“Mr. President, I, uh, don’t think it’s quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir.” These famous words of support were, of course, offered by Gen. Buck Turgidson, played by George C. Scott, in the classic black comedy, Dr. Strangelove, after a rogue U.S. Air Force general subverted America’s “fail-safe” system and sent a wing of nuclear-armed bombers to annihilate the Russians.

This seemed an appropriate intro to General McChrystal’s meeting today with President Obama, where the general’s attempt to explain numerous slip-ups to his Commander-In-Chief predictably resulted in dismissal. Scott’s line is also the lead-in to my reaction to a piece sent to me by Bob Kincaid, host of our favorite nightly progressive radio show on the HORN, describing our pay-offs to Afghan travel agents–otherwise known as insurgents and warlords–to safeguard passage for our military convoys. In a campaign fraught with mistakes and distorted vision, buying into protection rackets which invariably end up funding our enemy seems like another in a series of tragic slip-ups.

See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/21/AR2010062104628.html?hpid=topnews

After you look at the story, try to re-read the opening sentence of paragraph six without making those gurgling noises we’re so fond of here at A Cavalcade of Crazy. No disagreement with that senior official here. After nine years and over 1100 American casualties, I think we need to give it more time. It’s just too early to tell. And all along, I thought U.S. Army trucks still transported the U.S. Army. Where have I been? Actually, I’m having trouble understanding what the program is at all, anymore.

Once again, we are totally out of our element. Here we are, once more, Third World invaders in a classic relationship-based country. News flash: The illegal heroin trade trade originates there. In addition to lacking a legitimate government–rather a huge obstacle to our success–Afghanistan has no, well, rules–no dependable legal structure with the incentives to chase down the bad guys. Were we expecting to go over some contracts with village leaders? These people conduct business on a handshake, plain and simple. Friends and enemies can change every day. This place has ground up everybody in history who’s tried to mess with them. On the surface, maybe greasing palms is a good idea.

Unfortunately, these tactics just sink us deeper into the quagmire. We’re not going to change any hearts and minds, let alone institute our democratic form of government for which they’ve been waiting so breathlessly for centuries, by buying them off. Of course if anyone reading this still believes we do this to spread democracy, we can find you some hogs to wash. Our military has and continues to be for rent at the pleasure of big business, for dirty resources and dirty money. We are up to our necks, past our necks, into where one hoped by now we would have discovered a brain, with the puppet Karzai and this scene of total madness. Do we even need to mention just how critically we must to attend to our own backyard, that it is redundant and ridiculous to even consider foreign entanglements?

The American people know nothing good can come from this. But we’re not in charge anymore, and haven’t been since the Industrial Age aristocrats opened up branch banking in Washington, D.C. This is corporatism at its finest. The fabulous New World Order. What’s Good for GM is Good for America–and the rest of the solar system, no doubt. Admittedly, GM’s stock price is a little low right now for such grandiose claims. Oh well, we all got the point.

Ah, the enduring Gilded Age. There’s so much in it for everyone, isn’t there?

In related news, let’s follow the Senate as they obstruct the latest unemployment extension benefits. Evidently, keeping the jobless remnants of our once-stalwart middle class alive is not on the agenda. It’s so difficult, these days, to get sustained help for life, but there’s always plenty of cash available for death.

We might as well be fighting space aliens on one of the moons of Saturn. Imagine the weekly briefing sometime in 2410: “Well General, how’s the mission on Titan coming along? What’s your assessment after 14 years of bloody warfare?”

“Well, we’re still taking it to them, although it would be easier if there was anything like a legitimate government or legal system up here. But we’re pressing on, and securing as much crazillium-7 as we can.”

“Sir, we understand United Crazillium is poised to make a fortune with the exclusive rights to sell this amusing and revolutionary energy source. Is that still our goal?”

“God willing. Their contractors have been working with us from the outset. Lord knows, they’ve written enough checks to right people.”

Four hundred years from now, those choosing to review the failed campaign on Titan will no doubt reflect on the history we ignored centuries before–and were thus doomed to repeat–of the conflict on a similarly hostile and formidable world known as Afghanistan.

