Obama Fights for Power of Indefinite Military Detention, Unlike Afghan Leaders

Tuesday, September 18, 2012 by The Guardian
Obama lawyers file a breathless, angry appeal against the court ruling that invalidated the NDAA's 2011 detention law

by Glenn Greenwald

In May, something extremely rare happened: a federal court applied the US constitution to impose some limits on the powers of the president. That happened when federal district court judge Katherine Forrest of the southern district of New York, an Obama appointee, preliminarily barred enforcement of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the statute enacted by Congress in December 2011 with broad bipartisan support and signed into law by President Obama (after he had threatened to veto it). 

That 2011 law expressly grants the president the power to indefinitely detain in military custody not only accused terrorists, but also their supporters, all without charges or trial. It does so by empowering the president to indefinitely detain not only al-Qaida members, but also members of so-called "associated forces", as well as anyone found to "substantially support" such forces – whatever those terms might mean. I wrote about that decision and the background to this case when it was issued.

What made Judge Forrest's ruling particularly remarkable is that the lawsuit was brought by eight journalists and activists, such as former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, and Birgitta Jónsdóttir, who argued that their work, which involves interactions with accused terrorists, could subject them to indefinite detention under the law's broad and vague authority, even for US citizens on US soil. The court agreed, noting that the plaintiffs presented "evidence of concrete – non-hypothetical – ways in which the presence of the legislation has already impacted those expressive and associational activities". The court was particularly disturbed by the Obama DOJ's adamant refusal to say, in response to being asked multiple times, that the law could not be used to indefinitely detain the plaintiffs due to their journalistic and political activities.

Last week, Judge Forrest made her preliminary ruling permanent, issuing a 112-page decision explaining it. Noting that the plaintiffs "testified credibly to having an actual and reasonable fear that their activities will subject them to indefinite military detention", she emphasized how dangerous this new law is given the extremely broad discretion it vests in the president to order people detained in military custody with no charges:

The court also brushed aside the Obama DOJ's prime argument, echoing the theories of John Yoo: namely, that courts have no business "interfering" in the president's conduct of war. After acknowledging that the president is entitled to deference in the national security realm, Judge Forrest dispensed with the Obama DOJ's claim with this vital observation: one that should be unnecessary but, in the 9/11 era, is all too commonly ignored:

In other words: while the president is entitled to deference in his conduct of war, he's not entitled to wield the power to order people, including American citizens, indefinitely imprisoned in military detention. Regardless of how he claims he intends to exercise this power, the mere act of vesting it in him so chills the exercise of first amendment and other protected rights that the constitution can have no meaning if courts permit it to stand.

In response to this ruling, the Obama administration not only filed an immediate appeal, but they filed an emergency motion asking the appeals court to lift the injunction pending the appeal. Obama lawyers wrote a breathless attack on the court's ruling, denouncing it as "vastly troubling" and claiming that it "threatens tangible and dangerous consequences in the conduct of an active military conflict" and "threatens irreparable harm to national security".

The Obama DOJ also objected that the decision "was entered against the president as commander-in-chief in his conduct of ongoing military operations, is unprecedented and exceeded the court's authority": how irreverent. And they argued that the broad detention power claimed by President Obama "has been endorsed by two presidents [meaning him and George W Bush], by the [rightwing] DC circuit in habeas litigation brought by Guantánamo detainees, and by the Congress in Section 1021(b)(2)."

I've written at length before about why indefinite detention is so dangerous, and why a statute such as the NDAA – which purposely (as the court here found) leaves open the question of whether it applies to US citizens – is one of the most pernicious laws enacted in some time. I won't rehash that here, but I do want to make two points about the Obama administration's new fight in defense of this law.

First, the Obama administration's unhinged claim that Judge Forrest's ruling imperils national security gives the lie to the central excuse for the NDAA: namely, that it does not expand the president's detention powers beyond what is already vested by the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). Judge Forrest's ruling leaves the 2001 AUMF in place and did not purport to nullify any prior decisions applying it. Therefore, if the NDAA does nothing that the 2001 AUMF did not already do – as Obama defenders relentlessly claimed to justify his signing of this odious bill – then it cannot possibly be the case that Judge Forrest's ruling harms national security, since Obama already has all the detention power he claims he needs under the 2001 AUMF.

The reality is that the NDAA did indeed wildly expand the president's detention powers beyond what the 2001 AUMF provided. In contrast to the 2001 AUMF – which empowered the president to act against a relatively narrow category: those "he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on 11 September 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons" – the NDAA empowers him to act against a much broader range of people: not only those who perpetrated 9/11, but also "associated forces", and not only those who are members of such groups, but those who "substantially support" them.

While the Bush and Obama DOJs have long absurdly interpreted the 2001 AUMF to apply to this broader range, and while some courts have accepted that interpretation, the law itself vested no such power. The NDAA did. That is why civil liberties groups such as the ACLU denounced Obama's signing of it so vociferously, and it is why the Obama DOJ is so horrified, obviously, by the prospect that it will be invalidated: precisely because it so drastically expands their detention power. Both the court's ruling and the Obama DOJ's reaction to that ruling prove that the NDAA does indeed provide the president with significantly enhanced authority of indefinite detention.

Second, to see the sorry and wretched state of liberties in the US under President Obama, let us look to Afghanistan. The US is currently attempting to turn over to the Afghan government control of the lawless prison system the US has long maintained in Bagram and other parts of that country. But that effort is running into a serious problem: namely, the US wants the prisoners to remain there in cages without charges, but the Afghans are insisting that indefinite detention violates their belief in due process. From an Associated Press article Monday headlined "Afghans reject US-favored administrative detention":

"An Afghan judicial panel ruled Monday that administrative detention violates Afghan law, potentially thwarting a US plan to hand over Afghan detainees that American officials believe should continue to be held without a trial.

"President Hamid Karzai's office announced in a statement that a top-level judicial panel met earlier in the day and decided that the detention of Afghan citizens without a court trial 'has not been foreseen in Afghan laws' and therefore could not be used.

"The US government has long held Afghans captured in operations inside the country without trial, arguing that they are enemy combatants and therefore can be detained for as long as their release might pose a danger to the international coalition …

"A US official confirmed that the transfer of detainees had paused because of the dispute."

Is that not amazing? On the very same day that the Obama DOJ fights vigorously in US courts for the right to imprison people without charges, the Afghan government fights just as vigorously for basic due process.

Remember: the US, we're frequently told, is in Afghanistan to bring democracy to the Afghan people and to teach them about freedom. But the Afghan government is refusing the US demand to imprison people without charges on the ground that such lawless detention violates their conceptions of basic freedom. Maybe Afghanistan should invade the US in order to teach Americans about freedom.

This is not the first time this has happened. In 2009, the Obama administration decided that it wanted to target certain Afghan citizens for due process-free assassinations on the ground that the targets to be executed were drug "kingpins". They were to be killed based solely on US accusations, with no trial, just as the Obama administration does with its own citizens. But again, that plan ran into a roadblock: Afghan leaders were horrified by the notion that their citizens would be extrajudicially executed based on unproven suspicions [my emphasis]:

"A US military hit list of about 50 suspected drug kingpins is drawing fierce opposition from Afghan officials, who say it could undermine their fragile justice system and trigger a backlash against foreign troops.

"The US military and Nato officials have authorized their forces to kill or capture individuals on the list, which was drafted within the past year as part of Nato's new strategy to combat drug operations that finance the Taliban …

"General Mohammad Daud Daud, Afghanistan's deputy interior minister for counternarcotics efforts, praised US and British special forces for their help recently in destroying drug labs and stashes of opium. But he said he worried that foreign troops would now act on their own to kill suspected drug lords, based on secret evidence, instead of handing them over for trial.

"'They should respect our law, our constitution and our legal codes,' Daud said. 'We have a commitment to arrest these people on our own' …

"There is a constitutional problem here. A person is innocent unless proven guilty," [former Afghan interior minister Ali Ahmad Jalali] said. "If you go off to kill or capture them, how do you prove that they are really guilty in terms of legal process?"

In other words, the Obama administration has received far more resistance to its due process-free imprisonments and assassinations from Afghans than it has from its own citizens in the US. If only more Americans, including progressives, were willing to point out the most basic truths in response to these Obama power seizures, such as: "If you go off to kill or capture them, how do you prove that they are really guilty in terms of legal process?"

