'Private Security Contractors in Afghanistan Fueling the Taliban, Senate Report Concludes'

From Scott Horton, who watches this stuff:

The American decision to rely more heavily on contractors and to downplay the use of uniformed military in Afghanistan has led to a sharp detour in the process of nation-building, a Senate Armed Services Committee report (PDF) has concluded. To meet their security concerns, the contractors have turned to “warlords and strongmen linked to murder, kidnapping [and] bribery.” The report also documents incidents in which contractors have tendered payments to the Taliban.

There's more detail at Horton's site, and in the embedded links. Senator Carl Levin's conclusion: "This situation threatens the security of our troops and puts the success of our mission at risk." He's too polite, making it sound like an accident.

Horton's conclusion:

[P]rivate security contractors often work at cross purposes with U.S. counterinsurgency policy.

My conclusion? Welcome to money as a motivator, for all parties concerned; sends a tingle up my Galtian spine.

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The other 'slow motion coup'

I've been using the phrase "slow-motion coup" to describe the slow take-over of our political process by billionaires and their Big Money friends. (The "billionaire's coup" has gone international, by the way; Karl Rove has been consulting in Sweden.)

But Digby points us to another "Creeping Coup" — this one in the military. She examines an article in Politics Daily that starts with this:

The military officer corps is rumbling with dissatisfaction and dissent, and there are suggestions from some that if officers disagree with policy decisions by Congress and the White House, they should vigorously resist.

Officers have a moral responsibility, some argue, to sway a policy debate by going public with their objections or leaking information to the media, and even to sabotage policy decisions by deliberate foot-dragging.

This could spell trouble ahead as Washington grapples with at least two highly contentious issues: changing the policy on gays and lesbians in the military, and extricating U.S. forces from Afghanistan. In both cases, senior officers already have disagreed sharply and publicly with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and President Barack Obama, and in some cases officers have leaked documents to bolster their case.

I believe this began in the 90s, when Clinton "was faced with the clearest insubordination from his senior officers one of whom (Colin Powell by name) was conspicuous" (Christopher Hitchens).

It's since gotten worse. We've had tales of evangelicals taking over the Air Force Academy (ah, Colorado; some day I'll write about how the mountain states got to be "that way"). And as Digby points out (my emphasis):

This coincides with our new fetish for everything military, including the president of the United States announcing over and over again that he would "listen to the commanders on the ground" which likely gave more than a few of them the idea that they were the ones in charge. When you add that to the canonizing of the The Man Called Petraeus during the Bush years, this seems like a logical outcome. (I would also add that more than a few of them may be part of the religious "crusade" that some of the evangelical military brass are involved with.)

This is perfectly coincident with all of our recent fetishes — cops with Tasers, soldiers with shoot-first in their eyes, politician with whips, all the strong Daddies that frightened tough-guy conservative voters (in and out of the Republican party) worship and adore. Seems like a problem to me. Good catch, Digby.

I'll make a larger point as well, one that points to world-historical arcs. This nation (going back to its pre-Revolutionary roots) has had a major internal crisis roughly every seventy years — the Constitution discussion, the Civil War, the Great Depression. We're about due.

Each of those earlier times has seen the emergence of a "great man" — Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt — who has led us truly forward. (I'm deliberately referring to Carlyle's "great man" theory of history. I don't think "dialectic" helps much in a crisis.)

It feels like we're at another of those world-historical moments. And if the past is anything to judge by, we're going to need another great man, another real Lincoln. It won't take a Hitler to sink us, just another non-entity, a General McClellan, let's say. Someone who thinks he means well, but fails to lead.

Let's keep that in mind as 2012 approaches. The easiest solution would be that the current office-holder find his Inner Lincoln. But whether he does or not, we do need a solution, and for my Carlylian money, that's a person, not a process — or an ad campaign.

That person may need to start by standing up to the army.

