Sic Semper Tyrannis

!st SF Command and the return of the Jedburghs

"... training foreign fighters-"unconventional warfare," the military

calls it-has long been a main mission for Army Special Forces, albeit

one that had fallen out of favor recently.

After 9/11, the Pentagon deployed Special Forces and Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and other Special Operations Forces all over the world to fight insurgents and hunt terrorists. They largely took "direct action"-hitting the bad guys on their own-rather than working through local forces.

But from the 1940s into the 1990s, the Special Forces mostly practiced unconventional warfare-indirect action, if you will, and the focus of the new 1st Special Forces Command. In that way, the new HQ brings Special Forces "back to its roots," said Newson, a SEAL officer who served in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen.

This indirect method of warfare is ideal in situations where an American presence could be "too costly or be counter-productive," Newson explained."

------------------

Ah, to be young again...  This was the main mission of US Army Special Forces (Green Berets) until Congress created the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) along with Delta and the SEALS.  Those, later and derivative groups are involved in direct action missions and are essentially huge military SWAT teams, that is, people who do raiding themselves rather than with foreign troops.  This is quite different.  The GBs in these units now under their own headquarters in 1st SF Command will concentrate on the mission of working with foreign irregulars as well as with foreign regulars to create viable combat units as well as viable support units.  These GB units are capable of a very wide spectrum of training activities when augmented by engineers, medical people, signal corps folks, etc.  They are quite capable of training leadership cadres up to the regimental level.  That would be a 5,000 man force.  I have seen them do all that and participated in the activity.  One of the main mistakes made in the recent wars was to put the big, maneuver army in charge of creating foreign forces.  Neither the conventional forces nor the JSOC commandos have the talent nor the taste for such work and in both places the conventionals screwed up the game mightily.  The transformation of some ODAs into smaller "Jedburgh"type teams I take to be an indication that these particular teams will operate in denied areas training irregulars as the Jeds did.

This does an old man's heart good.  pl  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Jedburgh

Download ATT00001Download BGRogers

http://www.benning.army.mil/mcoe/maneuverconference/presentation/pdf/BGRogers.pdf

 

The Keltec CMR-30

"The Kel-Tec CMR-30 Rifle is chambered for the .22WMR cartridge (22 Magnum). The design is a rifle version of the popular Kel-Tec PMR-30 pistol. The same 30 round magazines are used. The single action trigger mechanism, bolt stop, ambidextrous safety levers, and mag catch are also identical. The CMR-30 rifle includes a collapsible stock and the 16” barrel is threaded 1/2”-28 to accept many different muzzle attachments. The collapsible stock allows for a short overall length of 22.6” with the stock collapsed, and 30” when exended. The long top picatinny rail will accept a multitude of different optics, and the removable under picatinny rail is included. The ambidextrous operating handles are non-reciprocating and latch in the forward position. The stock latch lever is also ambidextrous and located just in front of the trigger guard. An integral sling loop is included near the rear of the grip, on both sides. 

The CMR-30 is constructed of hard-coat anodized aluminum for the upper assembly and rails and houses the steel barrel. The collapsible stock is made with aluminum stock rods, and a nylon butt plate. The stock was designed to have a natural cheek weld when extended. The grip, mag catch, safety levers, stock latch, and operating handles are made of glass reinforced nylon (Zytel). The grip houses the frame which is made of 7075 aluminum. The bolt assembly is made of 4140 steel and includes the captive recoil spring assembly. The CMR-30 can easily be disassembled by pushing out the assembly pin, then unlatching the rear grip latch."  Keltec

----------------

This looks to be a hell of a rifle/carbine.  The .22 WMR cartridge is a winner.  3.8 lbs. empty - marvelous!  By contrast, the Norinco Hawk 12 gauge home defense pump shotgun that I recently bought to test weighs close to 10 pounds, something like an M-1 Garand.  Lots of steel in it.

Sign me up for a CMR-30.  pl

http://www.keltecweapons.com/our-guns/cmr-30/rifle/

On Europe and NATO (by CP)

In response to the insistence of members of this esteemed committee that I ought to write about Europe too, here’s how Europe’s idealism differs from America’s exceptionalism in crucial ways:

♦ For one, Europe may be an exceptional phenomenon, but its member states are not exceptional. If only to protect the Brits of collective apoplexy, no one, especially not Germany or France, is exceptional. All European states are all sovereign and equal. Considering that the EU was conceived as a means to reconcile through treaty, law and institutions the conflicting interests of the former super powers France and Germany over strategic commodities (coal and steel, nuclear) nothing else could have been sensible (i.e. acceptable).

♦ Secondly, except for the France and Britain, Europe by and large generally eschews the use of force. In case of France and the UK we are IMO seeing old imperial habits.

