Greenwald's response in the text itself, such as "there are numerous
official documents - THAT HAVE RECENTLY EMERGED - You access
them by clicking on 'that have recently emerged.' They are there to
substantiate indications the situation hasn't improved or gotten
worse, contrary to the administration's desperate attempt to stem the
tidal wave roused by this report, get the money now being debated
in the House and keep this disaster going.
Nine of them.
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/26/this-is-how-your-white-house-defends-its-war/
This Is How Your White House Defends Its War
Posted by Byard Duncan on @ 7:36 am
Article printed from speakeasy: <http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy
URL to article:
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/26/this-is-how-your-white-house-defends-its-war/
Here's the White House's full response to the latest WikiLeaks saga:
The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified
information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of
Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security.
Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents - the United
States government learned from news organizations that these documents would
be posted. These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment
to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our
common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani
people.
The documents posted by Wikileaks reportedly cover a period of time from
January 2004 to December 2009. On December 1, 2009, President Obama
announced a new strategy with a substantial increase in resources for
Afghanistan, and increased focus on al Qaeda and Taliban safe-havens in
Pakistan, precisely because of the grave situation that had developed over
several years. This shift in strategy addressed challenges in Afghanistan
that were the subject of an exhaustive policy review last fall. We know that
serious challenges lie ahead, but if Afghanistan is permitted to slide
backwards, we will again face a threat from violent extremist groups like al
Qaeda who will have more space to plot and train. That is why we are now
focused on breaking the Taliban's momentum and building Afghan capacity so
that the Afghan government can begin to assume responsibility for its
future. The United States remains committed to a strong, stable, and
prosperous Afghanistan.
Since 2009, the United States and Pakistan have deepened our important
bilateral partnership. Counter-terrorism cooperation has led to significant
blows against al Qaeda's leadership. The Pakistani military has gone on the
offensive in Swat and South Waziristan, at great cost to the Pakistani
military and people. The United States and Pakistan have also commenced a
Strategic Dialogue, which has expanded cooperation on issues ranging from
security to economic development. Pakistan and Afghanistan have also
improved their bilateral ties, most recently through the completion of a
Transit-Trade Agreement. Yet the Pakistani government - and Pakistan's
military and intelligence services - must continue their strategic shift
against insurgent groups. The balance must shift decisively against al Qaeda
and its extremist allies. U.S. support for Pakistan will continue to be
focused on building Pakistani capacity to root out violent extremist groups,
while supporting the aspirations of the Pakistani people.
And Glenn Greenwald's take, via Salon.
It's hardly a shock that the war in Afghanistan is going far worse than
political officials have been publicly claiming. Aside from the fact that
lying about war is what war leaders do almost intrinsically - that's part of
what makes war so degrading to democratic values - there have been numerous
official documents that have recently emerged or leaked out that explicitly
state that the war is going worse than ever and is all but unwinnable. A
French General was formally punished earlier this month for revealing that
the NATO war situation "has never been worse," while French officials now
openly plot how to set new "intermediate" benchmarks to ensure - in their
words - that "public opinion doesn't get the impression of a useless
effort." Anyone paying even mild attention knows that our war effort there
has entailed countless incidents of civilian slaughter followed by official
lies about it, "hit lists" compiled with no due process, and feel-good
pronouncements from the Government that have little relationship to the
realities in that country (other leak highlights are here). This leak is
not unlike the Washington Post series from the last week: the broad strokes
were already well-known, but the sheer magnitude of the disclosures may
force more public attention on these matters than had occurred previously.
Byard Duncan is a contributing writer and editor for AlterNet. His work has
appeared on AlterNet, Truthout, Common Dreams and the China Daily.
***
Huge Fly Swatter, No Flies: Top Secret America's Vast Counterterrorism
Machine
By Robert Dreyfus
The Nation: July 10, 2010
Not surprisingly, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is
complaining about the Washington Post's blockbuster series, "Top Secret
America," whose first installment appeared today. (You can read the whole
series, as it appears, at the Post's special site, TopSecretAmerica.com.)
Laughably, the ODNI says:
The reporting does not reflect the Intelligence Community we know.. We
have reformed the [intelligence community] in ways that have improved the
quality, quantity, regularity, and speed of our support to policymakers,
warfighters, and homeland defenders, and we will continue our reform
efforts. We provide oversight, while also encouraging initiative. We work
constantly to reduce inefficiencies and redundancies, while preserving a
degree of intentional overlap among agencies to strengthen analysis,
challenge conventional thinking, and eliminate single points of failure.
But as the Post makes clear, the world of Top Secret America has grown like
Topsy Secret America. Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, who wrote the
series, report that the post-9/11 apparatus has exploded to include at least
1,271 government organizations and nearly 2,000 private contractors in
10,000 locations, with 854,000 people holding top-secret security
clearances. The intelligence budget for the United States has risen from $30
billion a year in 2001 to $75 billion today, and that only scratches the
surface. And they report:
Twenty-four organizations were created by the end of 2001, including the
Office of Homeland Security and the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Force.
In 2002, 37 more were created to track weapons of mass destruction, collect
threat tips and coordinate the new focus on counterterrorism. That was
followed the next year by 36 new organizations, and 26 after that; and 31
more, and 32 more, and 20 or more each in 2007, 2008, and 2009.
What's missing from the story, however, is any assessment of the threat
against which this vast and growing machinery is arrayed. The Post notes
that twenty-five separate agencies have been set up to track terrorist
financing, which admirably shows the overlapping and redundant nature of the
post-9/11 ballooning of agencies and organizations targeting terrorism. But
the article barely mentions that there are hardly any terrorists to track.
The Post points out that among the recent, nuisance-level attacks by Muslim
extremists-the Fort Hood shooter, the underwear bomber, the Times Square
incident-the intelligence machine failed to detect or stop them. True.
That's an indictment of the counterterrorism machinery that has become a
staple for critics of the outsize budgets and wasteful bureaucracy that has
been created since 9/11.
The core problem, which the Post doesn't address, is that Al Qaeda and its
affiliates, its sympathizers, and even self-starting terrorist actors who
aren't part of Al Qaeda itself, are a tiny and manageable problem. Yet the
apparatus that has been created is designed to meet nothing less than an
existential threat. Even at the height of the cold war, when the Soviet
Union and its allies were engaged in a brutal, country-by-country battle
across Asia, Africa and Latin America to combat the United States, NATO, and
American hegemonism, there was nothing like the post-9/11 behemoth in
existence. A thousand smart intelligence analysts, a thousand smart FBI and
law enforcement officers, and a few hundred Special Operations military folk
are all that's needed to deal with the terrorism threat. It's been hugely
overblown. Yet in the Post story, sage-like gray beards of the
counterterrorism machine stroke their chins and pontificate about how
difficult it is to coordinate all these agencies, absorb all the data, read
all the reports and absorb the 1.7 billion e-mails and phone calls that are
picked up every day by the National Security Agency. It's an "Emperor's New
Clothes" problem. The emperor isn't naked, but no one, really, is
threatening him.
Robert Dreyfuss
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