Month: May 2007

Gen. William Odom discusses the “worst strategic disaster in American history,” the war in Iraq: the view of most generals that the war is wrong, the failure of the politicians to see the consequences of their actions, the centrality of the neoconservatives and the Israel lobby in pushing for the Iraq invasion, the “surge,” Bush’s siding with the Iran factions even though the Iraqi Shia don’t want them, the crisis of Iraq’s four million refugees and it’s possible consequences, the tenuous alliance between Iraq’s Sunnis and al Qaeda, the fact that a September 11th worth of Iraqis die every month in that country, his view of George Tenet and Colin Powell’s failure to resign before the war and the possibility of war with Iran.

MP3 here. (18:47)

Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. As Director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988, he was responsible for the nation’s signals intelligence and communications security. From 1981 to 1985, he served as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army’s senior intelligence officer.

From 1977 to 1981, General Odom was Military Assistant to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski. As a member of the National Security Council staff, he worked upon strategic planning, Soviet affairs, nuclear weapons policy, telecommunications policy, and Persian Gulf security issues. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1954, and received a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1970.

General Odom’s latest book, America’s Inadvertent Empire, co-authored with Robert Dujarric, was published in early 2004 by Yale University Press. His previous book, Fixing Intelligence For a More Secure America, was published in January 2003 (Yale University Press). His book, The Collapse of the Soviet Military (Yale University Press, 1998), won the Marshall Shulman Prize. General Odom has also written (American University Press, 1993); America’s Military Revolution: Strategy and Structure After the Cold WarTrial After Triumph: East Asia After the Cold War (Hudson Institute, 1992); On Internal War: American and Soviet Approaches to Third World Clients and Insurgents (Duke University Press, 1992); and The Soviet Volunteers (Princeton University Press, 1973). He coauthored Commonwealth or Empire? Russia, Central Asia, and the Transcaucasus with Robert Dujarric (Hudson Institute, 1995).

General Odom has published articles in Foreign Affairs, World Politics, Foreign Policy, Orbis, Problems of Communism, The National Interest, The Washington Quarterly, Military Review, and many other publications. A frequent radio and television commentator, he has appeared on programs such as “The PBS News Hour,” CNN, ABC’s “Nightline”, NBC News, C-Span, and BBC’s “The World Tonight.” He also is a periodic contributor to the op-ed pages of The NewYork Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and others.

Former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer discusses the open letter [.pdf] he and other former CIA officials wrote to George Tenet, the responsibility Tenet bears for the war and for failing to kill Osama bin Laden in the 1990’s, his excuse(?) that the “slam dunk” referred to lying us into war rather than the presence of WMD, Dick Durbin’s recent admission that he knew the war was based on lies and his responsibility for staying quiet, the Constitution’s requirement that Congress hold responsibility for declaring war, his belief that Osama is still alive, al Qaeda’s ability to quickly replace their leadership, Bush’s renewed invocation of Osama to justify the war in Iraq and threats against Iran and the fact that there was no pre-war link between Iraq and al Qaeda.

MP3 here. (17: 10)

Michael Scheuer is a 22-year veteran of the CIA and the author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror.

On Friday it was reported that Mohamed Dheere was appointed as the new mayor of Mogadishu by the US-backed Somali government. What’s interesting about this is that just last year, when the US decided to start funding warlords to pick fights with the Islamic Courts, Mr. Dheere was one of the warlords that was on the CIA’s payroll.

This is just the latest US link in a Somali government that is rapidly becoming an international embarrassment. I’m not going to rehash the backstory of the conflict: Scott’s recent Antiwar Radio interview with Chris Floyd does a far better job of that than I could in a single blog posting.

On the other hand, I was recently reading the transcript of the press conference in which Defense Department officials announced the creation of AFRICOM. The officials promise that America’s goals in Africa will be exclusively altruistic in nature, and I wonder if what’s occurred in Somalia, from American airstrikes on villages, to mass rendition of refugees to a nation with the dreadful human rights record of Ethiopia, and culminating with the installation of a CIA-funded warlord as the mayor of the capital city is an example of the sort of actions we can expect of AFRICOM in the coming years.