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Following repeated deadly attacks, US military seeks green energy

So is it the oil-addicted GOP who hates America or the military? It's all so confusing. Surely the Republicans will not stand for such an attack on their friends in Big Oil. NY Times:

Even as Congress has struggled unsuccessfully to pass an energy bill and many states have put renewable energy on hold because of the recession, the military this year has pushed rapidly forward. After a decade of waging wars in remote corners of the globe where fuel is not readily available, senior commanders have come to see overdependence on fossil fuel as a big liability, and renewable technologies — which have become more reliable and less expensive over the past few years — as providing a potential answer. These new types of renewable energy now account for only a small percentage of the power used by the armed forces, but military leaders plan to rapidly expand their use over the next decade.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the huge truck convoys that haul fuel to bases have been sitting ducks for enemy fighters — in the latest attack, oil tankers carrying fuel for NATO troops in Afghanistan were set on fire in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, early Monday. In Iraq and Afghanistan, one Army study found, for every 24 fuel convoys that set out, one soldier or civilian engaged in fuel transport was killed. In the past three months, six Marines have been wounded guarding fuel runs in Afghanistan.

“There are a lot of profound reasons for doing this, but for us at the core it’s practical,” said Ray Mabus, the Navy secretary and a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who has said he wants 50 percent of the power for the Navy and Marines to come from renewable energy sources by 2020. That figure includes energy for bases as well as fuel for cars and ships.

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France and UK to pool aircraft carriers

Some say that it's an interesting idea in theory but won't work in practice. (If so, a good theory is always a winner in France, regardless of practical application.) What is also striking about this potential move is that it never could have been done by Labour. While combining/sharing the military forces has made perfect sense in Europe for years, attempting such an agreement from the left would have brought cries of treason from the right. It's not unlike Nixon and China, in US terms.

Britain and France are expected to reveal plans to share the use of their aircraft carriers.

This would allow Britain to scrap or downgrade one of the two replacement carriers announced in 2007 at a cost of £5.2bn, but would risk thousands of shipyard jobs.

David Cameron and President Nicolas Sarkozy are expected to announce the proposal in November.

The arrangement would ensure that one of three ships – one French, two British – remained permanently on patrol. Currently Britain's two aging vessels – HMS Ark Royal and HMS Illustrious – are occasionally both in dock at the same time.

A decision on the future of the two planned replacement carriers will be announced in the Comprehensive Spending Review in October. A shared patrolling scheme with the French military would allow one to be built to a lesser specification, sold to another country or scrapped.

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Much more detail on the WikiLeaks–Assange non-rape story

From the always-good Scott Horton, comes a whole lot more detail on the Assange rape-but-not-really story.

This is bar none the best account I've found of what's happened. I really want to print the whole thing — it's that good. But I'll make do with a taste (I'll find a prime slice) and then strongly suggest you read it all. Horton's a lawyer and an expert in these things; he's also a hell of a researcher.

The prime slice (with my secondary emphasis):

This weekend, the controversies surrounding WikiLeaks took another strange turn. Late on Friday, the Swedish newspaper Expressen disclosed that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was the subject of an arrest warrant arising out of charges by two female witnesses that he had raped them within a three-day period. The late-hours special duty prosecutor, Maria Häljebo Kjellstrand, issued an arrest warrant for Assange, who quickly protested his innocence and charged that the claims against him were a “dirty trick.” Within twenty-four hours, Swedish prosecutors did a near complete about-face. . . . One of the women behind the charges gave an interview to the Swedish paper Aftonbladet on Sunday, backpedaling furiously. She stated that she was surprised to learn that the accusations were treated as a rape charge and denied that there had been any encounter with Assange involving violence or force. She suggested that the controversy had to do with Assange’s failure to use a condom during intercourse. In the meantime, Sweden’s Justice Ombudsman was demanding a formal investigation into how the accusations came to be sensationalized by the press on the basis of an improperly issued arrest warrant.

A few points should be noted about this case. . . . [U]nder the Swedish criminal justice system, like in many others, the preliminary investigation of allegations of a crime is a secret matter. That is doubly the case in questions relating to sexual misconduct, since disclosure may do severe damage to the reputation of all the parties involved. In this case, the information was fanned in a tabloid-style paper within minutes of its being opened. The prosecutors involved insist that they did not disclose this information. Who did? The Guardian speculates that it was the Swedish police.

Assange, however, quickly laid the blame on the Pentagon.

This doesn't begin to do justice to this valuable piece. Please do click through.

Note in just this small bit, we get the name of the prosecutor, the way that system works, and links to original sources — Expressen, Aftonbladet and de Verdieping Trouw — with information none of the English-language papers offered.

Why are we getting this information? Because Horton's consulting Swedish and Dutch sources and passing the info along instead of keeping it all safely low-key. (I assume Horton reads Swedish and Dutch himself; he reads everything else.)

Scott Horton is a valuable resource, someone to keep on the radar. For me he's a daily read.

