Tag: Military

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States Put at Risk from Bush Rip-off

Trish

How is the Bush government providing equipment for its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan? Why, stealing it from the states of course.

What I want to know is where the billions of dollars of emergency appropriations for “the troops” have gone.

Florida has about 600 to 700 soldiers in Iraq. Members were sent overseas with their equipment, but when they come back, the gear often stays in the war zones.

The Florida Guard was down 500 Humvees and 600 trucks, short 4,000 pairs of night vision goggle and needed 30 more wreckers, spokesman Lt. Col. Ron Tittle said…

The Florida National Guard has only 53 percent of the dual-use equipment it once had for responding to a storm or domestic disturbance, a recent analysis by the Government Accountability Office found. Texas, California and Louisiana also have about half of their dual-use equipment available to non-deployed Army National Guard forces.

In light of the pilfering, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) is worried about the Guard’s ability to respond to stateside disasters.

“Problems from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the Florida National Guard further than ever before, leaving it without all the resources it should have for responding to a domestic crisis,” Nelson said. “Hurricane season is coming fast and we need to make sure the Guard has what it needs.”

The Guard is being a good soldier and saying it will be O.K.

…Tittle said sufficient manpower and equipment remained to respond to a major hurricane, and additional supplies could be borrowed from other states or rented if needed.

Rented? In the devastation, flooding, power outages, and chaos of a major storm, we’ll just trot off to the nearest open Rent-All and come back with a generator or a backhoe? I’m not seeing it.

What I want to know is where the billions of dollars of emergency appropriations for “the troops” have gone. I would not be surprised to hear that government equipment ended up in the hands of the private contractors in Iraq, or that fistfuls of that emergency money went there too.

Nothing to Fear But the War on Terror

Jon Ponder

The timing of the Sept. 11 terror attacks couldn’t have been better for al Qaeda and worse for us. When they launched the attacks, Osama Bin Laden and his henchmen were probably not aware that a radical coalition of neo-cons and Christian nationalists had gained control of the United States government — just as most Americans were not aware of the true natures of Dick Cheney, George Bush and the cabal that surrounded them.

A normal president would have rallied the public to conquer their fears and shoulder on after such a horrendous attack.

A normal president would have rallied the public to conquer their fears and shoulder on after such a horrendous attack — as people have done in Britain, Israel and other places for decades. But this group of radicals operating out of the White House did the opposite.

Using carefully crafted rhetoric (and even a color-coded chart), they instilled a fear of terror in the public and then used it as a throttle to ratchet public paranoia up and down to suit their own politicals needs. The most dastardly bit of messagemeistering in this, however, was the way they aggrandized the attackers, raising them in stature from the ideological gang of street thugs that they are to warrior priests and adversaries worthy of the United States and its “global war on terror,” which they are not.

Here’s Zbig today in the Post:

The “war on terror” has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration’s elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America’s psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.

The Bush cabal could not have succeeded without a propaganda tool like the fear of terror. Bush could not have won reelection without his ability to terrorize voters — gay bashing would not have been enough on its own.

The attacks worked out so perfectly for them that it’s easy to see why some people believe 9/11 was an inside job. (It wasn’t.The Bushies are operationally incompetent and could never pull off such an elaborate fake.)

If our grandparents had been as easily terrified in the 1930s as Republicans are today, they would have watched in horrified silence while the Germans conquered Europe, and hidden under their beds when they came after us.

We need national leaders who call on us to be both brave and smart in combating terror. Using the military to fight terrorism, as I have said before, is like using a chainsaw to perform an appendectomy. The British army did not stop the Irish terrorists after decades of attacks, just as the Israeli army will never stop the terrorist attacks from Palestinian insurgents.

Stopping terrorism requires starts with street-level intelligence and a population on alert, but it also will require understanding the enemy in all its dimensions, not the cartoon characters presented to us now.

Breaking News: George Bush Joins Navy Intelligence

Buck Banks

It’s no joke: George P. Bush, our president’s nephew who made a big splash at the Repug national convention, has joined the U.S. Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer, according to The Politico.

Bush, 30, said in a telephone interview from his office at a real estate development firm in Fort Worth, Texas, that he was moved to join the service in part when he attended the rainy commissioning in October of the aircraft carrier named for his grandfather — the USS George H.W. Bush.