In 1983, the US founded CENTCOM to be the operational command for the Middle East and Central Asia. Since then, the US has fought three major wars and innumerable small skirmishes in that theater of operations. Can we expect more of the same from AFRICOM, and does its founding portend a massive increase in US military interventionism in Africa?

Only time will tell, but the Council on Foreign Relations recommended in a recent report that the US ramp up its involvement in Africa to secure its oil resources. Is it even possible that this agenda won’t lead to the same fiasco of a foreign policy that it has in the Middle East?

The “war on terrorism” as a project of the “visible yet sinister group” known as the neoconservatives — that’s the theme of this brilliant and beautiful video:

Andrew Sullivan, who supposedly has had a turnaround on the war, calls this “Nazi-like.” What’s so “Nazi-like” about it? Well, you see, the evidence is “in its concern with aesthetics.” So any “skillful” use of film in the service of making a political point is ”Nazi-like”? “Somehow,” Andy babbles on, ”I feel the irony was lost on it creators.” The irony here is that Sullivan’s use of the “Big Lie” technique is itself Nazi-like. As for the film, Sullivan clearly refuses to pay attention to its trenchant critique of managed “corporatist” economics and military expansionism, reducing it to epithets like “Chomsky-esque” when in fact it is much closer to what Old Right critics of militarism and big government, like John T. Flynn, were saying in the aftermath of World War II.

Via Laura Rozen:

“The Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV, and the Vice Chairman, Senator Kit Bond, announced today that the Committee has adopted its Phase II report on prewar intelligence assessments about postwar Iraq. The Committee will submit the report to the Director of National Intelligence for classification review. Following declassification, the Committee will release the report to the public.”

Go here for a timeline of the interminable delays in releasing phase two of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on how we were lied into war prewar intelligence. Go here for some indication of what the report might contain — and how heavily dedacted it is likely to be. Go here to see how it might impact the AIPAC spy trial, and also explain the sudden resignation of Douglas Feith as undersecretary of defense for policy.

The American style of colonialism is taking shape, and what seems to be developing is a certain peevish paternalism, colored with vivid shades of condescension. The BBC reports this highlight from Dick Cheney’s Baghdad trip:

“The vice-president also held talks with the US ambassador, Ryan Crocker, and with the commander of US forces in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus. Ambassador Crocker said the vice-president would try to dissuade Iraqi politicians from taking a two-month holiday this summer. ‘For the Iraqi parliament to take a two-month vacation in summer is impossible to understand,’ he said, given the ‘major effort’ being made by US and Iraqi security forces.”

Given the demonstrated inability of the occupation forces to protect even sessions of Parliament, I don’t wonder why the esteemed solons are taking long vacations. If Cheney is so concerned with public officials taking over-long vacations, he might want to talk to his “boss,” who idled in Crawford while Iraq imploded. On the other hand, it is probably a good thing the Iraqi legislators are taking long vacations: out of session, they can’t do as much damage — and that’s a principle I’d like to apply to all legislatures, everywhere, especially here in the U.S. Wherever and whenever politicians are gathered together in groups, you’d be well-advised to hold on to your wallet — and watch your back.

Aside from that, however, this animus toward the Iraqis seems to come out of the latest evasion explanation of why the war is such a resounding failure and defeat looms so large. The War Party has gone from blaming the supposedly imperfect “execution” of their grand strategy on Donald Rumsfeld, and then on the Iranians — and now they’re pointing their fingers at the “liberated” Iraqis themselves.

This is a leaf torn from Hillary Clinton’s playbook: at least, she is the first politician I can recall taking this kind of peevish, hectoring tone with our Iraqi allies. It was she who proposed withholding aid from the Baghdad government, while continuing to fund the occupation (and the surge) at the same or even higher levels:

 “‘I believe we have to tell them that we’re not going to continue to fund their army and security for their leadership and reconstruction for their country unless they take steps necessary to have the political solutions that everyone knows have to be reached,’ Clinton said. Those include disarming militias and dealing with the problems that are causing the Sunni insurgency, she says. Clinton says cutting off funding for U.S. troops is ‘not appropriate at this time, until we get more of our troops out of harm’s way.'”

Ah, but those Iraqis deluded enough to side with the Americans will be put directly in harm’s way if we stop paying for their security. Hillary’s message to them is: do as you’re told, or kiss your a*s goodbye. The Bushies dont’ go quite that far — yet.