Our own earlier coverage of the rape charge is here. The asymmetrical war, coming to a homeland near you. As I said, stay tuned.

GP

UPDATE: From The Local: Sweden's News in English, the initial prosecutor has been "reported for violating rules on the confidentiality of preliminary investigations."

The prosecutor on duty, Maria Häljebo Kjellstrand, decided on Friday to issue a warrant to arrest Assange on suspicion of rape. She later confirmed to Expressen that there was a case and that Assange was charged in absentia. The warrant was withdrawn one day later. . . .

According to the organisation, the prosecutor violated the confidentiality of preliminary investigations by giving the media information about this case, DJ reported.

Two dots left to connect. The on-call prosecutor confirmed the case to the tabloid. Who tipped the tabloid to ask about it? (Thanks to Marshall for tipping us.) Read More......

WikiLeaks' Assange: I think Pentagon is behind phony rape charges

Following our earlier coverage on Julian Assange's withdrawn Swedish rape charges, an update. You get this story two ways, depending on where you look. "Straight" coverage, like the Wall Street Journal online, plays it, well, straight (my emphasis throughout):

Swedish Chief Prosecutor Eva Finne will investigate the charges brought against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange this week, she said Monday.

The prosecution authority Friday said Assange was suspected of alleged rape and molestation, but dropped the rape investigations the following day. . . .

The rape charges were dropped Saturday because new information regarding the case became available, Finne told Dow Jones Newswires without providing further details.

She defended the decision Friday to bring forth the initial charge of allegated rape, saying it was taken in accordance with normal legal procedures.

But apparently Assange is accusing the Pentagon of waging info-war against him, something the WSJ doesn't tell you. Yahoo News:

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said in an interview published on Sunday that he believes the Pentagon could be behind a rape accusation against him that was later dropped by Swedish prosecutors. . . .

The Aftonbladet newspaper quoted Assange, 39, as saying he did not know who was "hiding behind" the claims, which came amid a stand-off with Washington over the website's publication of secret Afghan war documents.

The UK Daily Mail online, quoting the same interview:

He said he did not know how they had come about, but gave a clear indication of who he thought was behind them, adding: 'We have been warned that the Pentagon plans to use dirty tricks to destroy us. And I have been warned of sex traps.

Within hours of the warrant being issued, chief prosecutor Eva Finne said she was revoking it, and a spokesman yesterday blamed an 'on-call prosecutor' for the decision.

If I'm doing the Rockford Files thing, I start with that "on-call prosecutor" and whoever he/she talked to. (Notice that of the three, only the Daily Mail mentions him/her.)

This one really interests me, so I'm watching how it plays out. It's a classic case of asymmetrical warfare on the anywhere-battlefield, but this time against one of "us" — fair-skinned blond Westerners with political objections — instead of one of "them" (you know, incorrectly-religioned brown people with anti-colonial objections).

The asymmetrical war was bound to come home; this is its first arrival. In that sense, this is a tip-of-the-spear story.

And as usual, it's as much about us (i.e., how we handle the Pentagon dealing with "us" the way it deals with "them") as it is about any of the players. Stay tuned; I sure will.

Our original "stain on the pavement" coverage is here (and h/t mirth for the lead).

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DOD Secretary Gates wants to retire in 2011

Good riddance. I still worry that even with a more Democratic Secretary of Defense we'll still get bamboozled by the Pentagon on issue after issue.

Gates, who turns 67 in September, says he wants to leave the job and retire, this time for good, sometime in 2011. "I think that it would be a mistake to wait until January 2012," he said. It might be hard to find a good person to take the job so late, with just one year to go in the president's current term. And, he added, "This is not the kind of job you want to fill in the spring of an election year."

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Army probing McChrystal staff over Rolling Stone interview

Some good news from McClatchy. Read More......

Prudential profiting from deaths of US soldiers

Um, fix this. ASAP. It's despicable:

[Cindy] Lohman, a public health nurse who helps special-needs children, says she had always believed that her son's life insurance funds were in a bank insured by the FDIC. That money -- like $28 billion in 1 million death-benefit accounts managed by insurers -- wasn't actually sitting in a bank.

It was being held in Prudential's general corporate account, earning investment income for the insurer. Prudential paid survivors like Lohman 1 percent interest in 2008 on their Alliance Accounts, while it earned a 4.8 percent return on its corporate funds, according to regulatory filings.