“My grandfather’s my hero, and what really sold me on the ultimate decision was having the chance to see the CVN-77 be commissioned under his name,” he said. “That was pretty moving, and I had a chance to meet some Navy admirals, as well. I had a chance to talk to them briefly about the opportunity, and I was won over.”

George Prescott Bush, the oldest son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, said the death of Pat Tillman, the NFL player and Army Ranger who was killed in Afghanistan in 2004 in what was later determined to be a friendly-fire incident, “was a wake-up call for me.” He said he even “looked into active duty” and had somber conversations with his wife about the possibility.

Bush said he had not intended to announce his plans. “Honestly, I’m kind of a little disappointed that the word got out,” he said. “I was hoping to keep this as confidential as possible. I’m not doing it for political purposes or anything along those lines. I’m just doing it because I’ve been inspired by the friends of mine that have served, either through the JAG (military law) program or through the Reserves. I thought this was a small way that I could get involved.”

Hawaiian Rep Calls Bush Emergency Iraq Budget “Baloney”

Trish

U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D — Hawaii), has given us talking points for when Republicans start claiming Democrats are the bad guys by refusing to keep up Bush’s sham emergency funding of his wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan. Abercromie is chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces, and he’s followed the money trail.

Some of the so-called emergency replacement items in the 2007 request won’t even be available until 2010 or later

The Bush administration has asked Congress to approve $93.4 billion in emergency funding for Iraq and Afghanistan for the rest of 2007 and another $141.7 billion for next year. This, on top of a proposed 2008 defense budget of $481.4 billion.

Please note that the two supplemental appropriations requests are termed “emergency,” which ought to mean unexpected or unpredictable costs. But the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been funded through emergency spending requests since they began. …

Why is a supplemental request the budget vehicle of choice? Because as an emergency measure, it doesn’t count against the budget ceiling that Congress adopts to guide spending, and therefore isn’t figured into government estimates of our annual budget deficit. So, for the last four years, these emergency spending bills have helped President Bush obscure the true cost of the war.

As “emergency” legislation, these supplemental requests don’t get the same scrutiny as regular annual appropriation bills. In fact, for the last five years, there’s been heavy pressure from the administration and the Republican majority in Congress to approve them quickly and without argument. Those who have opposed, or even questioned, any part have been accused of “not supporting our troops.”

The Bush administration is already saying that if it doesn’t get everything it wants — or if Congress adds requirements for troop readiness or demands for protective equipment — our men and women in combat will run out of bullets or be left stranded in the desert.

Baloney.

[…]

Gen. Clark: Pentagon Conquest Plans in 2002 Included Iraq, Iran and Five Other Countries

Jon Ponder

I remember hearing Gen. Wesley Clark tell this story during the 2004 campaign. Here’s the transcript from Amy Goodman’s show, Democracy Now, from today:

“This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see a replay in what happened in the lead-up to the war with Iraq — the allegations of the weapons of mass destruction, the media leaping onto the bandwagon?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, in a way. But, you know, history doesn’t repeat itself exactly twice. What I did warn about when I testified in front of Congress in 2002, I said if you want to worry about a state, it shouldn’t be Iraq, it should be Iran. But this government, our administration, wanted to worry about Iraq, not Iran.

I knew why, because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in.

He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.”

I said, “Well, you’re too busy.”

He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September.

I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?”

He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.”

So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?”

He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments.” And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?”

And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”

I said, “Is it classified?”

He said, “Yes, sir.”

I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?”

He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”

Report: Iran War Is Set to Start Now, But Resistance Has Given Bush ‘Weak Knees’

Jon Ponder

Apocalypse now: New reporting by Robert Parry on the behind-the-scenes battle between Pres. Bush and the U.S. military’s top generals picks up where the Seymour Hersh’s story in the New Yorker leaves off — painting a picture of a what amounts to a quiet military coup at the very top ranks of the Pentagon against the neocon cabal at the White House.

Resistance from the Pentagon, Blair and even Democrats in Congress appears to be having an effect on Bush’s decision-making. He had planned to launch an attack on Iran, possibly as early as this week, but was getting “weak knees.”

