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General
30
Jan 03
Random bits
Today, half of all defense-related jobs are done by private sector contractors, an increase of about 25 percent since the 1970s. But taking on this type of business will bring CSC controversies it never faced doing systems integration. That the Pentagon outsources management of military bases and IT tasks is not, in itself, troublesome. “It makes a lot of sense,” says David Isenberg, a defense analyst who once worked for a DynCorp subsidiary. “You want the 101st Airborne training to kill people and destroy things, not figuring out how to create a Web site or link this database to that database.”
It’s the expansion of private firms into core functions of the military that is, for many, an alarming trend. A State Department spokesperson told me that DynCorp, with its “wide range of capabilities and experience,” is now crucial to many security functions. Some of these are basic, like piloting planes. But when the government hires DynCorp to oversee the withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo or guard the Afghan president or spray crops in Colombia, critics say the motivation is less a need for technical expertise than a desire to conduct operations Congress won’t let the military do, and to keep potentially messy foreign entanglements at arm’s length. In other words, DynCorp and its brethren exist to do Washington’s dirty work.
In 1966, the Office of Management and Budget issued Circular A-76, a rousing call for government to outsource as many of its functions as possible. “The competitive enterprise system, characterized by individual freedom and initiative, is the primary source of national economic strength,” declared the OMB. “The Government should not compete with its citizens.” In 1983, President Reagan turned this policy into a mandate. By then, DynCorp had spent nearly 40 years working the halls of power, and contracts were raining down.
- Deploying troops have always squared away their wills and other legal and financial affairs before going into harm’s way. But now, a small number of servicemen are choosing to make a stop at a sperm bank before heading out.
Is this further evidence that war is all about dicks and testosterone?
- “I think you get renaissances of conspiracy theories during times of great political upheaval,” he says. The first, he observes, was during the Industrial Revolution, when suspicion centered on covert plotters in secret rooms (an update of the Middle Ages’ fear of Jews and moneymen). Then came the Cold War, and the plotters became Communists. Now conspiracy theorists have seized on globalization, and their bogeymen are industrialists.
Ironically, adds Ronson, to a large extent the world is out of conspiracy theorists’ control. After all, conspiracy theorists tend to be fearful, less educated, less tied in to the power structure. Meanwhile, the leaders of corporations and countries do meet as part of conferences sponsored by organizations such as the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group.
They may not be the cackling puppet masters the extremists imagine, as Ronson found out when he spoke to a Bilderberg invitee — “I don’t want to rule the world,” Ronson was told, “I like to do the gardening and play Scrabble and have sex” — but they do try to exercise influence, and hope their ideas become policy.
29
Jan 03
The New Mujahadeen
More tying up loose ends ahead of Gulf War 2: Junior’s Turn. Many groups would love to overthrow the American puppet, Hamid Karzai, while the Americans are busy collecting ears in Iraq.
NY Times: U.S. and Its Allies Fight Rebel Force on Afghan Peaks:
As many as 80 fighters aligned with the former mujahedeen commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord who once battled Soviet occupation but has now joined forces with the remnants of the Taliban to oust the Americans, were thought to be lodged in caves and mountain hideouts near the border with Pakistan, said the spokesman, Col. Roger King. Those forces fired on Apache helicopters that went to investigate their presence in the Adi Ghar, a mountain range just north of Spinbaldak, the border crossing between the southern Afghan town of Kandahar and the Pakistani city of Quetta.
Mr. Hekmatyar, an Islamic fundamentalist who was an important leader in the resistance against the Soviets in the 1980’s, is opposed to the American military presence in Afghanistan, and to the government of President Hamid Karzai, whom he sees as an American-installed leader. There are also reports from Afghan and Pakistani officials that Arab and other foreign fighters are now based in the tribal areas of Pakistan, along the Afghan border, and are preparing new and bigger attacks against American troops in Afghanistan.
This has more to do with propping up the weak American-controlled government which has little if any control outside Kabul. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar actually has a lot of credibility with many Afghans because unlike Karzai he has not lived in America most of his life and actually fought the Soviets when they attempted to do what the United States is attempting to do now. I would hope Americans would have the same intolerance for foreign control as the Afghan people seem to have. I think we’ve been bred to take whatever master we’re given here in the United States. It’s good to see the rebel spirit of freedom alive somewhere in the world. Be warned, the NY Times article is laced with propaganda.
29
Jan 03
War-brewing: Venezuelan bankers do their part
Ahead of the scheduled GF2, Never Forget War, or whatever they’re calling this planned slaughter of thousands of innocents, Venezuelan banks are easing up on their rebellion against the Venezuelan government. No doubt important folks in South American banking got calls from the Bush administration along the lines of ‘hey, don’t put Venezuelan oil supplies in jeopardy by trying to overthrow the democratically elected leader of Venezuela until AFTER we’ve turned Iraq into the jewel in the American crown.’
As the invisible hand of capital and the crushing boot of military conquest work well together, Venezuelan banks started letting people take out their own money again and resumed normal hours. The global elite will turn up the heat on Chavez after Iraq has been turned into glass.
22
Jan 03
Ouch
This brevity of this page tells me I’ve been neglecting ye olde website. A thousand pardons.