The US has been hard at work to change that culture in favor of one that is more readily interventionist by introducing into NATO’s mission ‘out of Area operations’ (as US auxiliaries under US leadership). The reason for this is that in the context of Europe there not really is a point to the use of force in settlement of disputes. It is anathema to the idea of Europe itself.

Germany and the Netherlands settled a dispute over their North Sea maritime borders in the International Court. Unlike the US, Europe did reap the peace dividend by scaling down militaries after the end of the cold war. Consequently, it took years for the US to have Europe embrace use of force again as a possibility. The Balkans wars were a start and the events after 9/11 gave a further push.

♦ Thirdly, Europe sees itself as a model for successful cooperation and successful integration as a means to ensure prosperity and peace.

Just to visualize the extent to which Europe cooperates in various international and supranational bodies this diagram:

 

ME/Afghan Potpourri - 29 November 2014

"... officials want to lessen the risk that U.S.-trained fighters sent back into Syria to combat the Islamic State will use their weapons on civilians or — like the Afghan mujahideen fighters Washington backed in the 1980s — later turn against the United States and its allies.

Under the plan, which has not been finalized, “moderate” fighters will be evaluated on an ongoing basis. Successful participants would gradually attain access to higher levels of training and weaponry, and fighters found to be wanting would be dismissed from the program.

“We’re taking it extremely seriously,” a senior U.S. defense official said. He said fighters will also be educated about the laws of armed conflict."  Washpost 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-military-will-use-psych-evals-stress-tests-to-screen-syrian-rebels-for-training/2014/11/28/39bb9362-7712-11e4-bd1b-03009bd3e984_story.html

-------------------

This is a good idea that probably won't work very well.  CENTCOM thinks it can "screen" potential "surrogate fighters" en masse well enough to keep them from doing what they please once turned loose in Syria?  Good luck!!  Every single one of the people they will deal with will have his own agenda and they will all be willing to tell the screeners whatever they think is necessary to be armed and trained.  In HUMINT ops, COIN ops and UW ops I have been involved in doing much the same kind of screening and the outcome was always "dicey" and very dependent on the subjective judgment and skill of the screener.  At the beginning of the US occupation of Iraq an industrial psychologist was hired to vett prospective Iraqi policemen.  He  devised a questionnaire to administer to the candidates to determine their suitability.  He asked me to read it and to give an opinion.  I told him that this test would be disastrous.  "Why?" he asked.  l told him that the testees would lie to get what they wanted.  He professed to find that hard to believe.  I told him he needed to meet more people in the ME.  His test produced the police Shia death squads.  pl

***************

 "An Egyptian court on Saturday removed all remaining charges against former President Hosni Mubarak, raising the possibility that Mr. Mubarak could go free for the first time since he was removed from office in the 2011 uprising that defined the Arab Spring.

During earlier hearings in the various proceedings against Mr. Mubarak human rights lawyers demanded harsh punishment for his three decades of brutal autocracy, but Saturday’s court session was packed with Mubarak supporters who erupted in cheers at the verdict."  NY Times

 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/world/hosni-mubarak-charges-dismissed-by-egyptian-court.html?_r=0

-------------------

I love the ME.  The more things change the more they remain the same.   He'll be out shortly and anyone in Egypt with any brains at all will be very subdued in commenting on the court's "mercy."  At the time of the revolting Arab Revoltings I told Yussuf al-Misri that after a short delay there would come to be a struggle between the salafists (MB, etc.) and the Army and that the Army would win.  And lo, this has come to pass.  My old friend 'Umar Suleiman would have a good laugh.  BTW, he despised Mubarak.   pl

***************

"Eyewitnesses say militants have launched an attack on a foreign guesthouse near parliament in the Afghan capital of Kabul.The Taliban  immediately claimed responsibility for the attack Saturday on the guesthouse, home to Europeans working for the Afghan government.Police officials had no immediate comment. Eyewitnesses told The Associated Press  that suicide bombers and gunmen were taking part in the assault.The attack comes amid a series of deadly assaults in the capital targeting foreigners amid the withdrawal of most NATO  troops by the end of the year.

 http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/World/2014/Nov-29/279352-taliban-raid-foreign-guesthouse-in-afghan-capital.ashx?utm_medium=email&utm_source=transactional&utm_campaign=Newsletter#sthash.a9qenmgf.dpuf

---------------------

Ah, yes, tell me again how grand life will be in Kabul in the next few years.  pl

Why are energy prices still so high?" re-re-published 28 November 2014

 

The news media is full of stories about steadily rising Iraqi oil production, US oil and gas production - dittp.  If so, why is crude still priced up around $105/barrel? (when first published in July, 2013)

This does not seem to be a matter involving short term supply and demand.

