Cheney's Chief Assassin Is Now Obama's Commander in Afghanistan
By James Petras,
Axis of Logic: May 18, 2009.
Obama's appointment of General Stanley McChrystal reflects a grave new
military escalation of his Afghanistan war.
"The Deltas are psychos.You have to be a certified psychopath to join the
Delta Force.", a US Army colonel from Fort Bragg once told me back in the
1980s. Now President Obama has elevated the most notorious of the
psychopaths, General Stanley McChrystal, to head the US and NATO military
command in Afghanistan.
McChrystal's rise to leadership is marked by his central role in directing
special operations teams engaged in extrajudicial assassinations, systematic
torture, bombing of civilian communities and search and destroy missions. He
is the very embodiment of the brutality and gore that accompanies
military-driven empire building. Between September 2003 and August 2008,
McChrystal directed the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations (JSO) Command
which operates special teams in overseas assassinations.
The point of the 'Special Operations' teams (SOT) is that they do not
distinguish between civilian and military oppositions, between activists and
their sympathizers and the armed resistance. The SOT specialize in
establishing death squads and recruiting and training paramilitary forces to
terrorize communities, neighborhoods and social movements opposing US client
regimes. The SOT's 'counter-terrorism' is terrorism in reverse, focusing on
socio-political groups between US proxies and the armed resistance.
McChrystal's SOT targeted local and national insurgent leaders in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Pakistan through commando raids and air strikes. During the
last 5 years of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld period the SOT were deeply
implicated in the torture of political prisoners and suspects.
McChrystal was a special favorite of Rumsfeld and Cheney because he was in
charge of the 'direct action' forces of the 'Special Missions Units.
'Direct Action' operative are the death-squads and torturers and their only
engagement with the local population is to terrorize, and not to
propagandize. They engage in 'propaganda of the dead', assassinating local
leaders to 'teach' the locals to obey and submit to the occupation. Obama's
appointment of McChrystal as head reflects a grave new military escalation
of his Afghanistan war in the face of the advance of the resistance
throughout the country.
The deteriorating position of the US is manifest in the tightening circle
around all the roads leading in and out of Afghanistan's capital, Kabul as
well as the expansion of Taliban control and influence throughout the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Obama's inability to recruit new NATO
reinforcements means that the White House's only chance to advance its
military driven empire is to escalate the number of US troops and to
increase the kill ratio among any and all suspected civilians in territories
controlled by the Afghan armed resistance.
The White House and the Pentagon claim that the appointment of McChrystal
was due to the 'complexities' of the situation on the ground and the need
for a 'change in strategy'. 'Complexity' is a euphemism for the increased
mass opposition to the US, complicating traditional carpet 'bombing and
military sweep' operations. The new strategy practiced by McChrystal
involves large scale, long term 'special operations' to devastate and kill
the local social networks and community leaders, which provide the support
system for the armed resistance.
Obama's decision to prevent the release of scores of photographs documenting
the torture of prisoners by US troops and 'interrogators' (especially under
command of the 'Special Forces'), is directly related to his appointment of
McChrystal whose 'SOT' forces were highly implicated in widespread torture
in Iraq. Equally important, under McChrystal's command the DELTA, SEAL and
Special Operations Teams will have a bigger role in the new
'counter-insurgency strategy'. Obama's claim that the publication of these
photographs will adversely affect the 'troops' has a particular meaning: The
graphic exposure of McChrystal's modus operendi for the past 5 years under
President Bush will undermine his effectiveness in carrying out the same
operations under Obama.
Obama's decision to re-start the secret 'military tribunals' of foreign
political prisoners, held at the Guantanamo prison camp, is not merely a
replay of the Bush-Cheney policies, which Obama had condemned and vowed to
eliminate during his presidential campaign, but part of his larger policy of
militarization and coincides with his approval of the major secret police
surveillance operations conducted against US citizens.
Putting McChrystal in charge of the expanded Afghanistan-Pakistan military
operations means putting a notorious practitioner of military terrorism -
the torture and assassination of opponents to US policy - at the center of
US foreign policy. Obama's quantitative and qualitative expansion of the US
war in South Asia means massive numbers of refugees fleeing the destruction
of their farms, homes and villages; tens of thousands of civilian deaths,
and eradication of entire communities. All of this will be committed by the
Obama Administraton in the quest to 'empty the lake (displace entire
populations) to catch the fish (armed insurgents and activists)'.
Obama's restoration of all of the most notorious Bush Era policies and the
appointment of Bush's most brutal commander is based on his total embrace of
the ideology of military-driven empire building. Once one believes (as Obama
does) that US power and expansion are based on military conquests and
counter-insurgency, all other ideological, diplomatic, moral and economic
considerations will be subordinated to militarism. By focusing all resources
on successful military conquest, scant attention is paid to the costs borne
by the people targeted for conquest or to the US treasury and domestic
American economy. This has been clear from the start: In the midst of a
major recession/depression with millions of Americans losing their
employment and homes, President Obama increased the military budget by 4% -
taking it beyond $800 billion dollars.