Reverbo                                                                                                                                                                 Critic-At-Large

A few weeks ago, the saga of the torture memo writers, Jay Bybee and John Yoo, was officially re-visited. David Margolis of the Justice Department rejected the original conclusion reached by ethics lawyers in the Office of Professional Responsibility–that of professional misconduct–and replaced it with the anyone-can-have-a bad-day, poor judgement verdict.

I know this isn’t breaking news, and health care is the issue du jour, but we haven’t yet touched on some of the broader issues involved here on A Cavalcade of Crazy, and it gives me another opportunity to demonstrate the flexibility of the popularly-referenced fourth dimension; to wit, we will not be confined by it’s apparent linearity on this column. Nor, it seems, by short, pithy sentences.

For me, these diversions are more than just salubrious; they’re vital as a defense against the merciless aggravation we encounter with tedious frequency. I don’t wish to utter any more odd, gurgling noises than I already do. Listen to Bob’s show on the HORN on a regular basis and you’ll hear all manner of howls, yowls, rumblings, and groans. I think I even heard some quacking once. And that’s just from the host.

Let’s take a little side trip to seventy years in the past. Some time ago I began kind of a personal honor roll, commemorating during the months of their birth individuals who have profoundly added to my life in extraordinarily positive ways. Although highly subjective and discriminating (at the moment Ray Davies is in final approval), I wondered if any of you would agree that it’s possible, in the case of entertainers for example, to qualify based on a single performance instead of lifetime achievement. Here’s the thing: for my money, a single film –The Philadelphia Story – does just that for three superlative actors. if Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart and Katherine Hepburn never acted in another film, they would all make it for that 1940 classic. “C.K. Dexter-Haven,” said a sozzled Stewart to a sober Grant, “you have unsuspected depth.” Your thoughts.

Okay. Next destination: 2001. Not the movie.

The response of the military/industrial/media complex in accord with the Bush administration after 9/11 was to implement and advance a plan already on the table and spin it into a bogus rationale for attacking an innocent country. The record is clear on that. In essence, our own government offended us, and parts of the world, again, and it appears to be okay. Where are all the hearings? Where’s the outrage? Other than slapping Scooter and the two attorneys, who else have we called into account? I can think of a couple who just ignored congressional subpoenas, but that was before Obama took office.

I’ll admit that I’m not aware of all the legal fine points in this case. I know significant punishment has been avoided so far; Yoo is a professor at UC Berkeley and Bybee is a federal judge. Got a bit of an arrogant chip on their shoulders about the whole thing, especially John Yoo. And why not? Both could have been disbarred and Bybee face impeachment. But it’s all so redolent of how Bush and his handlers conducted business for eight years: announce a pre-determined conclusion and then contrive some premise to support it. Solutions seeking a problem. Conceal and control the information. And there was no shortage of loyal party hookers like John Yoo to facilitate these schemes for them. Just like that, Bush and the CIA had what they wanted in writing, a legal basis for officially hurting– even accidently terminating– people, thereby adding Guantanamo, and by extension the United States, to the popular torture destinations of the world. Just wanted to authorize this abuse a little closer to home, I suppose.

Want to take this a step further? I ask you to consider the following words precisely and in context: would it surprise anyone to learn one day that we have put bags over people’s heads and rendered them to a secret location in Utah for some enhanced interrogation? How do we know they don’t? Given our history of covert and nefarious intelligence and military activities going back to the fifties both here and abroad, through countless Freedom of Information requests or investigations by people like Seymour Hersh, Gary Webb, and other determined reporters, it would not surprise me. In fact, why do you need people like John Yoo to sanction your clandestine actions and methods at all? When did the NSA, CIA or the Black-Ops spooks ever care about legal justification? We don’t even know how many billions they appropriate, let alone what they do. What’s your problem? Do you hate freedom, or something?

All too often, the “official versions,” whether rushed to release or too late on the scene, have been leaving much to be desired. It can be downright revelatory when and if the real story emerges. In a nation that ostensibly holds the principles of trust and transparency high, that’s rather sad.

For review:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=7867

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA%20Hits/CIA_GreatestHits.html

http://www.minnpost.com/ericblackblog/2009/03/11/7310/investigative_reporter_

seymour_hersh_describes_executive_assassination_ring

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/121304.html

Yeah, I know–I’m giving you more to read, but here at A Cavalcade of Crazy we will include references when appropriate. You can peruse as much as you want in your spare time, if you have any. And I won’t link you up to any crackpots– that is, unless they are of a rich and irresistible nature.