Is this altogether a feature of market forces in which investors key off each others bids to ride prices up and down within a high range?

What happened to "peak oil?"

Let's hear your views.  pl 

Open Thread - 28 November 2014

pl

America’s bipolar Foreign Policy unlikely to change (by CP)

Putin supposedly said about Obama that “Negotiating with Obama is like playing chess with a pigeon. The pigeon knocks over all the pieces, shits on the board and then struts around like it won the game.”

If Putin didn't say that, it would be a case of fiction being more real than reality. If Putin really said that, he may just be describing his practical personal experiences, because the description itself is IMO rather  accurate.

In his new book (which I yet have to read; I wait for the paperback edition) Henry Kissinger, the wise old scoundrel, has made an astute observation that goes a long way describing an important root cause of the recent and past American foreign policy disasters, as much as America’s manifest inability to conduct to a rational foreign policy towards countries like Russia, Iran or Syria, to name the most prominent and important ones.

Kissinger’s observation

“The conviction that American principles are universal has introduced a challenging element into the international system because it implies that governments not practicing them are less than fully legitimate. … (which) … suggests that a significant portion of the world lives under a kind of unsatisfactory, probationary arrangement, and will one day be redeemed; in the meantime, their relations with the world’s strongest power must have some latent adversarial element to them.”

Kissinger's comment explains how the US can negotiate-and-not-negotiate (by routinely moving the goal posts during the negotiations – and then blame Iran for the 'lack of progress') with Iran for years.

It explains why the US under Bush 43 would unblinkingly accept the Russian offer of help after 9/11 only to open permanent bases in Central Asia.

It explains why the US under Obama would push-and-push-not missile defence, push NATO expansion, merrily cheat Russia on the UNSC resolution on Libya, while cooperating with Russia on Iran and Syria and then kick them in the shin by supporting a coup in Kiev, without feeling a contradiction in anything it does, while being just startled at all that irrational and incomprehensible Russian anger.

All the while, America sees ‘coercive diplomacy (war by diplomatic means?)’ as the norm. All options (military ones) are always on the table, a phrase heard so often that it must be a policy doctrine (presumably the "Let's-talk-while-we-preserve-the-right-to-cheat-and-or-kill-you" Doctrine).

Kissinger’s insight gives a compelling explanation of America’s attitudes. To the extent that Russia and Iran, reality based as they are, think it is about interests, on which rational discussion is possible they are mistaken. Rational discuscourse with the US for Russia, Iran and China is possible only to an extent.

The American attitude Kissinger points out has consequences beyond the quirk itself. It is a very dangerous day when Russia, Iran and China come to see the American government as so ideological to judge that talking with them is pointless.

Islamic State COIN operations

 "A recent Islamic State offensive in Iraq’s Anbar province suggests that the extremist organization is changing tactics, relying less on local Sunni Muslim tribes for support and carrying out what one coalition strategist called a “counterinsurgency campaign” intended to undercut any U.S.-led effort to enlist tribes against it.

The outlines of this new strategy became apparent last week when the Islamic State launched an assault on Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, without the assistance of local fighters. That assault was preceded by weeks of assassinations aimed at prominent members of Anbar tribes.

“This is the first real multi-pronged assault by the group acting on its own,” said Aymenn al Tamimi, a Middle East-based researcher who studies jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria, referring to the campaign, which began last Friday." McClatchy News

---------------------

The tribes being slaughtered by IS in Anbar are the same tribes we wrote about in the linked study in 2006.  Denigrators of the Awakening mocked the movement on the basis that the tribes received money.  They never never seemed to understand that Washington's men were paid when money could be found.   IS now targets these tribes and their leaders for execution.  

This is a form of COIN operation.  It is not the methodology recommended in the Petraeus manual  but it will be effective of the US does not overcome the nonsense emanating from the Children's Crusade. 

Hagel was done in by the disfunctional foolishness of the Obama Administration.  The girls and boys around Obama are very full of themselves.  pl

Download Iraqi Tribal Study - Final

 

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/11/24/247969_islamic-state-toughens-tactics.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/11/24/247969_islamic-state-toughens-tactics.html?rh=1

"The night of the Long Knives" by Richard Sale

As a new reporter for LIFE Magazine, I had spent almost six months living with a 4500-member black gang, The Blackstone Rangers on Chicago’s Southside. 

When the Democratic convention began, its purpose was to nominate Hubert Humphrey for President. LIFE was assigned me to lead the coverage of the street disturbances along with Muhammad Ali’s personal photographer and other pairs of reporters and photographers.   In this chapter, I try to describe what it is like to be suddenly thrust in a street riot.   

