-mentioned war is still booming, booming away.
Nasty day, that day, Sept. 11, 2001, but what has happened since might even be worse.
The attacks were a giant emotional bang, and not just for US peoples, but the world over.
Even the Iranians offered condolences, the-then President Hojatoleslam Mohammad Khatami saying “I condemn the terrorist operations of hijacking and attacking public places in American cities, which have resulted in the death of a large number of defenseless American people.”
And PTSD may not be just for combat veterans.
Yesterday it was reported the 9/11 attacks more than just jarred a lot of people:
- New data from a public health registry that tracks the health effects of 9/11 suggest that as many as 70,000 people may have developed post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the terrorist attacks.
The estimate, released Wednesday by New York City’s Department of Health, is based on an analysis of the health of 71,437 people who enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Registry.
They agreed to be tracked for up to 20 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and the study was based on answers they volunteered about their health two and three years after the attack.
Decider George’s antics have cost the US and world a great deal.
Arrogant incompetence fused with a delusional world view has created an even more dangerous environment than prior to the WTC, Pentagon and Flight 93 horrors.
The last seven years — in excited words of Jon Stewart — has been nothing more than one giant clusterfuck.
First this from Reuters this week via WireDispatch:
- “I’m not convinced we are winning it in Afghanistan. I am convinced we can,” Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in sobering testimony before the House Armed Services Committee nearly seven years after U.S.-led forces toppled Afghanistan’s former Taliban regime following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mullen said he was already “looking at a new, more comprehensive strategy for the region” that would cover both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
And this today in ArmyTimes:
- Afghanistan was the launching pad for al-Qaida’s terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
In response, U.S. forces invaded in October 2001 and drove the Taliban out of power in a matter of weeks.
Once derided as a ragtag insurgency after the fall of their regime, Taliban fighters have transformed into a fighting force advanced enough to mount massive conventional attacks.
Suicide and roadside bombs have turned bigger and deadlier than ever.
An excellent comment/wrap-up of the past seven years (or more) by Muhammad Cohen appeared this morning at Asia Times Online.
The gist is an overview of the before-mentioned clusterfuck.
A couple of snippets:
- But when they entered office, the Bush people downgraded the Clinton administration’s fight against al-Qaeda that included cruise missile attacks on targets in Somalia and Afghanistan.
The Bush people demoted the chief counter-terrorism adviser to the National Security Council. Condoleezza Rice, and reportedly George W Bush, saw the August 2001 national security briefing memorandum entitled “Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States” and dismissed it.
“It wasn’t something that we felt we needed to do anything about,” Rice told the 9/11 Commission.
So America got hit again, in the very same spot where al-Qaeda first struck.
Remember that old expression: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
…
The Iraq invasion distracted the US military and the world from the real fight against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
It also pre-empted providing Afghanistan with the political and infrastructure foundations needed to create a modern nation.
Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden remains at large, and al-Qaeda has orchestrated attacks on London, Madrid and beyond that have taken hundreds of lives.
Cohen’s piece is worth a full read and can also be found here.
What the shit happened?
Decider George switched commodes that’s what happened.
In late fall 2001, the war president changed wars.
In one of Bob Woodward‘s earlier Decider George books, “Plan of Attack” in 2004, it was revealed the move started toward the ultimate of all ultimate goals: Iraq.
Of course, without finishing up in Afghanistan first:
- On Nov. 21, 2001, 72 days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush directed Rumsfeld to begin planning for war with Iraq.
“Let’s get started on this,” Bush recalled saying.
“And get Tommy Franks looking at what it would take to protect America by removing Saddam Hussein if we have to.”
He also asked: Could this be done on a basis that would not be terribly noticeable?
And what did Tommy have to say about that shit?
- “They were in the midst of one war in Afghanistan, and now they wanted detailed planning for another? G–damn. What the f–k are they talking about?”
Jackboot John McCain was right there about the same time hollering his lying ass off:
- Within a month he made clear his priority.
“Very obviously Iraq is the first country,” he declared on CNN.
By Jan. 2, Mr. McCain was on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea, yelling to a crowd of sailors and airmen: “Next up, Baghdad!”
If Jackboot John and Earmark Sarah are elected in November — the mother of all clusterfucks.
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