Can you get into serious trouble for lying to the wrong people? That depends. Ask Dick Nixon. Okay, that’s a problem. Ask Bill Clinton. Before George Jr & Company’s pre-planned invasion of Iraq, I think the man who should have paid the price was the Grand Old Party’s Ronnie Reagan. Here’s a classic assertion: “We were not trading arms for hostages, nor were we negotiating with terrorists.” Three months later, on March 4, 1987, Reagan admitted he lied right to our faces: “A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.” (Next time any of you are in front of a judge, try that and see how it works.) So although Ronald’s heart was really into that mendacious tale, it just wasn’t going to last. Miss Hall? Yes, Col. North? Start the shredders.

And wasn’t there something about defying the laws of the land and sending the Nicaraguan contras the proceeds from those Iranian arms sales through the back door? Talk about low-hanging high crimes and misdemeanors. If that outrageous affair doesn’t result in impeachment hearings, what does? But we let the Teflon President skate away.

Watergate was nothing in comparison. Iran/Contra should have been the made-to-order centerpiece of a profound and long-lasting neo-con disgrace.

On one of his recent shows, I thought Bob Kincaid made a decent case for that negligence being a direct line to our dismaying situation today. If we throw Reagan out, or even George Sr. (whose fingerprints were all over that operation), none of this is a sure thing: The Bush 41 presidency and his pardon-fest, Newt and his farcical “contract,” mass media right wing craziness, human blot George Jr, or the invasion of the Middle East. Or John Yoo. The torture memos and their authors don’t enter that picture.

At least things might be a lot more manageable today. It goes back to Ford preemptively pardoning Tricky Dick. Rumsfeld, Cheney and those freaks don’t crawl out of their coffins to abuse us again. Not to mention sending an always prudent reminder to future executives. I’ll take it back to John Kennedy. I think you can argue that from November of 1963 until today, a few well-placed assassin’s bullets, together with our critical failure to finish seeing a handful of select weasels all the way to Leavenworth has led straight to the mess we are in right now. 

While I’m not especially pleased with the latest watered-down assessment of Bybee and Yoo, at least we followed up. The rest of the gang responsible for implementing the death and destruction machine in the name of the War On Terror have slipped away and are still at large. As is Bin Laden. We should come down on these mercenaries and profiteers like the pirates they are and just see how many can go for a spin in that Large Hadron Collider for a while. The shit these werewolves are getting away with up and down the line, including thousands of people literally dying because of their actions, deserves some measure of examination, if not judgement. A little justice for their rampage, you know? Mr. Yoo! Please take your place with the others inside the machine.     

I thought defrauding Congress and the people of the United States, looting the treasury, and slicing up the Constitution were criminal offenses. For your last trick you can’t just give us all the finger one more time as you walk out the door. Except I guess you can.

Sigh.

And before anyone gives them a pass, for any reason, know this: when they get their hands around your neck, there will be no passes for you.

The one thing that’s supposed to be dependable in a nation of laws is not that corruption is preventable but that there are valid and effective ways to take you down if you violate our rules of conduct. But the devious connections have grown so powerful, and the implementation of oversight so difficult, that isn’t a sure thing. In fact, too many of our elected officials are more apt to simply yield to this pressure than to exert effort on our behalf. Where is Sam Ervin? Where is Jimmy Stewart when we need him? Damn, he’s back there in paragraph four. I see no choice in the matter of official investigations into the possible crimes of any administration, especially when they leave such a trail of deceit.

What is ultimately more important than protecting our trust? Well, I’ll admit that changeover to all-digital TV is pretty big. I really don’t know how we let this go. There is a constitutional imperative to re-affirm the legitimacy of our systems and the authority of our laws. Otherwise many just descend into apathy, some into anarchy, but all lose even more confidence in government. And that is music to the ears of the powers that be.

” The government…teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law…To declare that the end justifies the means – to declare that the government may commit crimes – would bring terrible retribution.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        ––Louis D. Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice, 1916-1939

Reverbo

Critic-At-Large

Next time – Spotlight on The Republican Party:  Just Sayin’ No Since 1935.