This comes from my novel, Virtue’s Fool, which took me ten years to complete. Richard Sale

 

-------------------

     "Grant Park was not the usual park; it displayed belts of greenery that had been cut into major parallel streets between Michigan Avenue and Lake Michigan one and a half miles away. After the attacks of the afternoon, the police wanted to pen the kids up in Lincoln Park, keeping them away from the Hilton, but there were a variety of bridges and overpasses that went north and south and which crossed over the railroad lines and they led into Michigan Avenue. Many of the kids who had escaped the attacks up at Lincoln Park were now heading there. The exodus from Lincoln Park speeded up after the National Guard began to gas the kids and it found that there were too many bridges, too many choices, and the authorities had been outwitted. The wind suddenly shifted west,  causing eyes to tear, faces grimacing, people stopping to try and put a handkerchief to their eye, many of them never having to sniff tear gas before in their lives.

Worse, the beatings in Lincoln Park had attracted hundreds of newsmen, all of whom had now headed to the Hilton to cover what was soon to be called, “The Wednesday Night Massacre.”

Roger Snider stood squarely out in the middle of Michigan Avenue, next to the Hilton, behind the police line, his hands thrust into the pockets of his white gabardine jacket, wearing expensive, tasseled loafers and dress slacks. He had eaten a steak dinner, had two scotches and now he felt full and contented. He had spent his afternoon drinking at a local bar where Norman Mailer, who had suddenly left to go speak at the bend shell, leaving him with McCarthy staffers most of whom were in a glum mood.  (Roger would only learn later that Mailer was watching the spectacle that violent night from the safety of the nineteen floor of the Hilton.)

 

Middle East Diary - 24 November 2014

What we see in these articles is a profound mistrust of the Iraqi Army.  If we provide them significant weaponry will they lose it again to IS?  Will their rotten, grafting leaders continue to steal the troops' pay?  Will the two towns on the road to Iran stay in friendly hands?  Will the Syrian military close the mouth of the encirclement they have been constructing around the rebels in Aleppo? The gap is now a mile wide.

Will Michele Fluournoy be up to those policy challenges? 

Stay tuned.   

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/world/middleeast/graft-hobbles-iraqs-military-in-fighting-isis.html?_r=0

http://www.businessinsider.com/iraqi-weapons-reportedly-ending-up-with-isis-2014-11

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/11/23/uk-mideast-crisis-iraq-towns-idUKKCN0J70B120141123

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-23/iraq-premier-orders-aid-to-anbar-amid-islamic-state-offensive.html

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/11/20/iraq_needs_weapons_but_can_it_keep_them

http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-aleppo-siege-20141123-story.html

 

 

Hagel out - Flournoy maybe?

 
So, Hagel is out.  He is evidently the loser in a struggle between the military leadership and the Children's Crusaders at the White House and State Department.  The military want more clearly defined goals across the Islamic culture continent and "the kids" want to run foreign affairs on the basis of the crap they write in magic marker on white boards in their seminars. 

The armed forces are being asked to assume larger and larger missions in the Middle East, Afghanistan and West Africa.  At the same time the money needed to maintain DoD operations and perform such functions as Strategic Triad modernization has largely disappeared in the welter of sequestration and general reductions in budget. 

Understandably the generals and admirals are pushing back and the constitutional way for them to do that is through the civilian head of the Department of Defense.

The back pressure was probably displayed last week in a loosening of ROE in Afghanistan.

Obama, true to his nature, will, IMO, choose someone to replace Hagel who will not challenge him and who will "play nice" with the other boys and girls without regard to the realities of life. 

That woman is likely to be Michele Flournoy.   This woman is just another member of the Washington/New York playcircle of academics who think they understand war.  pl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mich%C3%A8le_Flournoy

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Graham squeals - again.

"Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, has some harsh words for the recently released Benghazi report, led by his own party.

"I think the report is full of crap," Graham told Gloria Borger on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.

"I don't believe that the report is accurate, given the role that Mike Morell (deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time) played in misleading the Congress on two different occasions. Why didn't the report say that?"

The investigative report Graham is referring to was released Friday by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Michigan, and Ranking Member Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Maryland.

The report finds little to support the questions that have been raised about CIA actions on the ground in Benghazi the night of the deadly attack on September 11, 2012.

Graham, who has maintained a critical voice in the Benghazi controversy over the past two years, says it's "garbage" that the report finds no members of the Obama administration lied to cover up what happened in Benghazi.

"That's a bunch of garbage," Graham said. "That's a complete bunch of garbage.""  CNN

-------------------------

This man is not quite right in the head.  Rogers, the head of the House Special Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) is a Republican.  This is his report.  He absolves the Obama Administration of all the charges made against it in the Benghazi incident with the exception of the lack of "hardness" in the defense of the Benghazi "consulate."  Fair enough, but that is not very important compared to what the Obama Administration is accused of by Graham, McCain and the like.