Instead, many Americans, particularly in the age of Obama, are content to assume that anyone whom the US government accuses of being a terrorist should, for that reason alone, be assumed to be guilty, and as a result, any punishment the president decides to dole out – indefinite imprisonment, summary execution – is warranted and just; no bothersome, obsolete procedures such as "trials" or "indictments" are necessary.

It is that mindset that will ensure that Obama's vigorous fight to preserve the power of indefinite detention will provoke so little objection: among Americans, that is – though obviously not among Afghans, who seem to have an actual understanding of, and appreciation for, the value of due process.

US Troops Posed with Body Parts in Afghanistan

Wednesday, April 18, 2012 by Common Dreams
US soldier says he released the photos to the LA Times to show breakdown in leadership and discipline

The Los Angeles Times this morning has released photographs, leaked by a member of the US Army, showing American soldiers posing with the dead and mutilated bodies of Afghan suicide bombers.

A soldier from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division with the body

of an Afghan insurgent killed while trying to plant a roadside bomb.

The photo is one of 18 provided to The Times of U.S.

soldiers posing with corpses.

The soldier who provided the photos did so on condition of anonymity. The Times did reveal that, "he served in Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne's 4th Brigade Combat Team from Ft. Bragg, N.C." and said the soldier released the shocking images to "point to a breakdown in leadership and discipline that he believed compromised the safety of the troops."

The soldier who released the photos told The Times that at the time his fellow soldiers "felt a sense of triumph and satisfaction, especially after learning that the insurgents had been killed by their own explosives." He said, "They were frustrated, just pissed off — their buddies had been blown up by IEDs" — improvised explosive devices — "So they sort of just celebrated."

Recognizing this episode is not an isolated incident of US troops' disregard for Afghan life, the Times notes:

"In January, a video appeared on the Internet showing four U.S. Marines urinating on Afghan corpses. In February, the inadvertent burning of copies of the Koran at a U.S. base triggered riots that left 30 dead and led to the deaths of six Americans. In March, a U.S. Army sergeant went on a nighttime shooting rampage in two Afghan villages, killing 17."

The US Army asked the LA Times not to publish any of the 18 photos it received. Times Editor Davan Maharaj said, "After careful consideration, we decided that publishing a small but representative selection of the photos would fulfill our obligation to readers to report vigorously and impartially on all aspects of the American mission in Afghanistan, including the allegation that the images reflect a breakdown in unit discipline that was endangering U.S. troops."

An Army investigation into the incidents has been launched.

* * *

The Los Angeles Times: U.S. troops posed with body parts of Afghan bombers

The 82nd Airborne Division soldiers arrived at the police station in Afghanistan's Zabol province in February 2010. They inspected the body parts. Then the mission turned macabre: The paratroopers posed for photos next to Afghan police, grinning while some held — and others squatted beside — the corpse's severed legs. 

A few months later, the same platoon was dispatched to investigate the remains of three insurgents who Afghan police said had accidentally blown themselves up. After obtaining a few fingerprints, they posed next to the remains, again grinning and mugging for photographs. 

Two soldiers posed holding a dead man's hand with the middle finger raised. A soldier leaned over the bearded corpse while clutching the man's hand. Someone placed an unofficial platoon patch reading "Zombie Hunter" next to other remains and took a picture.

U.S. Legacy in Afghanistan: Giant Prisons

Monday, February 20, 2012 by Common Dreams
Despite claims to hand over control of the main U.S. detention center in Afghanistan to the Afghans, the U.S. military is instead investing millions to double the size of the facility.

Spencer Ackerman writes in Danger Room this morning:

There once was a plan to turn over the main U.S. detention center in Afghanistan to control of the Afghans in 2011. That’s out the window. Instead, the military is offering millions to vastly expand the center’s inmate intake. 

Specifically, $35 million will fund expansions necessary to house “approximately 2,000 detainees” at the Detention Facility at Parwan on the outskirts of Bagram Air Field, an hour’s drive from Kabul. The Army Corps of Engineers wants to expand “detainee housing, guard towers, administrative facility and Vehicle/Personnel Access Control Gates, security surveillance and restricted access systems,” according to a recent solicitation. A Turkey-based company received the contract in late January. [...] 

And Parwan isn’t the only detention center on the grow: the U.S. is spending up to $100 million building jails across Afghanistan.

* * *

As Nick Turse noted last week, the "drawdown" in Afghanistan has been anything but:

Despite all the talk of drawdowns and withdrawals, there has been a years-long building boom in Afghanistan that shows little sign of abating. In early 2010, the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had nearly 400 bases in Afghanistan. Today, Lieutenant Lauren Rago of ISAF public affairs tells TomDispatch, the number tops 450. 

The hush-hush, high-tech, super-secure facility at the massive air base in Kandahar is just one of many building projects the U.S. military currently has planned or underway in Afghanistan. While some U.S. bases are indeed closing up shop or being transferred to the Afghan government, and there’s talk of combat operations slowing or ending next year, as well as a withdrawal of American combat forces from Afghanistan by 2014, the U.S. military is still preparing for a much longer haul at mega-bases like Kandahar and Bagram airfields. The same is true even of some smaller camps, forward operating bases (FOBs), and combat outposts (COPs) scattered through the country’s backlands. “Bagram is going through a significant transition during the next year to two years,” Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Gerdes of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Bagram Office recently told Freedom Builder, a Corps of Engineers publication. “We’re transitioning... into a long-term, five-year, 10-year vision for the base.” 

Whether the U.S. military will still be in Afghanistan in five or 10 years remains to be seen, but steps are currently being taken to make that possible. U.S. military publications, plans and schematics, contracting documents, and other official data examined by TomDispatch catalog hundreds of construction projects worth billions of dollars slated to begin, continue, or conclude in 2012.

Who Will Liberate America?

Obama, the Human Rights Hypocrite
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Is Obama a hypocrite or merely insouciant? Or is he an idiot?

According to news reports Obama’s White House meeting on Valentine’s day with China’s Vice President, Xi Jinping, provided an opportunity for Obama to raise “a sensitive human rights issue with the Chinese leader-in-waiting.” The brave and forthright Obama didn’t let etiquette or decorum get in his way. Afterwards, Obama declared that Washington would “continue to emphasize what we believe is the importance of realizing the aspirations and rights of all people.”

Think about that for a minute. Washington is now in the second decade of murdering Muslim men, women, and children in six countries. Washington is so concerned with human rights that it drops bombs on schools, hospitals, weddings and funerals, all in order to uphold the human rights of Muslim people. You see, bombing liberates Muslim women from having to wear the burka and from male domination.

One hundred thousand, or one million, dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, a country with destroyed infrastructure, and entire cities, such as Fallujah, bombed and burnt with white phosphorus into cinders is the proper way to show concern for human rights.

Ditto for Afghanistan. And Libya.

In Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia Washington’s drones bring human rights to the people.

Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and secret CIA prison sites are other places to which Washington brings human rights. Obama, who has the power to murder American citizens without due process of law, is too powerless to close Guantanamo Prison.

He is powerless to prevent himself from supplying Israel with weapons with which to murder Palestinians and Lebanese citizens to whom Obama brings human rights by vetoing every UN resolution passed against Israel for its crimes against humanity.

Instead of following Washington’s human rights lead, the evil Chinese invest in other countries, buy things from them, and sell them goods.

Has any foreign dignitary ever raised “a sensitive human rights issue” with Obama or his predecessor? How is the world so deranged that Washington can murder innocents for years on end and still profess to be the world’s defender of human rights?

How many people has China bombed, droned, and sanctioned into non-existence in the 21st century?

Will Syria and Iran be the next victims of Washington’s concern for human rights?

Nothing better illustrates the total unreality of life in the West than the fact that the entire Western world did not break out in riotous laughter over Obama’s expression of his human rights concern over China’s behavior.

Washington’s concern with human rights does not extend as far as airport security where little girls and grandmothers are sexually groped. Antiwar activists have their homes invaded, their personal possessions carried off, and a grand jury is summoned to frame them up on some terrorist charge. US soldier Bradley Manning is held for two years in violation of the US Constitution while the human rights government concocts fabricated charges to punish him for revealing a US war crime. WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is harassed endlessly with the goal of bringing him into the human rights clutches of Washington. Critics of Washington’s inhumane policies are monitored and spied upon.

Washington is the worst violator of human rights in our era, and Washington has only begun.

Who will liberate Americans from Washington’s clutches?

The Whims of an Empire Gone Mad

Horror and Puppetry

by LINH DINH

 

Meat, water, sock or political, it’s not easy being a puppet. Even before the first word tumbles from your mouth, people crack up, and your face alone can bring down the house.