22
Jan 03
Call me cynical
U.S. Promises to Hold Iraqi Oil ‘In Trust’
“If we are the occupying power, it will be held for the benefit of the Iraqi people and it will be operated for the benefit of the Iraqi people,” he said.
“How will we operate it? How best to do that? We are studying different models. But the one thing I can assure you of is that it will be held in trust for the Iraqi people, to benefit the Iraqi people. That is a legal obligation that the occupying power will have,” he added.
Powell said the U.S. military would not want to run Iraq for long after a possible invasion but he declined to speculate how long U.S. troops would stay in the country.
“There is no desire for the United States armed forces to remain in charge or to run a country for any length of time beyond that which is necessary to make sure that there is an appropriate form of government to take over from the initial military occupation,” he said.
12
Jan 03
More recent history on Iraq
Good resource: Country Study & Country Guide for Iraq:
Concern about the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan prompted Iraq to reexamine seriously the nature of its relationship with the United States. This process led to a gradual warming of relations between the two countries. In 1981 Iraq and the United States engaged in lowlevel , official talks on matters of mutual interest such as trade and regional security. The following year the United States extended credits to Iraq for the purchase of American agricultural commodities, the first time this had been done since 1967. More significant, in 1983 the Baathist government hosted a United States special Middle East envoy, the highest-ranking American official to visit Baghdad in more than sixteen years. In 1984, when the United States inaugurated “Operation Staunch” to halt shipment of arms to Iran by third countries, no similar embargo was attempted against Iraq because Saddam Husayn’s government had expressed its desire to negotiate an end to the war. All of these initiatives prepared the ground for Iraq and the United States to reestablish diplomatic relations in November 1984.
In early 1988, Iraq’s relations with the United States were generally cordial. The relationship had been strained at the end of 1986 when it was revealed that the United States had secretly sold arms to Iran during 1985 and 1986, and a crisis occurred in May 1987 when an Iraqi pilot bombed an American naval ship in the Persian Gulf, a ship he mistakenly thought to be involved in Iran-related commerce. Nevertheless, the two countries had weathered these problems by mid-1987. Although lingering suspicions about the United States remained, Iraq welcomed greater, even if indirect, American diplomatic and military pressure in trying to end the war with Iran. For the most part, the government of Saddam Husayn believed the United States supported its position that the war was being prolonged only because of Iranian intransigence.
Data as of May 1988
12
Jan 03
Some perspective on Iraq
It’s always good to have some background information and context. Turns out the US policy of ‘regime change’ in Iraq is nothing new. We’ve been getting our hands bloodied on Iraqi soil for decades.
How the CIA put the Baath in power in Iraq:
- The Baath first came to power in 1963, in a coup organised by the CIA They overthrew the regime run by Abd al-Karim Qassim, a nationalist army officer.
The coup, and the reasons why the CIA supported it, are described by journalists Andrew and Patrick Cockburn as follows:
In early 1963, Saddam had more important things to worry about
than his outstanding bill at the Andiana Cafe. On February 8, a mil-
itary coup in Baghdad, in which the Baath Party played a leading
role, overthrew Qassim. Support for the conspirators was limited. In
the first hours of fighting, they had only nine tanks under their con-
trol. The Baath Party had just 850 active members. But Qassim
ignored warnings about the impending coup. What tipped the bal-
ance against him was the involvement of the United States. He had
taken Iraq out of the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact. In 1961, he threat-
ened to occupy Kuwait and nationalized part of the Iraq Petroleum
Company (IPC), the foreign oil consortium that exploited Iraq’s oil.
In retrospect, it was the ClAs favorite coup. “We really had the ts
crossed on what was happening,” James Critchfield, then head of the
CIA in the Middle East, told us. “We regarded it as a great victory.”
Iraqi participants later confirmed American involvement. “We came to
power on a CIA train,” admitted Ali Saleh Sa’adi, the Baath Party sec-
retary general who was about to institute an unprecedented reign of
terror. CIA assistance reportedly included coordination of the coup
plotters from the agency’s station inside the U.S. embassy in Baghdad
as well as a clandestine radio station in Kuwait and solicitation of
advice from around the Middle East on who on the left should be
eliminated once the coup was successful. To the end, Qassim retained
his popularity in the streets of Baghdad. After his execution, his sup-
porters refused to believe he was dead until the coup leaders showed
pictures of his bullet-riddled body on TV and in the newspapers.
The above comes from “Out of the Ashes, The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein”, by Andrew and Patrick Cockburn, published by Verso, 2000.
12
Jan 03
Kinda weird
I was reading the news (as I often do) and I noticed something that annoyed me a little especially since my mother has this habit of telling me ‘I don’t believe everything I read on the internet.’
AP: Fuzzy Strands Fill Skies Over Texas City:
A University of Wyoming microbiology professor attributed the webs in Santa Cruz to young spiders that launch themselves on their homemade parachutes after hatching to be blown to a new home.
In Wyoming, dozens of the webs can been seen floating across the prairie in the spring, the professor was quoted as saying in the AP story.
However, on the Internet, some conspiracy connoisseurs remain convinced the webs are man-made and could be part of an elaborate government plot.
I mean, is that really necessary as the last sentence in an AP story?