I guess Graham just prefers his fantasy life.  Someone has said that from where he stands you can see Narnia.  pl  

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/23/politics/lindsey-graham-benghazi-report/

"The Shah’s Secret Police" by Richard Sale

 
    In November of 1976, after all kinds of intrigues to which I was no participant, The Washington Post gave me a $500 advance and sent me to Iran to do a series on that country. The editors gave me no guidance. I kept asking what I was to write about, and they would reply, “You’ll find something.” At that time, I was married to an Iranian woman who had never been to Iran. Her father was the Iranian Press Attaché in Washington, and I was very close to him, closer than to my real father. He taught me to love Iranian music, to learn passable Farsi, history and to love the Persian poets. My favorite was the poet Saadiq, from Shiraz. 

     So I went off to Iran. It was like sending a six year old to build an intricate computer.   

     I had learned from being in the first racial riot in Washington, D.C, that the way to get news is to go where no one wants you or expects you. In Iran, I planned to learn about Islam by going to the mosques. Everyone in America apparently saw the mosques as horrible and frightening. I suspected they had never visited one. But the mosques were the center of opposition to the Shah. 

     The night I arrived, I met my mother-in-law in Shemiran, a Tehran wealthy suburb close to the Shah’s palace. That Thursday evening was a holiday, and all over the city, the throats of sheep were being cut. I remember the gamey smell of the blood trickling in the joube or street drain. The next day, I went to south Tehran to go to the mosque there. It was a big mosque and was supposed to be a center for resistance to the Shah. Since the Shah had required that I become a Shia in order to marry, and I had done so and had my name inscribed in the rolls at Iranian Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. As a result, I felt I really needed to try out my religion, which I had studied, in order to move beyond the mere academic and gain a genuine knowledge. I was accompanied down to the south Tehran mosque by a dark-skinned gentleman from the Iranian Ministry of Information. He was in his forties. Courteous, smooth, polite. 

 

Yup, kings in Kaffiristan.

"Mr. Obama’s decision largely extends much of the current American military role for another year. Mr. Obama and his aides were forced to make a decision because the 13-year old mission, Operation Enduring Freedom, is set to end on Dec. 31.

The matter of the military’s role in Afghanistan in 2015 has “been a really, really contentious issue for a long time, even more contentious than troop numbers,” said Vikram Singh, who worked on Afghanistan policy both at the State Department and the Pentagon during the Obama administration and is now at the Center for American Progress in Washington.

American officials said that while the debate over the nature of the American military’s role beginning in 2015 has lasted for years, two issues in particular have shifted the debate in recent months.

The first is the advance of Islamic State forces across northern Iraq and the collapse of the Iraqi Army, which has led to criticism of Mr. Obama for a military pullout of Iraq that left Iraqi troops ill-prepared to protect their soil."  NY Times

------------------------

This guy (Obama) is low hanging fruit for the generals.  They rolled him for the surge in Afghanistan and now they are doing it again.   Stay tuned as they continue to press him for gradual increases in mission and numbers. 

As the Times states they can't stand the thought that the client state in Kabul will fall apart as the one in Baghdad did this year.  They will do anything to preent that.

Obama is very vulnerable and increasingly desperate and will become more so.  It's anyone's guess what he will do if the rest of Ramadi falls to IS.  pl

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/22/us/politics/in-secret-obama-extends-us-role-in-afghan-combat.html?_r=1 

Mr. Obama’s decision largely extends much of the current American military role for another year. Mr. Obama and his aides were forced to make a decision because the 13-year old mission, Operation Enduring Freedom, is set to end on Dec. 31.  NY Times

 

 

Is Asteroid Mining coming? Uncover Michigan

"The presence of ice or water on these bodies is one of the most significant potential resources. This is so as solar panels on spacecraft can provide the power to simply convert water to hydrogen and oxygen for fuel. This idea of harvesting resources needed in space doesn't sound like such a bad idea considering the fact that it costs from $5,000-25,000+ per kg to ferry items into space.

Currently, there are two private companies pursuing asteroid mining, these are Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries. NASA too is involved on several levels as it has awarded contracts to several companies including both Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries for studies relating to relating to asteroid redirection."  Uncover Michigan

------------------------

The Heinlein novel linked to below is centered on Luna, not an asteroid but you get the idea.  In Heinlein's book the Loonies used mass drivers to throw their ore production at Terra aiming for splash down areas at sea where the rocks could be harvested. 