Take this passage from Hamid Karzai, from a 2004 address to a joint session of the American Congress:

Our national army is being trained by American forces, American troops, and wherever we have deployed them the Afghan people have welcomed them. We have initiated the fight against narcotics to save our children, to save your children and children across the world from the evil of addiction to drugs.

It’s amazing the Capitol was still standing after these one liners. Need I remind you that Karzai spent much of his adult life on the payroll of the CIA, the world’s biggest drug gang? And that his brother, since assassinated, was a notorious drug dealer? As for the Afghan people’s love for Karzai’s army, it now depends on four times the number of American troops to keep it from disintegrating or being overrun. The night’s biggest howler, however, came when Karzai related this tale about two American soldiers in Kandahar:

Somebody, a terrorist, threw a grenade at them. The grenade landed in their vehicle. They took the grenade. Instead of throwing it into the street where there were people around them, civilians, these heroic men stuck the grenade under their seat. The grenade exploded. Fortunately, they survived. But they were badly injured. To us, this was also an example of heroism and care for humanity, and we are proud of these two American soldiers. These stories tell a tale of partnership, tell a tale of joint struggle, tell a tale of care and courage and care for humanity.

I’m sorry for being skeptical, but in the long an(n)als of propaganda or warfare, I don’t think anyone has ever claimed that a soldier placed a live grenade under his butts (and jewels). It just doesn’t happen, OK? Even if his mother was standing in that crowded street, I doubt he would shove it right there.

As an American puppet, Karzai had to mouth such absurdities, but these jokes wouldn’t go over too well at home, especially as American atrocities avalanched. When even the New York Times had to report that Afghan children were being blown up just for fun by American chopper crews, Karzai had to protest. He couldn’t follow his supposed outrage to its conclusion, however, by demanding that America quit Afghanistan, because if there were no more American troops in Afghanistan, there would also be no more Karzai… in Afghanistan.

Even Karzai’s own vice-president accused him of being a puppet, so as an American stooge, he had to appear as an uber-Afghan. Thus, the lambskin hat, the bright robe, the tunic. No ordinary suit and tie, Allah forbid, as found on the Syrian President, enemy of the West, or just a discount, JC Penney jacket, as draped on the Iranian leader.

Now, a political puppet can certainly outgrow his role. No longer useful, he can be shoved aside or even killed. Conversely, if he feels that he no longer needs his patron, that he has used this support long enough to consolidate his own power, he can also ditch the patron to stand on his own two feet. This, Karzai hasn’t come close to achieve. Quite the reverse. As recent events have proven, Karzai has become even more superfluous.

Karzai’s only justification for being was that he was an alternative to the Taliban, so when the US started to negotiate with these same Taliban, he went berserk, especially as neither sides bothered to bring him into their discussions. Karzai’s indignation changed nothing, however, so now he’s endorsing this rapprochement between his Yankee masters and his political enemy.

To prove that he’s his own puppet, after all, and a nationalist and humanist, to boot, Karzai’s now demanding that the US returns Bagram Prison to Afghanistan. Citing its atrocious human rights abuses, Karzai considers this complex a violation of Afghan sovereignty. Of course he’s right, but then everything America does in Afghanistan is a violation of Afghan sovereignty, because America shouldn’t be there at all. America’s installation of Hamid Karzai is a violation of Afghan sovereignty.

Since the American invasion, thousands of Afghans have had to suffer indefinite detention without access to a lawyer, often after having been yanked from their home in the middle of the night. Many have been tortured, with some killed in custody. At present, there are over 1,700 prisoners in Bagram. With the National Defense Authorization Act, Americans can now look forward to the same sadistic, inhuman treatment, but who, and how many?

Since there will be no legal presentation or due process, with everything done in secret, you will never know, will you, unless it’s you yourself who are suddenly stripped naked, hung from the ceiling and beaten, forced to endure unbearable cold and to curl up naked on the floor in an empty cell day after day, without any evidence presented whatsoever, with no basis at all for your open-ended suffering but the whims of an empire gone mad.

Russia threatens to block NATO routes in Response to NATO Missile Defense System

29 Nov 2011 - Jafria News

Russia has threatened to block NATO’s supply routes to Afghanistan, should the Western military alliance continue to disregard Moscow’s concerns about the US-led defense shield for Europe, a report says.

Russian Ambassador to NATO Dmitri Rogozin warned that Moscow will review its cooperation with the Western military alliance on Afghanistan if the NATO fails to address Russia’s objections, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Earlier on Thursday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned that direct actions will be taken if his country’s concerns are not addressed.

Medvedev envisioned possible missile attacks on Poland, Romania, Spain, and Turkey as a means to disable the counter-missile batteries, if the United States fails to acknowledge the concerns of the Russian defense officials.

He also warned that the country will deploy nuclear weapons to European borders in response to the move.

Russia’s threats to suspend the NATO supply lines to Afghanistan coincides with a similar punitive measure taken by Pakistan on Saturday in retaliation to the US-led alliance’s recent airstrikes on Pakistani military forces, which killed 24 soldiers.

NATO started using safer routes in Russia to deliver its supplies to its forces since Washington and Moscow reset diplomatic relations in 2009.

The Russian government has long opposed the NATO’s disputed plan of deploying an anti-missile shield in Europe, arguing that the would-be system in its “backyard” is not to secure Washington’s European allies, but is effectively aimed at Russia.

NATO claims that the anti-missile shield is planned to thwart possible attacks from ‘rogue’ states, and it will go ahead with the plan despite Russia’s concerns.

After Years of War, House Holds Votes to Check Military Action

Monday, May 30, 2011 by The Hill

by Russell Berman 

 

An increasingly war-weary House will vote this week on legislation that would halt the U.S. military intervention in Libya. The vote comes just days after lawmakers nearly approved a measure to expedite the American withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The office of Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Friday the House would take up a resolution introduced by anti-war Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) that directs the president to remove U.S. armed forces from Libya. The liberal Democrat is acting under authority of the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which enables legislators to force a vote on troop withdrawal measures under certain conditions.

Kucinich has used the mechanism to force votes on withdrawing forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, most recently in March, but this will be the first such vote on the two-month-old Libya mission.

The measure is not expected to pass, but a significant number of votes in favor could send a sobering message to the White House, which has struggled to win congressional support for the military intervention in Libya. Both Republican and Democratic leaders criticized Obama for a lack of consultation with Congress in the run-up to the military deployment, and the House has ignored his request for a resolution supporting the mission.

Obama has also come under criticism for not providing enough clarity on the goals of the bombing campaign – whether it is merely to protect Libyan civilians from a crackdown by Moammar Ghadafi or whether it is to drive Ghadafi from power.

The House last week overwhelmingly voted to add amendments to a Defense authorization bill to bar the president from deploying ground troops to Libya and stating explicitly that Congress was not, as part of the legislation, authorizing the military mission.

Kucinich seized on those votes to declare increased momentum for ending the U.S. involvement. “Congress is not satisfied with the blank check that this administration has written for itself to conduct the Libyan war,” Kucinich said. “Congress has made it clear that the Libyan war has not been authorized as required by the Constitution and the War Powers Act.”

Aides said Democrats felt comfortable voting to prohibit ground troops in Libya because Obama has already deemed it U.S. policy.

An aide to Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Democratic leaders would not whip their members on the Kucinich resolution.

In a separate vote, the House came surprisingly close to approving an expedited withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. The bipartisan measure, authored by Reps. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Justin Amash (R-Mich.), failed 215-204 after drawing 26 Republican votes and all but eight Democrats.

During the debate over that resolution, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that she told Afghan President Hamid Karzai that Americans wanted to end the war. “Each time I go there, I say, ‘The American people are growing tired of war,’ ” Pelosi said on the floor.

The Corruption Conundrum

Washington Rules
By JOHN GRANT

Corruption is more and more being built up as our greatest problem in Afghanistan. It’s all over the newspapers and the TV. At the epi-center of this corruption, the Kabul Bank we helped create and maintain has run aground and there’s talk in the air of a financial bail-out.

Meanwhile, the $250 million commission created to buy off Taliban fighters is “almost dead,” according to a top Afghan official at the commission. We have no trouble giving US tax dollars to the government and banking system in Afghanistan, but we can’t seem to get the Taliban to take our money.