NY Times

By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: February 10, 2010

WASHINGTON — Two former employees of Blackwater Worldwide have accused the private security company of defrauding the government for years by filing bogus receipts, double billing for the same services and charging government agencies for strippers and prostitutes, according to court documents unsealed this week.

In a December 2008 lawsuit, the former employees said top Blackwater officials had engaged in a pattern of deception as they carried out government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The lawsuit, filed under the False Claims Act, also asserts that Blackwater officials turned a blind eye to “excessive and unjustified” force against Iraqi civilians by several Blackwater guards.

Blackwater has earned billions of dollars from government agencies in the years since the Sept. 11 attacks, when the company won contracts to protect American diplomats in Iraq and Afghanistan. The former employees who filed the lawsuit, a married couple named Brad and Melan Davis, said there was little financial oversight of the money. Source Article

National Security Network

22 October 2009

Today, National Security Network Senior Adviser Gen. Paul Eaton (Ret.), who served more than 30 years in the United States Army and from 2003-2004 oversaw the training of the Iraqi military, responded to Dick Cheney’s accusations on Afghanistan from last night:

“The record is clear: Dick Cheney and the Bush administration were incompetent war fighters. They ignored Afghanistan for 7 years with a crude approach to counter-insurgency warfare best illustrated by: 1. Deny it.  2.  Ignore it. 3. Bomb it. While our intelligence agencies called the region the greatest threat to America, the Bush White House under-resourced our military efforts, shifted attention to Iraq, and failed to bring to justice the masterminds of September 11.

“The only time Cheney and his cabal of foreign policy ‘experts’ have anything to say is when they feel compelled to protect this failed legacy. While President Obama is tasked with cleaning up the considerable mess they left behind, they continue to defend torture or rewrite a legacy of indifference on Afghanistan. Simply put, Mr. Cheney sees history throughout extremely myopic and partisan eyes.  Source

Courtesy Global Post:

KABUL — It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

At a staff meeting in 2006, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, who was then commander of Combined Forces Afghanistan, took a sip of bottled water.

Then he looked at the label of one of the Western companies that were being paid millions of dollars a year to ship bottled water by the container load into Afghanistan.

And Eikenberry, who is now the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, said, “There must be a way of producing bottled water in Afghanistan.”

Thus was born the concept of Afghan First, a policy of preferential treatment for Afghan-owned companies that steers military aid into the hands of Afghan vendors.

All local procurement from fuel delivery for the Afghan army to the production of winter socks for the Afghan police — everything short of weapons and ammunition — now comes from a variety of local contractors, who are being paid about $800 million per year from the U.S. military. The largesse comes out of the total $1.1 billion budget for local purchases that falls under the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, CSTC-A for short. It is the lead U.S. agency responsible for developing the Afghan army and police.

“We are building this country,” said Sgt. Edward Gyokeres, chief of the public affairs office at CSTC-A, explaining that the program is intended to use the American and coalition aid money in a way that helps construct a national economy in Afghanistan.

But, paradoxically, this well-intentioned policy may also benefit the insurgency, according to those inside the system, who contend that a significant portion of that money going to Afghan vendors trickles down into the hands of the very enemy the U.S. is battling in Afghanistan — the Taliban.

Precise numbers are impossible to obtain in the lawless fringes of rural Afghanistan where there is very little accounting for this money, but those knowledgeable about the process estimate that at least 10 percent, or about $80 million, has in the last year gone to the diverse groupings of Afghan insurgents whom the U.S. military has come to call the Taliban.

Some contractors say as much as 20 percent of the contracts go to paying off the insurgency, which would put the number closer to $160 million a year.

U.S. and Afghan officials tracking where the Taliban gets its funding estimate that the Taliban’s annual take of the poppy crop is about $100 million

Over the last month, GlobalPost conducted a series of interviews with contractors, military personnel and others who work inside the system and confirmed that a flow of money goes from these local Afghan contractors to the Taliban for payoffs and protection in the widening areas of the country that are Taliban controlled.

In fact, GlobalPost found almost no one inside the military procurement and aid community who expressed surprise at the phenomenon, but very few who were willing to discuss the process on the record out of fear of losing their lucrative contracts, their jobs, or their lives.

“There is no line item for bribes,” said CSTC-A’s Sgt. Gyokeres. “That’s not to say it doesn’t happen.”

-Article continues @ Source.