Space colonization must come to be commercially viable or it will just end in a whimper of some sort.  pl

http://uncovermichigan.com/content/22019-asteroid-mining-its-way

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outland_(film)

 

Is DoD illegally protecting Israel's "clandestine nuclear weapons program?" IrMep

 
"A quarter century ago the Department of Defense clearly documented that Israel had a clandestine nuclear weapons program. Under the Symington and Glenn Amendments to the US Foreign Aid Act, at that very moment the United States was obligated by law to cut off all foreign aid to Israel.Instead, another $82 billion in foreign aid was provided to Israel by unwitting U.S. taxpayers.  The public's right to know the inside details of such massive ongoing government corruption enabled by ongoing cover-up far outweigh the protections of any NDA, even more so considering the signatories in this case."  irmep plaintiff response

----------------------------

In 1987 the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) a US government think tank produced a research document for the US DoD that appears to have established the existence of Israel's nuclear weapons program.  Under US law (Symington and Glenn Amendments) official knowledge of this program required a cut-off of all foreign aid to Israel.  That did not happen.

Irmep filed a FOIA request for the document three years ago.  Thus far DoD has not handed over the document.  pl 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Defense_Analyses

http://www.irmep.org/cfp/11202014_Plaintiffs_Response_v4s.pdf

http://www.IRmep.org/cfp/11192014_defendant_motion_extension_time.pdf

 

Open Thread - 21 November 2014

  pl

Jim Webb for president!

"We haven’t been perfect and from time to time, as with today, we have drifted to the fringes of allowing the very inequalities that our Constitution was supposed to prevent. Walk into some of our inner cities if you dare, and see the stagnation, poverty, crime, and lack of opportunity that still affects so many African Americans. Or travel to the Appalachian Mountains, where my own ancestors settled and whose cultural values I still share, and view the poorest counties in America – who happen to be more than 90 percent White, and who live in the reality that “if you’re poor and White you’re out of sight.”

The Democratic Party used to be the place where people like these could come not for a handout but for an honest handshake, good full-time jobs, quality education, health care they can afford, and the vital, overriding belief that we’re all in this together and the system is not rigged."  The Atlantic

-------------------

 I supported Webb for the senate and will certainly support him in this as well.  IMO the time has come for the Clintons and Bushes to go home and wait a generation or two before they re-enter US politics.  pl 

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/11/president-jim-webb/382977/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Webb

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Webb

 

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Afghanistan continues to "drink" US money

"Sopko leads the office responsible for tracking down waste, fraud, and abuse in U.S.-backed projects and helping to reclaim misused taxpayer dollars.The United States has allocated more than $104 billion for reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, and President Obama's fiscal 2015 budget would add an additional $5.8 billion.

Despite the best intentions of the U.S. government, Sopko said that it has helped increase corruption. He pointed to large, rapid investments from the United States and a lack of planning about how Afghanistan would sustain U.S.-led projects.

"They can't afford the government we've given them," he said. "If you go over there, it's like Disneyland, what we bought for them.... It isn't working if you approach reconstruction that way."'  NJ

--------------------------

Both the Bush and Obama Administrations have turned a blind eye to US/Afghan money corruption in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Huge consulting contracts for development business advising were given to K Street lobbying firms that grew new subsidiaries built for the sole purpose of delivering money to the US participants.  Many of the people involved in such schemes then formed personal partnerships with Afghans whose fathers, uncles, etc.  were central figures in the Karzai government.  This corruption was driven from the top. This continues.  pl  

http://www.nationaljournal.com/defense/ig-corruption-in-afghanistan-getting-significantly-worse-20141118?ref=early_bird

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"...Islamic militants have army of 200,000..." The Independent

"The Islamic State (Isis) has recruited an army hundreds of thousands strong, far larger than previous estimates by the CIA, according to a senior Kurdish leader. He said the ability of Isis to attack on many widely separated fronts in Iraq and Syria at the same time shows that the number of militant fighters is at least 200,000, seven or eight times bigger than foreign in intelligence estimates of up to 31,500 men.

Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of the Kurdish President Massoud Barzani said in an exclusive interview with The Independent on Sunday that "I am talking about hundreds of thousands of fighters because they are able to mobilise Arab young men in the territory they have taken."

He estimates that Isis rules a third of Iraq and a third of Syria with a population of between 10 and 12 million living in an area of 250,000 square kilometres, the same size as Great Britain. This gives the jihadis a large pool of potential recruits.

Proof that Isis has created a large field army at great speed is that it has been launching attacks against the Kurds in northern Iraq and the Iraqi army close to Baghdad at the same time as it is fighting in Syria. "They are fighting in Kobani," said Mr Hussein. "In Kurdistan last month they were attacking in seven different places as well as in Ramadi [capital of Anbar province west of Baghdad] and Jalawla [an Arab-Kurdish town close to Iranian border]. It is impossible to talk of 20,000 men or so.""  The Independent

----------------------

Well, pilgrims, The Purple Assed Mandrill of Peace (PAMOP) is trembling with fear and shaken by frissons of anticipation at the thought that this may be true.