“In Kabul, politics is all about money,” a prominent Afghan businessman recently told New York Times reporters in a story on the political connections between President Hamid Karzai and the Kabul Bank. It seems the bank gave $14 million for Karzai’s re-election after he agreed to name a bank shareholder’s brother – the fearsome Tajik General Muhammad Fahim -- as his vice presidential candidate.

Afghan and US leaders are concerned the Kabul Bank mess could unravel the government of Afghanistan. It’s a sticky matter for the US, since it helped create both the Afghan government and the Kabul Bank when it invaded in 2001. Our government has a major capital investment in the whole shebang. Our CIA, military and other US agencies have been hosing in US funds for years.

The who’s who of corruption

At this juncture, it’s worth reminding ourselves what’s really going on here. About a year ago, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski was on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show. She apparently knows Brzezinski’s daughter, so it was a loose, friendly conversation. Maddow earnestly asked Brzezinski to comment on the corruption in Afghanistan. Brzezinski paused, then chuckled.

“But Rachel. What about the corruption in Washington?”

It was one of those unplanned remarks that suddenly flung open locked doors and shuttered windows. Yeh, what about the corruption in Washington, the town the infamous Philly Congressman Ozzie Myers summed up this way:

“In this town, money talks and bullshit walks.”

So why should we be aghast, after invading and occupying Afghanistan, to find out “politics is all about money” in Afghanistan?

The greasing of the wheels of politics in Washington is certainly more sophisticated and smoother than it is in Kabul. But let’s not kid ourselves, it’s all part of the same cesspool. Utilizing their best natural instincts, our loyal allies in Kabul have used our guidance and US tax dollar generosity to create an incredible infrastructure of mutual back-scratching and power-sharing. They also lined up some really cool villas in Dubai.

The real problem in Afghanistan for the US government in its determined world domination posture is not, as so many now like to complain, one of corruption. Corruption -- as we’ve seen historically in Central America, Vietnam and a host of other places – is not something the United States is concerned about as long as the corrupt element is in synch with the interests of US policy makers.

All we have to do is recall Franklin Roosevelt’s comment on the English-speaking gangster-President of Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza. “He may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard.”

No. The problem in Afghanistan is that the corruption that up until now has been fine with the US – even funded and encouraged -- is now so pervasive and so evident and alienating for the ordinary Afghan citizen that it is making the Taliban and other insurgent elements look good.

Once again, the United States has used its great wealth and power to nurture a monster that, in the end, has become its own worst enemy. As Pogo put it, “I’ve met the enemy and the enemy is us.” It would be comical if it were not so gravely serious.

Allowing wisdom to happen

Andrew Bacevich opens his new, magnificent book Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War with a tale of himself as an Army colonel on a research mission into the former East Germany, part of the Cold War enemy that loomed over his entire career. He describes how the scales fell from his eyes.

“How could I have so profoundly misjudged the reality of what lay on the far side of the Iron Curtain?” he asked himself. But then that was only the half of it. “Far worse than misperceiving ‘them’ was the fact that I misperceived ‘us’ ”

He refers to himself as a “slow learner,” the truth hitting him in his forties. “Worldly ambition inhibits true learning,” he writes. “A young man in a hurry is nearly uneducable. …All that counts is that he is going somewhere. Only as ambition wanes does education become a possibility.”

That same personal epiphany applies, he says, to the nation as it pursues a state of permanent war on what amounts to the global front lines of what was begun as westward Manifest Destiny centuries ago. This drive to control is our “worldy ambition,” the thing that “inhibits true learning” and precludes the humility it takes to see what is being done in our names as Americans, often dishonestly and in secret.

“If change is to come, it must come from the people,” Bacevich writes. “Yet unless Americans finally awaken to the fact that they’ve been had, Washington will continue to have its way.”

Without this soul-searching change, there will be no meaningful national jobs programs; there will be no needed infrastructure maintenance; there will be no domestic Marshal Plan pursuing alternative energy application; and we will continue to fall behind in educating our youth for the future.

We are now on the verge of bailing out crooks in an Afghan banking system that crashed, just like the economic crisis here, due to irresponsible loans and real estate boondoggles. Just like we did here, we will be bailing out the fat-cat crooks who caused the crisis. And just like here, the poor and working people will suffer.

We will bail the government out in Afghanistan, as Bacevich and Brzezinski make clear, because of our own blinding ambition, drive and corruption – and because we know, if we don’t bail them out in a crisis like this, we will be disempowering them and empowering the Afghan insurgency.

It could be different.

Instead of endorsing permanent militarism, President Obama could take a tack in line with Bacevich’s well-developed thinking. He could use his bully pulpit to educate, “summoning Americans to take on the responsibilities of an active and engaged citizenship … confronting illusions (and) dissecting contradictions.”

If the American people don’t have the courage for such soul searching, Bacevich and others predict disaster ahead. The current Afghan corruption conundrum should be a warning.

As is unfortunately our government’s inclination, choosing to get tough on only the corruption that’s inconvenient for our imperial interests won’t cut it in the end.

Film Shows How Bush Admin Lies Marred Legacy of Pat Tillman

The "Tillman story," tells the struggle his family went through to learn the truth about Tillman's death and how political leaders covered-up the real story
By Rory O'Connor, MediaChannel.org
Posted on August 16, 2010

vidlink

Of the many lies George W. Bush told us about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some were larger but none worse than that told about the death of Pat Tillman.

In 2004 – just after Bush’s invasion of Iraq, ostensibly in search of those non-existent weapons of mass destruction — Tillman became a military-and media-manufactured symbol of duty, sacrifice, patriotism and heroism. But the truth about Tillman’s life is much more complex, and his death ultimately far more heroic, than the convenient, self-serving lie served up by the military and then sent out by our ever-gullible media.

Tillman, a truly remarkable young man who walked away from a multi-million dollar contract as a professional football player to enlist as in the Army Rangers after the 9/11 attacks, is the subject of The Tillman Story, a moving documentary directed by Amir Bar-Lev that opens in theatres in New York and Los Angeles this week. Although the film rightly tells the story of Pat Tillman’s remarkable life, it also focuses on a parallel Tillman story, that of the struggle his family went through to learn the truth about Tillman’s death from “friendly fire” and the ongoing cover-up of how and why our military and political leaders lied in order to exploit his heroism for propaganda purposes.

Tillman was on his second tour of duty when he was killed in Afghanistan — a victim of “fratricide,” inadvertently killed by his own troops during an ill-fated expedition. Our leaders should have told the truth — namely, that Corporal Tillman’s death was a senseless accident coupled with incompetence. Instead they lied — to all of us, but most despicably to his family – rewrote the details of his death, awarding Tillman a posthumous Silver Star, America’s third-highest military decoration, and turned the tragedy into an opportunity to promote their endless and unpopular wars.

Why did they lie? No doubt it began because at the time of Tillman’s death, in April 2004, the Bush war machine was roiled by a number of negative images that threatened to adversely affect public perception of the war in Iraq. Remember those haunting photographs and videos of the bodies of American contractors strung up in Fallujah? Can you ever forget the searing images depicting abuse by U.S. soldiers working as guards in the Abu Ghraib prison? Adding the news that American soldiers had gunned down a celebrated NFL star certainly wouldn’t help the war effort… So Pat Tillman was recast, in death, as a war hero and lesson to us all.

The Tillman Story excels in teaching us other lessons, however — not only about Corporal Pat Tillman, but also about his remarkable family, led by his indefatigable mother Dannie. It shows the arduous journey his family undertook to find the truth about what happened and to have someone held accountable not only for their son’s death but also for the added insult of its use as a propaganda tool. Handed a massive, confusing box of intelligence records — thousands of pages of documents about her son’s death – Dannie Tillman patiently dug through the voluminous material to uncover the roots of a carefully coordinated cover-up. Her efforts, along with that of Tillman’s father and other family members and friends, eventually forced a Congressional hearing into the matter. As the film dramatically demonstrates in its stunning climax, however, the ultimate fix was in… and although the many obvious lies and cover-ups can be tracked up to and even well beyond such military brass as the recently fired general Stanley McChrystal, in the end no one among the higher-ups was ever found blameworthy or even responsible for lying to the Tillman family and the nation.

In lieu of presenting a hagiography, Director Bar-Lev does an excellent job of humanizing Tillman and offering a multi-dimensional look at his actual character. Scenes with Tillman’s family as they lovingly describe his character and his close, funny and frequently profane relationship with two brothers (the film is unfortunately and unfairly burdened with an “R” rating as a result) along with testimony from family friends and fellow soldiers paint a clear portrait of who Tillman really was — warts and all. As Bar-Lev points out, Pat Tillman was no “paragon of moral certitude; he was curious and tried to see things from every possible point of view.” That impulse is what the director attempts to give back to his subject, after he had been dehumanized and exploited for political gain by America’s leaders, aided and abetted as usual by the complicit cheerleaders of the national news media.