Obama's embrace of militarism is obvious from his decision to expand the
Afghan war despite NATO's refusal to commit any more combat troops. It is
obvious in his appointment of the most hard-line and notorious Special
Forces General from the Bush-Cheney era to head the military command in
subduing Afghanistan and the frontier areas of Pakistan.
It is just as George Orwell described in Animal Farm: The Democratic Pigs
are now pursuing the same brutal, military policies of their predecessors,
the Republican Porkers, only now it is in the name of the people and peace.
Orwell might paraphrase the policy of President Barack Obama, as 'Bigger and
bloodier wars equal peace and justice'.
***
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/68315.html?storylink=omni_popular
Cheney said Gitmo detainees revealed Iraq-al Qaida link
By Jonathan S. Landay
McClatchy Newspapers: May 15, 2009
WASHINGTON - Then-Vice President Dick Cheney, defending the invasion of
Iraq, asserted in 2004 that detainees interrogated at the Guantanamo Bay
prison camp had revealed that Iraq had trained al Qaida operatives in
chemical and biological warfare, an assertion that wasn't true.
Cheney's 2004 comments to the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News were largely
overlooked at the time. However, they appear to substantiate recent reports
that interrogators at Guantanamo and other prison camps were ordered to find
evidence of alleged cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein - despite CIA reports that there were only sporadic,
insignificant contacts between the militant Islamic group and the secular
Iraqi dictatorship.
The head of the Criminal Investigation Task Force at Guantanamo from
2002-2005 confirmed to McClatchy that in late 2002 and early 2003,
intelligence officials were tasked to find, among other things, Iraq-al
Qaida ties, which were a central pillar of the Bush administration's case
for its March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
"I'm aware of the fact that in late 2002, early 2003, that (the alleged al
Qaida-Iraq link) was an interest on the intelligence side," said retired
Army Lt. Col. Brittain Mallow, a former military criminal investigator.
"That was something they were tasked to look at."
He said he was unaware of the origins of the directive, but a former senior
U.S. intelligence official has told McClatchy that Cheney's and former
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's offices were demanding that
information in 2002 and 2003. The official, who wasn't authorized to speak
publicly on the matter, requested anonymity.
During the same period, two alleged senior al Qaida operatives in CIA
custody were waterboarded repeatedly - Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times and
Khalid Sheik Mohammed at least 183 times.
A 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report said that the two were
questioned about the relationship between al Qaida and Iraq, and that both
denied knowing of one.
A U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Paul Burney, told the Army Inspector
General's office in 2006 that during the same period, interrogators at
Guantanamo were under pressure to produce evidence of al Qaida-Iraq ties,
but were unable to do so.
"The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . .
. there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce
more immediate results," Burney said, according excerpts of an interview
published in a declassified Senate Armed Services Committee report released
on April 22.
A key proponent of the Iraq invasion and of harsh interrogation methods,
Cheney has become the leading defender of such measures, which included
forced nudity, prolonged sleep deprivation, stress positions and
waterboarding, which simulates drowning.
The Rocky Mountain News asked Cheney in a Jan. 9, 2004, interview if he
stood by his claims that Saddam's regime had maintained a "relationship"
with al Qaida, raising the danger that Iraq might give the group chemical,
biological or nuclear weapons to attack the U.S.
"Absolutely. Absolutely," Cheney replied.
A Cheney spokeswoman said a response to an e-mail requesting clarification
of the former vice president's remarks would be forthcoming next week.
"The (al Qaida-Iraq) links go back," he said. "We know for example from
interrogating detainees in Guantanamo that al Qaida sent individuals to
Baghdad to be trained in C.W. and B.W. technology, chemical and biological
weapons technology. These are all matters that are there for anybody who
wants to look at it."
No evidence of such training or of any operational links between Iraq and al
Qaida has ever been found, according to several official inquiries.
It's not apparent which Guantanamo detainees Cheney was referring to in the
interview.
One al Qaida detainee, Ibn al Sheikh al Libi, claimed that terrorist
operatives were sent to Iraq for chemical and biological weapons training,
but he was in CIA custody, not at Guantanamo.
Moreover, he recanted his assertions, some of them allegedly made under
torture while he was being interrogated in Egypt.
"No postwar information has been found that indicates CBW training occurred,
and the detainee who provided the key prewar reporting about this training
recanted his claims after the war," a September 2006 Senate Intelligence
Committee report said.
Although the Defense Intelligence Agency questioned it at the time, former
President George W. Bush cited al Libi's claim in an October 2002 address,
and former Secretary of State Colin Powell used in his February 2003 speech
to the United Nations.
A Libyan newspaper last week reported that al Libi committed suicide in a
Libyan jail.
(Warren P. Strobel contributed to this article.)
No comments:
Post a Comment