I know nothing of Fuad Hussein but his logic appeals.  IS is not acting as though it is short of men.  If FH is correct then the re-taking of Beiji may be irrelevant or at worst a clever move in a gambit in which the ISF are lured into suitable positions for encirclement.

Movements like IS often have various echelons of organization and activity.  An active force is frequently backed by semi-active militias.  Both the IRA and the VC were examples of this behavior.

Time will tell.  pl

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/war-with-isis-islamic-militants-have-army-of-200000-claims-kurdish-leader-9863418.html

Obama’s immigration plan ...

"President Obama’s expected action lifting the threat of deportation from millions of undocumented immigrants, which could come as early as this week, will expand the authority of the executive branch into murky, uncharted territory.

The path is built on the long-accepted principle, going at least as far back as the 1970s, that any administration should have wide discretion over how it deals with those who are in this country illegally. Obama, however, is poised to take that leeway significantly farther than before.

The move is certain to bring criticism that Obama has gone too far — ignoring the intent of Congress in passing the nation’s immigration statutes and violating the constitutional requirement that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”"  Washpost

------------------------

Obama said the other day that he is not an emperor, but he acts as though he wishes that he were such.  We are often reminded that he was a constitutional law teacher of some sort but did he specialize in constitutional law because he likes the US system of government or because he sought ways to overcome it?

IMO the Republican congress will have little choice but to seek to stop him if he extends what amounts to amnesty to five million alien parents of US citizen offspring, who are themselves US citizens because of the generosity of the birthright grant of citizenship provisions of the US Constitution.

What form would congressional resistance take?  IMO someone will sue Obama in the federal courts for usurpation of power and neglect of the duties of his oath in that he is sworn to "take care that the Laws be faithfully executed."  There is existing law that applies.

The key question then would be if the parties making the suit have "standing" to bring the matter to the courts, that is, would they be the agrieved party?

If the plaintiffs are thought to have standing then the process will begin to drive a massive crisis of a kind not seen since Watergate.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obamas-potential-immigration-plan-could-enter-uncharted-territory/2014/11/17/3e5be738-6dde-11e4-ad12-3734c461eab6_story.html

Related articles

Repeal The Constitution

Does Obama Immigration Policy Violate Article 1 Of The Constitution?

Ferguson Braces...

 

“Sales are off the charts,” said Steven King, a white owner of Metro Shooting Supplies in Bridgeton, a mostly white suburb about 10 miles from Ferguson. He held up a stack of about 100 new applications for the federal background check needed to buy a weapon. “People are in fear of their lives. They’re just scared to death. The rumors are that every single area is a threat.”

St. Louis routinely has one of the nation’s highest violent crime rates, but Brown’s death was the only homicide in Ferguson this year.

At least a few locals worry that all of these very public preparations for violent protests could be a self-fulling prophecy. “I don’t think the reaction would have been as violent as what everyone is thinking,” said Hubert H. Hoosman Jr., who is black and owns a real estate consulting firm a few blocks from Ferguson’s police station. “But I do worry what it says that everyone keeps talking about it as if it’s a given.”  CS Monitor

------------------------

 I wrote here a while back that it was very unlikely that any grand jury would indict Wilson and it seems that will be the case. 

The same thing is likely to happen if Obama seeks a civil rights violation indictment from s federal grand jury.

Even the DoJ effort to stand the Ferguson police department on its head is likely to fail because such a DoJ effort will be dependent on a ruling from a federal judge.  Such a ruling would be subject to judicial review.  This attempt would quickly become a deeply political act in which the relative powers of the federal government and the State of Missouri will be a major issue in Washington.

What might happen in Ferguson if the grand jury does not indict?  IMO there will be widespread disorder so severe that a lot of property damage will occur as well as attacks on policemen.  In this situation the governor of Missouri is likely to employ the National Guard.

What will Obama's reaction to that be?  pl  

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/Decoder-Voices/2014/1117/Ferguson-braces-for-prospect-of-no-indictment-in-Michael-Brown-shooting-case

Book Review by TTG

"My original intention was to read “Cry Havoc” over the course of a week as a relaxing bit of evening reading before drifting off to the land of Nod. Instead, I finished it in two sittings. I found it that exciting and engaging… and definitely not conducive to sleep. As you read this novel, you will find elements of such science fiction classics as “Dune” and “Starship Troopers.” But make no mistake, this is an original and uniquely imaginative world set largely at the Ganymede Military Academy
in the year 2410."  TTG

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/the_athenaeum/2014/11/review-of-cry-havoc-by-jack-hanson-reviewed-by-ttg.html

IS/Nusra Alliance Against the FSA - Crack of Doom?