“I hope the story of Tillman tells us that heroism and humanity are not contradictory and heroism is complex,” Bar-Lev told Documentary magazine. “‘Hero’ is a problematic word that says a lot more about the people using it than the person they’re speaking about….

“I knew there were myths around his death,” Bar-Lev added, “but what began to intrigue me was when we found out there were equally as many myths about his life.”

“Ultimately, what I would want to have happen is just the truth,” Pat’s youngest brother Richard told ESPN.com. “At the end of the day, Pat deserves the truth. This isn’t about our family. This isn’t about the Tillmans. This is about Pat Tillman. And he deserves the truth, period. He sacrificed so much for his country, and then the government turns around and uses him for propaganda. That is totally unacceptable.”

Blackwater guards indicted for murder

By Eric W. Dolan  |  Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

A federal grand jury has added an additional indictment to a former Blackwater employee involved in the murders of two Afghan civilians in May of 2009, according to The Virginian-Pilot.

Two Blackwater guards have been charged with second-degree murder for the fatal shootings.

The Virginian-Pilot reports,

[Christopher] Drotleff, of Virginia Beach, and [Justin] Cannon, of Corpus Christi, Texas, were working for a subsidiary of Blackwater, also known as Xe, to train the Afghan police force in Kabul. The indictment alleges they were drinking that day when they became involved in a traffic accident and began firing their weapons at another car.

Drotleff and Cannon say they fired in self-defense, in fear for their lives, at a car that was speeding toward them. The government counters that the victims were all shot from behind.

The new indictment replaces a firearm charge against Cannon with use of a machine gun during the killings. The new charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years in prison on conviction.

The two former Blackwater security workers were also charged with aiding and abetting each other in the murders of Rahib Mirza Mohammad and Romal Mohammad Naiem. A third civilian, Fareed Haji Ahamd, was wounded in the shooting.

Drotleff and Cannon will appear before the grand jury for trial on September 14.

A similar incident occurred in 2007, when five Blackwater security workers shot and killed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.

The five guards, who had been part of a convoy of armored vehicles, had been charged with killing 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians and wounding 18 others during an unprovoked attack at a busy Baghdad traffic circle using gunfire and grenades.

The men had faced firearms charges, and up to 10 years in jail on each of 14 manslaughter counts, but a judge dismissed the case.

In 2009 Blackwater Worldwide officially changed its name to Xe, in the midst of widespread negative publicity. Then they changed their name to Prevanent.

How the US Funds the Taliban

Defense contractors in Afghanistan use federal funds to pay off suspected insurgents not to attack US supply convoys. And this payola may be a major source of funds for the Taliban.
BY ARAM ROSTON  |  THE NATION

On October 29, 2001, while the Taliban's rule over Afghanistan was under assault, the regime's ambassador in Islamabad gave a chaotic press conference in front of several dozen reporters sitting on the grass. On the Taliban diplomat's right sat his interpreter, Ahmad Rateb Popal, a man with an imposing presence. Like the ambassador, Popal wore a black turban, and he had a huge bushy beard. He had a black patch over his right eye socket, a prosthetic left arm and a deformed right hand, the result of injuries from an explosives mishap during an old operation against the Soviets in Kabul.

But Popal was more than just a former mujahedeen. In 1988, a year before the Soviets fled Afghanistan, Popal had been charged in the United States with conspiring to import more than a kilo of heroin. Court records show he was released from prison in 1997.

Flash forward to 2009, and Afghanistan is ruled by Popal's cousin President Hamid Karzai. Popal has cut his huge beard down to a neatly trimmed one and has become an immensely wealthy businessman, along with his brother Rashid Popal, who in a separate case pleaded guilty to a heroin charge in 1996 in Brooklyn. The Popal brothers control the huge Watan Group in Afghanistan, a consortium engaged in telecommunications, logistics and, most important, security. Watan Risk Management, the Popals' private military arm, is one of the few dozen private security companies in Afghanistan. One of Watan's enterprises, key to the war effort, is protecting convoys of Afghan trucks heading from Kabul to Kandahar, carrying American supplies.

Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort.

In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. "It's a big part of their income," one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts — hundreds of millions of dollars — consists of payments to insurgents.

Understanding how this situation came to pass requires untangling two threads. The first is the insider dealing that determines who wins and who loses in Afghan business, and the second is the troubling mechanism by which "private security" ensures that the US supply convoys traveling these ancient trade routes aren't ambushed by insurgents.

A good place to pick up the first thread is with a small firm awarded a US military logistics contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars: NCL Holdings. Like the Popals' Watan Risk, NCL is a licensed security company in Afghanistan.

What NCL Holdings is most notorious for in Kabul contracting circles, though, is the identity of its chief principal, Hamed Wardak. He is the young American son of Afghanistan's current defense minister, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, who was a leader of the mujahedeen against the Soviets. Hamed Wardak has plunged into business as well as policy. He was raised and schooled in the United States, graduating as valedictorian from Georgetown University in 1997. He earned a Rhodes scholarship and interned at the neoconservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute. That internship was to play an important role in his life, for it was at AEI that he forged alliances with some of the premier figures in American conservative foreign policy circles, such as the late Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick.

Wardak incorporated NCL in the United States early in 2007, although the firm may have operated in Afghanistan before then. It made sense to set up shop in Washington, because of Wardak's connections there. On NCL's advisory board, for example, is Milton Bearden, a well-known former CIA officer. Bearden is an important voice on Afghanistan issues; in October he was a witness before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where Senator John Kerry, the chair, introduced him as "a legendary former CIA case officer and a clearheaded thinker and writer." It is not every defense contracting company that has such an influential adviser.

But the biggest deal that NCL got — the contract that brought it into Afghanistan's major leagues — was Host Nation Trucking. Earlier this year the firm, with no apparent trucking experience, was named one of the six companies that would handle the bulk of US trucking in Afghanistan, bringing supplies to the web of bases and remote outposts scattered across the country.

At first the contract was large but not gargantuan. And then that suddenly changed, like an immense garden coming into bloom. Over the summer, citing the coming "surge" and a new doctrine, "Money as a Weapons System," the US military expanded the contract 600 percent for NCL and the five other companies. The contract documentation warns of dire consequences if more is not spent: "service members will not get food, water, equipment, and ammunition they require." Each of the military's six trucking contracts was bumped up to $360 million, or a total of nearly $2.2 billion. Put it in this perspective: this single two-year effort to hire Afghan trucks and truckers was worth 10 percent of the annual Afghan gross domestic product. NCL, the firm run by the defense minister's well-connected son, had struck pure contracting gold.

Host Nation Trucking does indeed keep the US military efforts alive in Afghanistan. "We supply everything the army needs to survive here," one American trucking executive told me. "We bring them their toilet paper, their water, their fuel, their guns, their vehicles." The epicenter is Bagram Air Base, just an hour north of Kabul, from which virtually everything in Afghanistan is trucked to the outer reaches of what the Army calls "the Battlespace" — that is, the entire country. Parked near Entry Control Point 3, the trucks line up, shifting gears and sending up clouds of dust as they prepare for their various missions across the country.

The real secret to trucking in Afghanistan is ensuring security on the perilous roads, controlled by warlords, tribal militias, insurgents and Taliban commanders. The American executive I talked to was fairly specific about it: "The Army is basically paying the Taliban not to shoot at them. It is Department of Defense money." That is something everyone seems to agree on.

Mike Hanna is the project manager for a trucking company called Afghan American Army Services. The company, which still operates in Afghanistan, had been trucking for the United States for years but lost out in the Host Nation Trucking contract that NCL won. Hanna explained the security realities quite simply: "You are paying the people in the local areas — some are warlords, some are politicians in the police force— to move your trucks through."

Hanna explained that the prices charged are different, depending on the route: "We're basically being extorted. Where you don't pay, you're going to get attacked. We just have our field guys go down there, and they pay off who they need to." Sometimes, he says, the extortion fee is high, and sometimes it is low. "Moving ten trucks, it is probably $800 per truck to move through an area. It's based on the number of trucks and what you're carrying. If you have fuel trucks, they are going to charge you more. If you have dry trucks, they're not going to charge you as much. If you are carrying MRAPs or Humvees, they are going to charge you more."