"I'm shocked," says Lohman, breaking into tears as she learns how the Alliance Account works. "It's a betrayal. It saddens me as an American that a company would stoop so low as to make a profit on the death of a soldier. Is there anything lower than that?"

Millions of bereaved Americans have unwittingly been placed in the same position by their insurance companies. The practice of issuing what they call "checkbooks" to survivors, instead of paying them lump sums, extends well beyond the military.

Prudential is literally making money off dead soldiers. That's sick. Seriously, have they no shame?

John Strangfeld is the Chairman and CEO of Prudential. The list of officers and directors is here. They're all benefiting financially from this practice. Bastards. Ms. Lohman is right: "Is there anything lower than that?" Read More......

Barney Frank and Ron Paul on the need to 'make substantial cuts' in Pentagon spending

Voices from opposite ends of the political spectrum agree on something -- the need to cut defense spending:

As members of opposing political parties, we disagree on a number of important issues. But we must not allow honest disagreement over some issues interfere with our ability to work together when we do agree.

By far the single most important of these is our current initiative to include substantial reductions in the projected level of American military spending as part of future deficit reduction efforts. For decades, the subject of military expenditures has been glaringly absent from public debate. Yet the Pentagon budget for 2010 is $693 billion -- more than all other discretionary spending programs combined. Even subtracting the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, military spending still amounts to over 42% of total spending.

It is irrefutably clear to us that if we do not make substantial cuts in the projected levels of Pentagon spending, we will do substantial damage to our economy and dramatically reduce our quality of life.

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So it's Petraeus

From ThinkProgress:

Speaking from the White House Rose Garden this afternoon, President Obama announced that he has accepted Gen. Stanley McChrystal resignation as head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, following the four-star general’s unprofessional remarks in a Rolling Stone interview. Obama said McChrystal’s remarks did not “meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general” and eroded trust among his national security team. McChrystal had reportedly acknowledged, “I’ve compromised the mission.”

Obama emphasized that McChrystal had served “faithfully,” that he was “grateful” for his service, and that the replacement is not a “personal insult.” In McChrystal’s place, Obama has nominated CentCom Commander David Petraeus, the general who oversaw the Iraq surge, to take charge of the upcoming Afghanistan surge.

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McChrystal & Truman

Quick hit: This is a Truman moment.

But I mean that differently than most. If Obama fails to fire McChrystal, he'll be forever judged as weaker than Harry S. Truman (pun intended). With Truman as tough-guy icon, that's harsh. And it will stick a very long time.

Team Change, take note.

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Military still blowing off vets' health care

So where exactly are the Teabaggers and the Republicans when our vets are suffering from an overbloated government health care system? Silence.

Improvised bombs rattled former Army Spc. Adam Pittman a dozen times in his three tours in Iraq, most severely when his Bradley fighting vehicle ran over one hidden in the dirt in 2005.

Now, part of Pittman's brain has gone dormant, and on most days he can't think straight.

He leaves the room and forgets what he was searching for. He gets migraines so piercing that his right eye sometimes curls away from his left. Anger comes easily, inspiring rages that sometimes have his wife terrified for herself and their 3-year-old daughter.

Although Pittman, who lives in Lillington, N.C., left the military in July 2008 complaining of headaches and memory loss, it took nearly a year for him to get a brain scan and another five months to start getting temporary disability benefits.

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Is the US really saying Agent Orange impact is inconclusive?

Whoever is promoting such an argument has no shame. I've spent a lot of time traveling throughout Southeast Asia as well as other poor countries and nowhere else do you see anything like you see in Vietnam. The number of victims is very high compared to other countries so to suggest this might be a nutrition issue is a scandalous lie. Those pitching these lies ought to be forced to spend extended periods of time in the areas most impacted by Agent Orange and see how arrogant they are at the end of their visit. The US did this and should face up to the consequences.

Vietnam says as many as 4 million of its citizens were exposed to the herbicide and as many as 3 million have suffered illnesses caused by it — including the children of people who were exposed during the war.

The U.S. government says the actual number of people affected is much lower and that Vietnamese are too quick to blame Agent Orange for birth defects that can be caused by malnutrition or other environmental factors.

"Scientists around the world have done a lot of research on dioxin and its possible health effects," said Michael Michalak, the U.S. ambassador in Hanoi. "There is disagreement as to what's real and what isn't, about what the possible connections are."