The nation’s top brass are convinced that attacking Iran would yield calamitous results, and yet the White House — under the sway of the neocons and Vice Pres. Cheney — is determined at any cost to escalate the sectarian war it has started in Iraq into a full-scale regional war between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Iran.

In an elaborate contest of wills, the generals, apparently including Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have leaked the broad strokes of Cheney’s secret war planning to the media. They have also let it be known that many of them would resign if Cheney and Bush take the country to war.

To counter this threat, Cheney has instructed the Pentagon to be ready to start bombing Iran within 24 hours after a signal from the White House — relying on the military’s “do or die” ethos to force the generals to stay at their posts until after the damage is done:

By creating such a tight time frame for action, Bush would negate the possibility for the Pentagon brass and Congress to mount any serious opposition to a presidential order on Iran, even if they are convinced Bush’s actions will be catastrophic.

The tradition of the U.S. military is to implement presidential orders regardless of doubts. Perhaps months later, a dissenting commander might quietly resign.

That practice and the 24-hour window may help explain why several U.S. generals are pondering now how to stop Bush from blindsiding them with a new war. One of their tactics appears to be leaking indications of their strong opposition to the press.

It was the order to set up the 24 hour trigger that prompted several top generals to signal to the Sunday Times of London this week that they would resign if the order to start the war is given. And, as unlikely as it may seem, it appears that the generals’ resistance may have been worked, at least in the short term:

[One] source told me that the resistance — from the Pentagon, Blair and even Democrats in Congress — appears to be having an effect on Bush’s decision-making. This source said he believed Bush had planned to launch an attack on Iran, possibly as early as this week, but was getting “weak knees.”

Nonetheless, based on the way Cheney and Bush drove the country to war against Iraq in 2002, the best assumption is that the new war against Iran could begin at any moment. It will come, according to Parry’s sources, with an attack by Israel on Iran, probably on its nuclear facilities. When Iran retaliates, the U.S. will come in full force to defend Israel, launching a bombardment of Iran’s infrastructure similar to the “shock and awe” bombing at the start of the war in Iraq.

What the generals want the American people to know is that this nightmare scenario is real, the planning is complete and ready to go — and that an attack could begin at any moment that would likely trigger a full-scale war in the Middle East.

Did Cheney Use Iran-Contra ‘Lessons Learned’ to Keep Iran War Plans Secret?

Jon Ponder

One revelation in Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker article about Vice Pres. Cheney’s not-so-secret plan to attack Iran bears more scrutiny. It involves Elliott Abrams — a Reagan Administration official who got caught in the Iran-Contra scandal, pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress and was later pardoned by the first Pres. George Bush.

“One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office.”

With a record like that, it should be no surprise that the current Pres. Bush has every confidence in Abrams, who currently serves as his Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy. Hersh suggests that Abrams has been helpful, at least indirectly, in providing Cheney and his team with a primer on how to operate secret government operations, as he, Oliver North, John Poindexter and then-Sec. of Defense Caspar Weinberger did during Iran-Contra — but, unlike them, without getting caught:

Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned” discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: “One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office” — a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said…

[A] Pentagon consultant added that one difficulty, in terms of oversight [over Cheney’s operations], was accounting for covert funds. “There are many, many pots of black money, scattered in many places and used all over the world on a variety of missions,” he said. The budgetary chaos in Iraq, where billions of dollars are unaccounted for, has made it a vehicle for such transactions, according to the former senior intelligence official and the retired four-star general.

“This goes back to Iran-Contra,” a former National Security Council aide told me. “And much of what they’re doing is to keep the agency out of it.” He said that Congress was not being briefed on the full extent of the U.S.-Saudi operations. And, he said, “The C.I.A. is asking, ‘What’s going on?’ They’re concerned, because they think it’s amateur hour.”

As is all too obvious, since we know about the secret plan, either Cheney’s war planners did not follow Abrams’ advice, or they consciously chose to leak their plans in order to unnerve their counterparts in Iran.

In any case, it’s worth noting that Our Liberal Media is completely untroubled by the fact that the U.S. government is set to foment a full-scale sectarian war in the Middle East between between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia.

“Lessons learned,” indeed.