Hanna says it is just a necessary evil. "If you tell me not to pay these insurgents in this area, the chances of my trucks getting attacked increase exponentially."

Whereas in Iraq the private security industry has been dominated by US and global firms like Blackwater, operating as de facto arms of the US government, in Afghanistan there are lots of local players as well. As a result, the industry in Kabul is far more dog-eat-dog. "Every warlord has his security company," is the way one executive explained it to me.

In theory, private security companies in Kabul are heavily regulated, although the reality is different. Thirty-nine companies had licenses until September, when another dozen were granted licenses. Many licensed companies are politically connected: just as NCL is owned by the son of the defense minister and Watan Risk Management is run by President Karzai's cousins, the Asia Security Group is controlled by Hashmat Karzai, another relative of the president. The company has blocked off an entire street in the expensive Sherpur District. Another security firm is controlled by the parliamentary speaker's son, sources say. And so on.

In the same way, the Afghan trucking industry, key to logistics operations, is often tied to important figures and tribal leaders. One major hauler in Afghanistan, Afghan International Trucking (AIT), paid $20,000 a month in kickbacks to a US Army contracting official, according to the official's plea agreement in US court in August. AIT is a very well-connected firm: it is run by the 25-year-old nephew of Gen. Baba Jan, a former Northern Alliance commander and later a Kabul police chief. In an interview, Baba Jan, a cheerful and charismatic leader, insisted he had nothing to do with his nephew's corporate enterprise.

But the heart of the matter is that insurgents are getting paid for safe passage because there are few other ways to bring goods to the combat outposts and forward operating bases where soldiers need them. By definition, many outposts are situated in hostile terrain, in the southern parts of Afghanistan. The security firms don't really protect convoys of American military goods here, because they simply can't; they need the Taliban's cooperation.

One of the big problems for the companies that ship American military supplies across the country is that they are banned from arming themselves with any weapon heavier than a rifle. That makes them ineffective for battling Taliban attacks on a convoy. "They are shooting the drivers from 3,000 feet away with PKMs," a trucking company executive in Kabul told me. "They are using RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] that will blow up an up-armed vehicle. So the security companies are tied up. Because of the rules, security companies can only carry AK-47s, and that's just a joke. I carry an AK — and that's just to shoot myself if I have to!"

The rules are there for a good reason: to guard against devastating collateral damage by private security forces. Still, as Hanna of Afghan American Army Services points out, "An AK-47 versus a rocket-propelled grenade — you are going to lose!" That said, at least one of the Host Nation Trucking companies has tried to do battle instead of paying off insurgents and warlords. It is a US-owned firm called Four Horsemen International. Instead of providing payments, it has tried to fight off attackers. And it has paid the price in lives, with horrendous casualties. FHI, like many other firms, refused to talk publicly; but I've been told by insiders in the security industry that FHI's convoys are attacked on virtually every mission.

For the most part, the security firms do as they must to survive. A veteran American manager in Afghanistan who has worked there as both a soldier and a private security contractor in the field told me, "What we are doing is paying warlords associated with the Taliban, because none of our security elements is able to deal with the threat." He's an Army veteran with years of Special Forces experience, and he's not happy about what's being done. He says that at a minimum American military forces should try to learn more about who is getting paid off.

"Most escorting is done by the Taliban," an Afghan private security official told me. He's a Pashto and former mujahedeen commander who has his finger on the pulse of the military situation and the security industry. And he works with one of the trucking companies carrying US supplies. "Now the government is so weak," he added, "everyone is paying the Taliban."

To Afghan trucking officials, this is barely even something to worry about. One woman I met was an extraordinary entrepreneur who had built up a trucking business in this male-dominated field. She told me the security company she had hired dealt directly with Taliban leaders in the south. Paying the Taliban leaders meant they would send along an escort to ensure that no other insurgents would attack. In fact, she said, they just needed two armed Taliban vehicles. "Two Taliban is enough," she told me. "One in the front and one in the back." She shrugged. "You cannot work otherwise. Otherwise it is not possible."

Which leads us back to the case of Watan Risk, the firm run by Ahmad Rateb Popal and Rashid Popal, the Karzai family relatives and former drug dealers. Watan is known to control one key stretch of road that all the truckers use: the strategic route to Kandahar called Highway 1. Think of it as the road to the war — to the south and to the west. If the Army wants to get supplies down to Helmand, for example, the trucks must make their way through Kandahar.

Watan Risk, according to seven different security and trucking company officials, is the sole provider of security along this route. The reason is simple: Watan is allied with the local warlord who controls the road. Watan's company website is quite impressive, and claims its personnel "are diligently screened to weed out all ex-militia members, supporters of the Taliban, or individuals with loyalty to warlords, drug barons, or any other group opposed to international support of the democratic process." Whatever screening methods it uses, Watan's secret weapon to protect American supplies heading through Kandahar is a man named Commander Ruhullah. Said to be a handsome man in his 40s, Ruhullah has an oddly high-pitched voice. He wears traditional salwar kameez and a Rolex watch. He rarely, if ever, associates with Westerners. He commands a large group of irregular fighters with no known government affiliation, and his name, security officials tell me, inspires obedience or fear in villages along the road.

It is a dangerous business, of course: until last spring Ruhullah had competition — a one-legged warlord named Commander Abdul Khaliq. He was killed in an ambush.

So Ruhullah is the surviving road warrior for that stretch of highway. According to witnesses, he works like this: he waits until there are hundreds of trucks ready to convoy south down the highway. Then he gets his men together, setting them up in 4x4s and pickups. Witnesses say he does not limit his arsenal to AK-47s but uses any weapons he can get. His chief weapon is his reputation. And for that, Watan is paid royally, collecting a fee for each truck that passes through his corridor. The American trucking official told me that Ruhullah "charges $1,500 per truck to go to Kandahar. Just 300 kilometers."

It's hard to pinpoint what this is, exactly — security, extortion or a form of "insurance." Then there is the question, Does Ruhullah have ties to the Taliban? That's impossible to know. As an American private security veteran familiar with the route said, "He works both sides... whatever is most profitable. He's the main commander. He's got to be involved with the Taliban. How much, no one knows."

Even NCL, the company owned by Hamed Wardak, pays. Two sources with direct knowledge tell me that NCL sends its portion of US logistics goods in Watan's and Ruhullah's convoys. Sources say NCL is billed $500,000 per month for Watan's services. To underline the point: NCL, operating on a $360 million contract from the US military, and owned by the Afghan defense minister's son, is paying millions per year from those funds to a company owned by President Karzai's cousins, for protection.

Hamed Wardak wouldn't return my phone calls. Milt Bearden, the former CIA officer affiliated with the company, wouldn't speak with me either. There's nothing wrong with Bearden engaging in business in Afghanistan, but disclosure of his business interests might have been expected when testifying on US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. After all, NCL stands to make or lose hundreds of millions based on the whims of US policy-makers.

It is certainly worth asking why NCL, a company with no known trucking experience, and little security experience to speak of, would win a contract worth $360 million. Plenty of Afghan insiders are asking questions. "Why would the US government give him a contract if he is the son of the minister of defense?" That's what Mahmoud Karzai asked me. He is the brother of President Karzai, and he himself has been treated in the press as a poster boy for access to government officials. The New York Times even profiled him in a highly critical piece. In his defense, Karzai emphasized that he, at least, has refrained from US government or Afghan government contracting. He pointed out, as others have, that Hamed Wardak had little security or trucking background before his company received security and trucking contracts from the Defense Department. "That's a questionable business practice," he said. "They shouldn't give it to him. How come that's not questioned?"

I did get the opportunity to ask General Wardak, Hamed's father, about it. He is quite dapper, although he is no longer the debonair "Gucci commander" Bearden once described. I asked Wardak about his son and NCL. "I've tried to be straightforward and correct and fight corruption all my life," the defense minister said. "This has been something people have tried to use against me, so it has been painful."

Wardak would speak only briefly about NCL. The issue seems to have produced a rift with his son. "I was against it from the beginning, and that's why we have not talked for a long time. I have never tried to support him or to use my power or influence that he should benefit."

When I told Wardak that his son's company had a US contract worth as much as $360 million, he did a double take. "This is impossible," he said. "I do not believe this."

I believed the general when he said he really didn't know what his son was up to. But cleaning up what look like insider deals may be easier than the next step: shutting down the money pipeline going from DoD contracts to potential insurgents.

