Surprise Surprise: Troop Drawdown Delay

Surprise surprise, the troop surge has worked so well that we need to delay the troop draw down. This isn't a quagmire, it's an occupation.

Now that we know either Clinton, Obabma or McCain will be the next president, we know the US troops will be in Iraq, at some level, for at least nine more years, unless they are pushed out.

My estimate of the length of the occupation is still on track, but I'm not sure I haven't under estimated it.

In my original estimate I used a comparison of Iraq and Vietnam as the basis for estimating six more years from January 2007. Here's another possible basis for an estimate of how long we'll be in Iraq.... Bosnia:

TUZLA, Bosnia, Nov. 24, 2004 -- U.S. troops marked the end of their nine-year peacekeeping role in Bosnia on Wednesday as NATO prepared to hand over the task to the European Union in December.

Ooops! Forgot something:

A small number of U.S. troops will stay in Bosnia to hunt war crime suspects and help the country reform its military.

Sound familiar? Obama and Clinton always say have a similar disclaimer, like those words read really quickly at the end of a damn advertisement:

Thecandidatedoesnotrepresentthisstatementasfact and reservestherighttomaintaintrooplevelstomeetunforseenneeds astheyarise
including butnotlimitedto securityforcontractorsandembassyemployees
trainingiraqiforces interdictingterrorists

So, General Petraeus wants a little time for "consolidation and evaluation," and Defense Secretary Gates "had been kind of headed in that direction as well."

Fear and Worry are all Part of a Crumbling Empire:

Some fear the drawdown could result in giving up some recent security gains while many in the military worry that strains on troops from long and multiple combat tours will grow worse unless the troop reduction continues after July.

If people like Barak Obama have their way, who call for increasing the size of the US Military by 90,000, the latter worry should subside... for a while.

Crumble, crumble.

Sources:

CBC, U.S. may delay troop cuts in Iraq: defence secretary, February 11, 2008.

Gates says Iran seeks to cause chaos

So does the U.S. government. The Bush M.O. is management by chaos.

The world is being taken over by a segment of the corporate elite by using the The Shock Doctrine.

Sources:

Associated Press, Gates says Iran seeks to cause chaos, LOLITA C. BALDOR, December 8, 2007.

Primary Threat Posed by Hugo Chavez

Has anyone noticed the propaganda campaign to undermine Venezuela's Hugo Chavez? US complicity in the 2002 coup against Chavez? What would drive the US to such ends, other than the fact that Venezuela is a contender as the top oil-bearing land mass.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently provided us the answer.

I think that the principal threat represented by Hugo Chavez is to the freedom and economic prosperity of the people of Venezuela. I think that he has been very generous in offering the resources to people around the world, when perhaps those resources could be better used to alleviate some of the economic problems facing the people of Venezuela. I think that's the principal concern.

Generosity is the principal concern. Tell me we're not living in Orwellian times.

Sources:

DemocracyNow, Headlines, October, 3, 2007.

Intelligence Agencies Blame Bush for Increased Terrorist Threat

My first reaction to the new intelligence agency reports on Al-Qaida was to wonder if the findings are politicized by the Bush administration. Now I'm wondering if maybe they are politicized against the Bush administration.

Everyone is familiar with the politicization of intelligence leading up to the Iraq war; some call it an "intelligence failure," as if the information was wrong. No. Thanks to Richard Dryfuss, Karen Kwiatikowski and others, we know that Dick Cheney created a lie factory in the Pentagon that gave false intelligence to the establishment media, Congress and the American people.

Many may also be familiar with the case against former CIA Director, and current Defense Secretary, Robert Gates. During past Senate confirmation hearings, numerous intelligence analysts, such as Jennifer Glaudemans and Ray McGovern, spoke out against Gates due to their concerns about his politicization of intelligence.

But we also know that Bush and Cheney set up the CIA to take the blame for the administration's abuse of intelligence, calling it "intelligence failures." So, we know that the intelligence community has an axe to grind against Bush/Cheney. We might be seeing that happening today.

The retribution comes through in the following message from the intelligence agencies: Bush's war in Iraq is undermining National security by creating a terrorist training ground. With that in mind, read the following:

National Intelligence Council Chairman Thomas Fingar warned that the group's operatives in Iraq are getting portable, firsthand experience in covert communications, smuggling, improvised explosive devices, understanding U.S. military tactics and more.

Thomas Finger is still a new face, not even written up on Wikipedia as of the writing of this blog essay. Finger comes out of the US State Department intelligence department, one of the agencies that got it right before the Iraq war, but was shouted down. I'm guessing he's telling it straight.