That position frustrates many Vietnamese, who point out that the U.S. government banned commercial use of the herbicide long ago and provides benefits to American veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam.

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Georgian president details 'foiled plot to see weapons grade uranium'

The amount was quite small, but it's still a major concern.

Georgian sources said the highly-enriched uranium – HEU – was intercepted in a sting operation carried out by the Tbilisi authorities in March without international assistance. They said the uranium was more than 70% enriched. The exact analysis is expected in a few days, but it appears to have been pure enough to use in a crude nuclear weapon.

The amount seized was small, measured in grams, so nowhere near the 25kg minimum needed for a functioning bomb, but Georgian officials said the gang was offering the HEU as a sample of a bigger quantity available for purchase. The officials would not comment on the nationality of the gang.

"The Georgian ministry of interior has foiled eight attempts of illicit trafficking of enriched uranium during the last 10 years, including several cases of weapons-grade enrichment. Criminals associated with these attempts have been detained," the Georgian president told the summit. "The most recent case of illicit trafficking was the attempted sale of highly enriched uranium in March of this year."

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Retired US general blames Srebrenica massacre on gay soldiers

The sooner we move away from the old guard military types like John Sheehan the better. The Dutch are furious, for good reason. What a creep.

"They declared a peace dividend and made a conscious effort to socialise their military – that includes the unionisation of their militaries, it includes open homosexuality. That led to a force that was ill-equipped to go to war," he said.

"The case in point that I'm referring to is when the Dutch were required to defend Srebrenica against the Serbs. The battalion was under-strength, poorly led, and the Serbs came into town, handcuffed the soldiers to the telephone poles, marched the Muslims off, and executed them. That was the largest massacre in Europe since world war two."

He added that the Dutch chief of staff had told him that having gay soldiers at Srebrenica had sapped morale and contributed to the disaster.

"Total nonsense," said General Henk van den Breemen, the Dutch chief of staff at the time. The Dutch embassy in Washington dismissed the US officer's argument as worthless, Maxime Verhagen, the Dutch foreign minister said that it was not worth commenting on, and the Dutch defence ministry voiced incredulity.

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Isn't it illegal to use soldiers as political props?

Rob Diamond over at Huff Post would like to know. So would I. Imagine had a Democrat done this. Read More......

Defense contractor will stop putting secret Bible references on gun sights shipped to Iraq and Afghanistan

It's a sad day when a Christian can no longer kill in the name of his Lord. Background on this story here. Read More......

CentCom spokesman defends secret Bible verses inscribed on US weapons heading into Afghanistan and Iraq

Secret Bible versus? Are you kidding me? And they're defending it?

Following an ABC News report that thousands of gun sights used by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan are inscribed with secret Bible references, a spokesperson for the Marine Corps said the Corps is 'concerned' and will discuss the matter with the weapons manufacturer.

"We are aware of the issue and are concerned with how this may be perceived," Capt. Geraldine Carey, a spokesperson for the Marine Corps, said in a statement to ABC News. "We will meet with the vendor to discuss future sight procurements." Carey said that when the initial deal was made in 2005 it was the only product that met the Corps needs.

However, a spokesperson for CentCom, the U.S. military's overall command in Iraq and Afghanistan, said he did not understand why the issue was any different from U.S. money with religious inscriptions on it.

"The perfect parallel that I see," said Maj. John Redfield, spokesperson for CentCom, told ABC News, "is between the statement that's on the back of our dollar bills, which is 'In God We Trust,' and we haven't moved away from that."

Said Redfield, "Unless the equipment that's being used that has these inscriptions proved to be less than effective for soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and military folks using it, I wouldn't see why we would stop using that."

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Army tells single mom to deploy and put 10-month-old son in foster care. She says no way. They prosecute her.

If these are the facts, it's outrageous. From ThinkProgress:

Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, a 21-year-old Army cook, refused to deploy to Afghanistan in November because she had no one to take care of her 10-month-old son. Hutchinson said when she brought her situation to her superiors’ attention, they told her that she would have to deploy anyway and place the child in foster care. “For her it was like, ‘I couldn’t abandon my child,’” her civilian attorney Rai Sue Sussman told the AP. After skipping her unit’s flight out of Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, GA, millitary police arrested her and confined her to the base while prosecutors decided how to proceed. Today, the Army filed charges against her and, if convicted in a court-martial, she faces several years in prison and a dishonorable discharge.

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