Two years ago, a top Afghan security official told me, Afghanistan's intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, had alerted the American military to the problem. The NDS delivered what I'm told are "very detailed" reports to the Americans explaining how the Taliban are profiting from protecting convoys of US supplies.

The Afghan intelligence service even offered a solution: what if the United States were to take the tens of millions paid to security contractors and instead set up a dedicated and professional convoy support unit to guard its logistics lines? The suggestion went nowhere.

The bizarre fact is that the practice of buying the Taliban's protection is not a secret. I asked Col. David Haight, who commands the Third Brigade of the Tenth Mountain Division, about it. After all, part of Highway 1 runs through his area of operations. What did he think about security companies paying off insurgents? "The American soldier in me is repulsed by it," he said in an interview in his office at FOB Shank in Logar Province. "But I know that it is what it is: essentially paying the enemy, saying, 'Hey, don't hassle me.' I don't like it, but it is what it is."

As a military official in Kabul explained contracting in Afghanistan overall, "We understand that across the board 10 percent to 20 percent goes to the insurgents. My intel guy would say it is closer to 10 percent. Generally it is happening in logistics."

In a statement to The Nation about Host Nation Trucking, Col. Wayne Shanks, the chief public affairs officer for the international forces in Afghanistan, said that military officials are "aware of allegations that procurement funds may find their way into the hands of insurgent groups, but we do not directly support or condone this activity, if it is occurring." He added that, despite oversight, "the relationships between contractors and their subcontractors, as well as between subcontractors and others in their operational communities, are not entirely transparent."

In any case, the main issue is not that the US military is turning a blind eye to the problem. Many officials acknowledge what is going on while also expressing a deep disquiet about the situation. The trouble is that — as with so much in Afghanistan — the United States doesn't seem to know how to fix it.

The Military Can Waste Money Too

Texas Straight Talk
by Ron Paul

This past week various news events once again made it abundantly clear that our foreign policy is an abject failure. Unfortunately, in spite of this the administration is determined to stay on this destructive course, despite any past promises to change it. For Afghanistan especially, if ever there was an opportunity to admit shortcomings and change strategies along with leaders, this past week was it.

There really is nothing for us to win in Afghanistan. Our mission has morphed from apprehending those who attacked us, to apprehending those who threaten or dislike us for invading their country, to remaking an entire political system and even a culture. I remain highly skeptical that, as foreign occupiers, we can ever impose western-style democracy on another country. Our troops have debilitating restrictions on defending themselves against enemies, which are so often indistinguishable from civilians. They also face dire setbacks in winning hearts and minds when innocents are mistakenly harmed, which happens all the time. We can never make friends this way; the tactic never works.

This is an expensive, bloody, endless exercise in futility. Not everyone is willing to admit this just yet. But every second they spend in denial has real costs in lives and livelihoods.

Many of us can agree on one thing, however. Our military spending in general has grown way out of control. This is largely because fiscal accountability in military budgeting is seen, by many, as weak on defense. This is absolutely wrong and a dangerous way to think. It is certainly possible for the military to waste money, or to spend money counterproductively, and indeed it has. But out of political correctness, the military has been getting blank checks from the administrations and Congress for far too long.

It is important to defend our soil, but let us defend our own soil instead of defending Europe’s soil. Our willingness to defend Europe enables their lavish social spending at our expense, while they criticize our model of capitalism. It is time they allocated the money for their own defense. The same goes for Korea, Japan and other countries like Egypt and Israel.

It is also important that while our troops are in combat, our soldiers have what they need to do the best they can, even if we disagree with why they are there. It is an embarrassment that some soldiers and families have had to buy body armor at their own expense when billions are awarded to politically well-connected defense contractors for weapon systems that don’t work, are over-budget, past deadline. This is the kind of waste that needs to end. I firmly believe that there is enough waste in the military budget that we can both save money overall and at the same time be safer.

Of course, the obvious way to save money and be safer is to stop meddling in the affairs of foreign countries and just bring our troops home. This will happen eventually if our empire, like every other fallen empire, insists on spending itself into collapse. If we want to avoid this, we must look into ways to bring our costs under control. Military budgets must be on the chopping block along with everything else.

Blackwater is STILL Getting Govt Contracts worth Millions of Dollars

(This is completely insane!!! Blackwater should not even exist anymore, much less still be getting govt contracts for security in militarized zones. They are founded by war hawks, & manned by mercenaries--and ALL of them are guilty of murder.--jef)

###

Blackwater Firm Gets $120M U.S. Gov't Contract
Published on 06-19-2010

CBS News has learned in an exclusive report that the State Department has awarded a part of what was formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide a contract worth more than $120 million for providing security services in Afghanistan.

Private security firm U.S. Training Center, a business unit of the Moyock, N.C.-based Blackwater, now called Xe Services, was awarded the contract Friday, a State Department spokeswoman said Friday night.

Under the contract, U.S. Training Center will provide "protective security services" at the new U.S. consulates in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, the spokeswoman said. The firm can begin work "immediately" and has to start within two months. The contract lasts a year but can be extended twice for three months at a time to last a maximum of 18 months.

Should the firm fulfill all 18 months available in the contract, it will be paid a total of $120,123,293, the spokeswoman said.

The awarding of the contract comes just more than four months after the government of Iraq ordered hundreds of Blackwater-linked security guards to leave the country within seven days or face possible arrest.

The Justice Department is also trying to prosecute a case against five Blackwater guards who had opened fire on a crowded Baghdad street in 2007. Last December, a federal judge dismissed the U.S. government's case against the guards in the deaths of unarmed Iraqi civilians killed in the shooting because prosecutors used sworn statements the guards gave under a promise of immunity. Federal prosecutors are continuing to appeal the dismissal.

The Justice Department's case or Blackwater's expulsion from Iraq didn't block U.S. Training Center from bidding on the multi-million dollar contract, the State Department spokeswoman said.

"Under federal acquisition regulations, the prosecution of the specific Blackwater individuals does not preclude the company or its successive companies and subsidiaries from bidding on contracts," the spokeswoman said. "On the basis of full and open competition, the department performed a full technical evaluation of all proposals and determined the U.S. Training Center has the best ability and qualifications to meet the contract requirements."

Two other companies submitted bids for the contract, the spokeswoman said; however, she could not name either of U.S. Training Center's competitors when reached Friday night.

Obama's Afghanistan Strategy: The News is Bad

Public skepticism about the war is growing. 53% say war "not worth fighting"
by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - While U.S. officials insist they are making progress in reversing the momentum built up by the Taliban insurgency over the last several years, the latest news from Afghanistan suggests the opposite may be closer to the truth.

People gather around the coffins of men who were killed in the Kandahar attack. (Reuters) Even senior military officials are conceding privately that their much-touted new counterinsurgency strategy of "clear, hold and build" in contested areas of the Pashtun southern and eastern parts of the country are not working out as planned despite the "surge" of some 20,000 additional U.S. troops over the past six months.

Casualties among the nearly 130,000 U.S. and other NATO troops now deployed in Afghanistan are also mounting quickly.

Four U.S. troops were killed Wednesday when Taliban fire brought down their helicopter in the southern province of Helmand, the scene of a major U.S. offensive centered on the strategic farming region of Marja over the past several months.

That brought the death toll of NATO soldiers just this week to 23, including 10 killed in various attacks around the country on Monday, the deadliest day for NATO forces in two years.

"It's been a tough week," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Wednesday.

Seventeen of the 23 were U.S. soldiers, bringing the total U.S. death toll in and around Afghanistan since the U.S. intervened to oust the Taliban from power in late 2001 to more than 1,100, according to the independent iCasualties website.

While senior military officials attributed the steadily rising toll to Washington's surge of a total of 30,000 additional troops by next month, as well as the beginning of the Taliban's annual summer offensive, none other than Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned that the U.S. and its NATO allies were running out of time to show results.

"The one thing none of the (alliance's) publics...including the American public, will tolerate is the perception of stalemate in which we're losing young men," he said in London Wednesday on the eve of a key NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels this week at which Afghanistan will top the agenda and Gates himself is expected to prod his interlocutors to fulfil pledges to provide more troops.

"All of us, for our publics, are going to have to show by the end of the year that our strategy is on the track, making some headway," he said.

Obama, who last November set a July 2011 as the date after which Washington would begin to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, has said his administration will conduct a major review of U.S. strategy and whether it is working at the end of this year.