Finger is not alone in broadcasting subtle public messages that point the blame towards Bush and Cheney:

Ted Gistaro, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, said al-Qaida in Iraq did not have any active cells when the U.S. invaded in March 2003. He said the watershed moment was when its now-deceased leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, declared his allegiance to bin Laden in an October 2004 Internet message.

The story of Zarqawi is interesting. Briefly, he was originally a small-time, locally-based operator. According to Zarqawi researcher, and economist, Loretta Napoleoni:

al-Zarqawi met Osama Bin Laden in 2000 in Kandahar, and it was a meeting in which he refused to join Al Qaeda because he could not share Osama Bin Laden's view of far-away enemy, i.e., the United States. He was very much focused on the existing Arab regimes, in particular Jordan.

Zarqawi ran a little training camp in Herat, but was forced to flee to Iraqi Kurdistan. The Kurdish secret service informed the US that Zarqawi was "Al Qaeda," which was false, but the Bush needed some kind of evidence of Iraqi wrong doing. Zarqawi became their tumped up link of Al Quaeda to Iraq. Bush proclaimed Zarqawi to be "number 2" in Al Qaeda, and the corporate media fell in line with the story.

It was only after the Bush administration artificially pumped up Zarqawi's public image as a major terrorist that Zarqawi was able to attract support in the Muslim world.[1] That is, Bush created Zarqawi as a bogeyman image, which enabled Zarqawi to attract the resources needed to become a real threat. Bush literally helped create Zarqawi, even if unintentionally.

All of this points to more evidence of the Iraq Effect. This is the notion that the Iraq war correlates with a 600 percent increase in terrorist attacks since the US invasion of Iraq. This is according to research by Paul Cruickshank, Fellow at New York University Law School’s Center on Law and Security.

Although Bush might think this intelligence report serves his need to ratchet up the fear factor for his benefit, I suspect the intelligence community is conducting a secondary information campaign to undermine Bush's credibility. It's pay-back time.

Sources:

1. Democracy Nowm, June 8, 2006. Loretta Napoleoni, Italian economist and writer. She is the author of several books including "Insurgent Iraq: Al Zarqawi and the New Generation" and "Terror Incorporated: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks."

Is the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq Politicized?

That's the question the Democratic Congress must answer. They must call hearings, examine the process and actors who had editorial control, and also interview lower level staff to determine whether there is any political spin in the assessment.

There is ample evidence that politicization occured in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq that was developed prior to the 2003 US invasion. For example, Robert Dryfus, and others, exposed the Pentagon's system of short-circuiting the formal chain of intelligence designed to inform the President (The Lie Factory). John Negroponte, who served as the first Director of National Intelligence while this NIE was under development, is a netorious political operator who effectively led America's dirty wars involving death squads in Cenral America during the 1980s.

Current Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who could have influenced the final touches on the NIE, also has a history of bending to political will during his tenure as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In 1985 Gates was both deputy director of CIA, and chairman of the National Inelligence Committee (NIC) that drafted the Iran NIE. Having a political director position serve as chair creates the opportunity for politicization. Jennifer Glaudemans, A former CIA analyst on the 1985 Iran NIE, said that, "Now, not since he held that position has anyone ever yet again held a conflict of interest position of holding those two jobs." She also said, "...the CIA never took a footnote to an estimate, could not dissent to an estimate, as long as Mr. Gates was also the chairman of the NIC." [1]

Glaudemans explains, "What happened in the Third World Activities Division [of the CIA] was analytical judgments were put out as [intelligence] community view in estimates or as CIA view, for which there was no evidence. The Iran estimate in 1985 is just a classic example of that, and one I was personally involved with. There was no evidence to support the key judgment about the Soviets in that Iranian estimate. There was a ton of evidence that contradicted that. So it’s not a question of a young junior analyst not getting her view taken, it was a question of evidence versus no evidence." [1]

According to Glaudemans, "there was an Inspector General investigation. Many analysts, not just myself, many managers -- I think everyone in the Office of Soviet Analysis was interviewed. And one of the judgments of that IG report was that the perception of politicization of analysis was pervasive." This isn't directed solely at Gates, but is another demonstration that intelligence findings are subject to politicization.

Given the track record of the current administration, it is highly likely the current Iraq NIE is politicized. Given the high stakes, the Democratic Congress must investigate that question.

You can help make that happen by contacting Congress and by raising the question with media outlets.

Write the US House of Representatives
Write the US Senate
Write the Major Media Outlets

Sources:

[1] DemocracyNow! December 5, 2006. Interview of Jennifer Glaudemans and Ray McGovern