Month: October 2011

When you’re shilling for a war in Iran as regularly as the Washington Times does, you’re constantly making up allegations centering around what anonymous officials totally bet is the case. That and hiring artists to make caricatures of an Ayatollah made of nukes.

The downside to doing this for so long is that your stories have to be bigger and scarier every time, and after years upon years of “Iran totally almost has nukes” being the slogan, they had to up the ante.

So now, with former CIA spy “Reza Kahlili” taking the byline and a convoluted story that would make Tom Clancy blush filling in the details, the Washington Times is now reporting, as though it is absolute fact, that Iran “already has nuclear weapons.”

Putting aside the nonsensical story for a minute, neither Kahlili nor the Times appears to understand that if Iran not only has nuclear weapons but, as they claim, has had them for many years, the whole narrative they’ve been pushing about such a weapon being an imminent threat in the hands of Iran is proven false by them never using these supposed Soviet surplus nukes.

It’s a sad day when those on the left end of the political spectrum understand Frédéric Bastiat’s simple economic lesson of the seen and the unseen better than billionaire businessmen. But something tells me they know better. Fear-mongering estimates about the terrible job losses that would occur if cuts to defense budgets actually take place are ignoring – knowingly, I bet – the jobs that would be created if the taxes taken from the economy and given to defense firms were allowed to stay in the hands of the people for projects that don’t end in destruction, war, and murder. Entrepreneurial Americans are largely peaceful people; keeping the moolah in their hands will lead to productive economic activity – and thus, more jobs.

Robert Greenwald and Derrick Rowe:

In their attempt to protect pay packages that would shame a Goldman Sachs executive, the CEOs of the biggest military contractors are again releasing bogus “analysis” on job creation related to massive military budgets. Don’t be fooled: the spin coming out of the Second To None lobbying front is about one job, and one job only: the job of the guy at the top of the war corporation, along with its massive salary.

Let’s dispense with the war profiteers’ so-called economic analysis (.pdf). The study released today at a war-contractor-convened press conference tries to obscure the massive jobs cost of military spending by citing all the jobs that are tied to the current Pentagon budget.

• simple analysis of how many more jobs would be created through virtually any other kind of spending (even plain old consumer spending) compared to military spending in the short term, and
• the huge jobs cost caused by the “brain drain” imposed by huge military R&D budgets, which pull engineers and scientists out of more productive civilian fields, leading to a loss of competitiveness in U.S. manufacturing. This brain drain far outweighs any spillover benefits caused by military technology finding its way into the civilian sector. This brain drain, according to Lloyd Dumas, has cost us literally millions of jobs.

So there is talk of Obama ending the Iraq War? And planning to draw down in Afghanistan sometime soon? Well, yes and no, on a number of levels. As we know, the decision to not keep thousands of US troops in Iraq was forced upon the Obama administration by the Iraqis, after the administration spent years pressuring for a remaining force. And withdrawing, is not exactly withdrawing when you consider the thousands of private mercenaries that will remain, the expanded “diplomatic” mission there, and the bases throughout the country (not to mention the largest Embassy in the world, essentially a military fortress). And for Afghanistan, there is still almost 150,000 troops there, and US and NATO military officials have repeatedly confirmed a remaining occupation of that country for at least the foreseeable future, and perhaps into the 2020s.

But The Atlantic gave us yet another perspective on the so-called drawdown of troops and supposed ending of wars. It speaks to what Nick Turse has called the “Secret War in 120 Countries,” namely the increasing use of covert elite forces like Joint Special Operations Command. This is a largely secret army that will again be another step back from those in power ever needing to declare war when they seek to wage it. As Obama supposedly “withdraws” from Iraq and Afghanistan, he is taking out the ordinary military we all know, and putting in his secret military:

The strain on the highly-trained forces will only increase as the Obama administration expands its shadow war against high-ranking militants in countries like Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, all of which have been the scene of targeted raids by elite troops in recent months.  Senior Pentagon officials have also made clear that Special Operations troops will be used to conduct counter-terror raids in Afghanistan even as overall U.S. troop levels there begin to decline.

Elite forces like the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force don’t deploy for as long as conventional Army and Marine units, which usually spend six to 15 months in the war zones per tour of duty. But they deploy far, far more often.  Many conventional troops have done four or five deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. By contrast, Special Operations troops have done 10, 12, and even 14 tours.