The latest polling here shows a noticeable erosion of support for Washington's commitment to the war compared to eight months ago when Obama agreed to the Pentagon's recommendations to send the 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to bring the total U.S. presence there to around 100,000.

An additional 34,000 troops from NATO and non-NATO allies are supposed to be deployed there by year's end.

According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Thursday, 53 percent of respondents said the war in Afghanistan, which last month, according to most measures, exceeded the Vietnam conflict as the longest-running war in U.S. history, was "not worth fighting". That was the highest percentage in more than three years.

The same poll found that 39 percent of the public believe that Washington is losing the war, compared to 42 percent who believe it is winning.

While public skepticism about the war appears to be growing, the foreign policy elite, including within the military, also seems increasingly doubtful for a number of reasons.

Disillusionment with President Hamid Karzai - already running high as a result of last year's rigged elections and his tolerance for government and family corruption - gained new momentum last weekend with the forced resignations of his two top security officials, Interior Minister Hanif Atmar and intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, who were considered by Western officials as among the most competent of Karzai's cabinet members.

The two men reportedly objected strongly to Karzai's order to release all accused Taliban prisoners who are being held without enough evidence for trials.

The order was seen as the latest in a series of moves designed to reconcile with the Taliban leadership, a step that Washington has strongly opposed until now.

Among other things, the U.S. fears that such a move could prompt leaders of the Northern Alliance, which consists of non-Pashtun groups, to break with the government and prepare for renewed civil war of the kind that devastated Afghanistan before the Taliban first took control in 1996.

Karzai's bid for reconciliation stems from his conviction, according to a number of accounts, that U.S. strategy is unlikely to succeed in weakening - let alone defeating - the Taliban and that his hold on power will ultimately rely on reaching an accommodation with them.

That impression may well be grounded in an accurate assessment of the way Washington's counterinsurgency strategy is actually playing out.

Indeed, the Marja campaign, which was heralded as a major test of Washington's new strategy when it was launched in February, appears to be faltering badly. Late last month, Washington's overall military commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, even referred to it as "a bleeding ulcer".

While it initially succeeded in "clearing" Taliban from the region McChrystal's pledge that U.S. troops would bring with them an Afghan "government in a box" that would provide basic security and social services proved, as a feature story in Thursday's Washington Post described it, "largely empty".

As a result of local disillusionment with the police and the very few Afghan civilian officials that followed the U.S. military into the area, insurgents have regrouped and in some areas regained the offensive, according to the latest reports. One recent study found that the majority of the population had become more antagonistic to NATO forces than was the case before the operation began.

The Marja experience has cast doubt on a yet more ambitious and strategically critical operation planned for Kandahar.

While Washington had initially planned to launch a major military operation to "clear" Taliban from neighborhoods in and around the city before introducing the civilian component of the counterinsurgency strategy, it has now reversed the order in hopes of not alienating the local population as it did in Marja.

But the presence of more police and civilian officials will no doubt require a build-up of NATO troops to protect them, particularly in light of a stepped-up and highly effective Taliban campaign to intimidate government officials who are perceived as cooperating with the Western forces by assassinating selected targets, including even low-level bureaucrats.

The Coming Escalation in Obama’s War

by Ali Ahmed
June 4, 2010

Six months on and Obama’s War is nowhere nearer the end state he outlined in his West Point speech of December last year. He has merely a year to deliver on his promise of beginning to pull back troops by July next year. This is only seemingly a setback. The ‘AfPak strategy’ can be expected to have planned for this contingency. Escalating the war this military campaigning season is therefore possible given US presidential election-related deadlines of 2012.

The political prong of strategy has not delivered the ‘good’ Taliban yet. The ongoing jirga is the latest effort to this end. With the hostiles staying away and terrorists attacking it, it is a non-starter. US allies are in disarray. The German President has had to resign over controversial remarks and the new UK dispensation has promised a review. Pakistan appears to have gained space for its position of having a ‘say’ in Afghanistan after its strategic dialogue with the US of February. Nevertheless, Secretary Clinton felt it necessary to administer a warning of unspecified action in case of a successful repeat of the Times Square plot. Relations between the US and Karzai are back on an even keel, but the military operation in Kandahar looms large ahead.

Militarily, US casualties have crossed 1000 even as US troops in Afghanistan finally exceeded their numbers in Iraq. Drones have been an effective weapon; but have drawn adverse attention from the UN on their use viewed through the prism of laws of war. Operation Mostarak, launched in the Taliban heartland of Marjah in Helmand in February, would have been studied for any lessons for application in the forthcoming campaign, and in particular how to avoid killing civilians. The link between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban has deepened, with the Pakistani Taliban demonstrating repeatedly their ability and intent by taking terror into Punjabi heartland best signaled by the Friday massacres in the two Ahmadiya mosques in Lahore. Hakimullah Mehsud has resurfaced.

The course of the future can be seen in the constellation of the present. Pakistan has conducted its conventional exercises Azm e Nau involving 40,000 troops. The exercise gives it the self-confidence to take on any Indian attack in case a future terrorist provocation was to cross the Indian threshold of tolerance. Operation Rah-e-Nijat to clear South Waziristan having ended last year, the army has had a breather. The operations over the past two years have not borne out the apprehension that an ethnic divide would open up in the Pakistan Army. Therefore, the Army is ready for the summer campaign. It is being pressured to go into North Waziristan to knock out the base of the Haqqani faction there. Kayani’s extension as Chief being virtually certain, the Pakistan Army may well do so, in conjunction with launch of the long delayed operations in Kandahar by US troops. Feelers for talks through declarations of Karzai, the Arabs, Pakistanis, the UN and possibly the UK, have not yielded results. This is seen as legitimizing the military option. This is the escalation predicted in the immediate future.

The intent would be to degrade the Taliban further. If the Taliban has not come to talk thus far, it is because it has apparently not felt pressured enough. A concerted operation on both sides of the Durand line could influence its decision and, in any case, contain its presence and military capacity. While military success can be predicted in light of the experience gained and preparatory time thus far, the possible asymmetric response options compel a pause.

Two possible outcomes can be envisaged. First is the worst case scenario in which the Punjabi portion of Pakistani Taliban escalates forays into mainland Pakistan. This would increase their unpopularity and enable legitimacy for military operations underway. However, two factors merit attention. One is whether the Pakistani state and society would be able to bear an extended terrorist onslaught. This concern is occasioned by the fact that both Zardari and the US are not popular even in mainstream Pakistan. The Punjabi Taliban has identified the Pakistani state with the US. A repeat of the situation in Algeria in the early nineties that resulted in over a hundred thousand dead eventually is a plausible scenario. Next, is the impact on cohesion of the Pakistan Army. The consensus among the Corps Commanders could come under considerable strain. Fears of this had led Pakistan to suggest to its partner, the US, a reaching out to the Taliban. With Mullah Omar still holding out, the fears may yet come true. Added to this is the wild card of terror directed at India and the US.

The second scenario is one in which the low intensity war continues, with the Taliban considerably inconvenienced, but still reckonable as a military foe and political presence. Obama has the choice to follow the set schedule without the situation stabilizing to desired levels, but with both Kayani and Karzai having the capacity to manage the degraded Taliban. This can transpire if the Pakistani state and society display the capacity to withstand the inevitable spike in violence. For this, Pakistan would require considerable support.

Additionally, even as the operations are ongoing, another Arabian or Pakistani-led initiative to get the Taliban on board needs initiation. In case the violence crescendo reaches Iraq-like levels, then a shift of gears to the much neglected political prong would be possible. In any case, persistence with this over the following period as the political prong of strategy may be necessary, perhaps a replay of the Kai Eide dialogue by the UN. Even if a surrender is to be negotiated, holding out the possibility through maintaining contacts makes strategic sense.

It is more than just a timely coincidence, then, that India is poised to restart the composite dialogue. With the Pakistani state able to claim credit for movement on Kashmir, it would gain the space it needs to combat its internal enemies. The resumption would decrease the threat of anti-India terror attacks. With Pakistan taking on the Taliban finally, India’s concerns would be met considerably. In retrospect it would be perhaps be possible to trace India’s role in pressure in concert with the US on Pakistan to take on the terrorists.

While the military escalation is set to occur, preemption of the worst case possibility must be the focus. Keeping Pakistan on an even keel is a strategic necessity, since it is on the frontline. The Pakistani Taliban, in both its Pukhtun and Punjabi variants, would want to profit from instability. The resilience of Pakistan would be finally tested. Past experience suggests it could use whatever support possible, including, paradoxically, from India.