Cheney Unhurt in Taliban Bomb Attack

Jon Ponder

The Taliban in Afghanistan have claimed credit for a suicide bomb attack on a military base during a visit by Vice Pres. Dick Cheney that killed more than a dozen people. However, Cheney was unharmed:

There were conflicting reports on the death toll. Provincial Gov. Abdul Jabar Taqwa said 20 people were killed, while NATO said initial reports indicated three fatalities, including a U.S. soldier, a South Korean coalition soldier and a U.S. government contractor whose nationality wasn’t immediately known. NATO said 27 people also were wounded.

It was unclear why there was such a large discrepancy in the reports.

Didn’t we vanquish the Taliban before we went in Iraq? Oh, I guess not.

Hersh: Cheney Has Secret Plan to Start War with Iran

Jon Ponder

Iran-Contra redux: New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh has learned that Vice Pres. Cheney has a secret plan to set up an “open confrontation” with Iran. As part of the plan, the Pentagon is now ready to start bombing within 24 hours of a signal from the White House.

The core of the problem is an unintended consequence of another failed Cheney gambit, the invasion of Iraq.

While Pres. Bush is undoutedly aware of Cheney’s plan, which is referred to internally as a “redirection,” according to Hersh, Cheney is firmly in charge:

The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney…

The fact that Cheney’s activities are being kept secret from the Congress is eerily similar to the Reagan administration’s secret dealings in the Iran-Contra scandal — a fact which may have prompted the recent resignation of John Negroponte, a player in the Contra affair, as National Intelligence Director.

The core of the problem is an unintended consequence of another failed Cheney gambit, the invasion of Iraq. Under Saddam, the Sunni minority controlled Iraq, which made it a stable, if totalitarian, bastion between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran. Democratic elections in Iraq turned control of Iraq over to the Shiite majority, leading to the unintended consequence of an ongoing regional power shift toward Teheran.

This power struggle is being played in the Iraq civil war, where both Shiite and Sunni insurgents are being funded by their respective co-sectarianists in Iran and Saudi Arabia, respectively. The Saudis, with their huge oil reserves, are famously risk-averse however, and they are demanding that Cheney fix what he broke.

As a result, Cheney’s team is rattling its sabers at Shiite-controlled Iran, even though the insurgents killing and wounding U.S. troops in Iraq are primarily Sunnis allied with the Saudis:

“This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them.”
— Flynt Leverett, former Bush administration National Security Council official

Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council official, told me that “there is nothing coincidental or ironic” about the new strategy with regard to Iraq. “The Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when — if you look at the actual casualty numbers — the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude,” Leverett said. “This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them.”

In the Iran-Contra matter 20 years ago, Congress was kept in the dark about Reagan’s efforts to send weapons and supplies to the Contras. Secrecy was required because Congress had expressly forbidden the administration from dealing with the Contras.

In 2005, a group of Iran-Contra veterans got together in Washington to review “lessons learned.” Elliot Abrams, who was tried, convicted and then pardoned for his role in Iran-Contra, led a session that reached four conclusions about how to run secret government operations without getting caught:

“One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office” — a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said.

But at least one Iran-Contra figure is opting out, according to Hersh:

I was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the former senior intelligence official that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a factor in Negroponte’s decision to resign from the National Intelligence directorship and accept a sub-Cabinet position of Deputy Secretary of State. (Negroponte declined to comment.)

The former senior intelligence official also told me that Negroponte did not want a repeat of his experience in the Reagan Administration, when he served as Ambassador to Honduras. “Negroponte said, ‘No way. I’m not going down that road again, with the N.S.C. running operations off the books, with no finding.’ ” (In the case of covert C.I.A. operations, the President must issue a written finding and inform Congress.) Negroponte stayed on as Deputy Secretary of State, he added, because “he believes he can influence the government in a positive way.”

Last Sunday, the Times of London reported that a handful of top U.S. military brass had threatened to resign if the U.S. attacked Iran. It is possible their threats were prompted by learning about Cheney’s plan — which, see number three above, is apparently not so secret anymore.

Assuming Seymour Hersh’s reporting is correct, and his track record is among the best — and based on the record of Cheney and Bush from 2002, we have to assume they will start a war in Irans sometime very soon — even though it is hard to fathom, then as now, why they are hellbent on igniting the cataclysm.