“We’re getting real close to double-digit deployments across a number of different formations,” Lt. Col. Tom Bryant, a spokesman for the Army Special Operations Command, said in an interview.  “Those numbers are becoming increasingly common and will be even more the norm down the road.”

The Special Operations world is the most secretive and insular component of the military.  The Pentagon maintains several units and taskforces whose work – typically hunter-killer missions designed to track and eliminate militants around the globe–is so secretive that Washington won’t disclose their names or formally acknowledge their existence.

Do read the whole article.

Journalist Lizzy Phelan on Her Experience in Libya 

Regular readers of Antiwar.com will not be surprised by Ms. Phelan’s account of what she saw in Libya. Just like the war in Iraq, the bombing of Libya was based on a whole lot of nonsense: inflated death tolls and exaggerated opposition against Gaddafi (although the opposition against him should not be marginalized). As US rhetoric towards Iran reaches a fever pitch similar to that in the run up to the war in Iraq, it’s truly worth pondering just how many times the American people will tolerate being lied to or bullied into war.

It’s amazing to see the roundabout justifications in the media regarding the Obama administration’s increasingly close relationship with Uzbekistan and its monstrous dictator Islam Karimov. As I’ve written previously, the Uzbek government is one of the worst human rights violators in the world. The Bush administration supported the regime handsomely in order to have military bases there and help supply American troops in Afghanistan. The Karimov regime engaged in wretched abuses against individuals caught up in the Bush administration’s War on Terror, and became known for widespread torture, including boiling people alive and raping people with broken bottles. Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, wrote an important book on this.

The US-Uzbekistan relationship began to sour in part because of how widespread the international condemnation was for forming such a close and supportive alliance with such a monster. But lately, the Obama administration has been cozying back up to the dictator in their execution of the Afghan war. The State Department itself, in its latest report on Uzbekistan lists an inventory of human and civil rights abuses, including: “Instances of torture and mistreatment of detainees by security forces; incommunicado and prolonged detention; arbitrary arrest and detention; denial of due process and fair trial; restrictions on freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association; governmental control of civil society activity; restrictions on religious freedom including harassment and imprisonment of religious minority group members; and government-compelled forced labor in cotton harvesting.”

Secretary of State Clinton just visited with Karimov this week, barely a month after the Obama administration lifted sanctions on Uzbekistan which will allow the resumption of US Foreign Military Sales (FMS) to the despot. The commentary on this “cozying up” and this latest Clinton visit is always apologetic, creatively assigning the utmost reluctance and goodwill to our dear leaders in the Obama camp. We hear about the administration trying to press Uzbekistan towards respect for human rights and democracy, as Human Rights Watch urged them to do just prior to Clinton’s departure. The Washington Post goes so far as to claim Clinton “chided” the Central Asian dictator on human rights. In public at least, her so-called chiding amounted to a pathetic, empty hint specifically aimed at media like the Postwould regurgitate it and frame it as an earnest attempt to save the Uzbek people from the terror their government has unleashed on them for years. She said, “Countries that make reforms to give their people the opportunities for political and economic participation that they demand and deserve will thrive. Those who do not will fall behind.” Ah, a ripe old tongue-lashing.

On the one hand, the politics of this is that it’s merely another example of Obama’s treacherous record of tenacious support for tyranny and state terrorism all around the world. The anointed one who flew into presidential politics four years ago on a golden chariot of peace and human rights, has consistently supported some of the worst dictators and sadistic abuses of basic rights of the individual, never mind his own foreign and domestic policies. Yet he still has approximately half of the electorate’s support, dipping below 50% only because of the recession. And whether he wins or loses in 2012, he will receive approximately half of the vote – the other half of course going to some Republican even more blatantly supportive of such tyranny. And some Obama supporters still see him as the champion of human rights that is so very much is not.

But pushing a bit further, in a country supposedly based on the rule of law, why in the world should our masters in the halls of power in Washington be getting away with any of this? I mean, the Obama administration has enough blood on its own hands for there to be criminal investigations for, say, the implementation of the war in Afghanistan, for example – or for its obstruction of justice for the crimes of his predecessors. But lending money, weapons, and diplomatic support to consistent human rights violators from Latin America to the Middle East to Central Asia shouldn’t just be a tenuous question of policy…it should be indictable.