"The two most brutal terror groups in Syria reportedly have struck an alliance, in a deal that poses serious problems for the Obama administration’s efforts to prop up “moderate” rebel factions in the country.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that militant leaders from the Islamic State and Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate, the Nusra Front, agreed during a meeting in northern Syria last week to stop fighting each other.

Such an accord could present new difficulties for Washington's strategy against the Islamic State. While warplanes from a U.S.-led coalition strike militants from the air, the Obama administration has counted on arming "moderate" rebels to push them back on the ground.

Those rebels, already considered relatively weak and disorganized, would face far stronger opposition if the two heavy-hitting militant groups now are working together. One official claimed the Islamic State and Nusra already have agreed to work toward destroying one prominent, U.S.-backed rebel group."  foxnews

------------------

Well, pilgrims, looks like a bad day for the unicorn army and the kids in the WH and State Department.  pl 

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/11/13/isis-al-qaeda-reportedly-reach-accord-in-syria/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Nusra_Front 

 

Toward an AUMF for the forever war.

"If Congress declines to formally authorize US strikes against the Islamic State, one key senator predicts some members will try to end the military operations.

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat who has introduced one of a handful of authorizations pending in both chambers, pressed hard during a Wednesday forum for Congress in coming months to debate and vote on a legal underpinning for President Barack Obama's air strikes on the violent Islamic group.

Obama last week announced he will ask Congress to approve the strikes. Due to a crowded lame duck session agenda, and the need to craft a force-authorization measure both chambers can accept, it appears Kaine's desired debate and vote will have to wait until the new Congress takes over next year."  Military Times

--------------------

Tim Kaine wants the war against IS to be authorized by Congress, and he recognizes that if Obama is allowed to employ the armed forces without specific congressional approval we will have taken a big step in the direction of dictatorship.  After all, what does emperor mean other than unlimited commander in chief?

Kaine wants a new AUMF that will authorize this war but not unlimited war, not war against whatever enemy some future commander in chief may want to fight.

Tim Kaine has it right. pl  

http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/capitol-hill/2014/11/13/new-aumf-kaine/18957077/

****************

 "President Barack Obama wants his advisers to review the administration's Syria policy after determining that it may not be possible to defeat Islamic State militants without removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, CNN reported on Wednesday.

Citing senior U.S. officials, the network said Obama's national security team held four meetings in the past week that were driven by how the administration's Syria strategy fit into its campaign against Islamic State, which has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq.

"The president has asked us to look again at how this fits together," CNN quoted one senior official as saying. "The long-running Syria problem is now compounded by the reality that to genuinely defeat ISIL, we need not only a defeat in Iraq but a defeat in Syria." ISIL is another acronym for Islamic State."  Reuters

----------------------

Obama's plan in regard to Syria evidently has relied on the creation of a game altering 25,000 man force of "moderate" Syrians who are yet to be vetted, selected or trained as individuals or at successively higher levels of command until a level of capability could be arrived at that would make this force the king maker in Syria.  It has been HOPED that along the way this FSA force would defeat IS, Nusra and the Syrian government.  IMO the creation of such a force would take five years at least.

Some of level of reality about the possibility of keeping all these Syrian balls in the air while this happens has begun to set in.  As a result the Obamanites are looking for another game changer.  IMO to that end we will see a new AUMF that specifically authorises US air action against the Syrian government.

The Syrian Army and Air Force present just the kinds of targets that US airmen like; big, hard to hide, and vulnerable to our advanced weaponry.  Once an air war against the SAG begins the USAF and US Navy will break the Syrian govenment like a stick.  Air bases in Turkey would be available. 

The FSA is an illusion, an army of unicorns.  Once the present Syrian government is gone the Islamists will rule in Damascus and there will be a flood of Christians, Alawis, Shia, Druze, etc. into Lebanon and Jordan.

Perhaps Congress should think about that when they write a new AUMF.  pl  

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/13/us-mideast-crisis-obama-syria-idUSKCN0IX03T20141113

It is past time to start helping the Iraqi tribes.

"... mass killings of Sunni tribesmen battling the Islamic State have added urgency to Iraqi government efforts to support pockets of resistance against the militants. But distrust, a lack of financing and corruption threaten the process, tribesmen and officials say.

In a flurry of meetings in recent weeks, tribal leaders have demanded that Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi address problems of missing weapons and lack of support as they hold out against extremists in the face of mass detentions and executions. Hundreds of tribesmen have been summarily executed in the western province of Anbar over the past month, with hundreds more rounded up north of Baghdad.

The slayings have underscored the predicament of Sunni tribes that have resisted Islamic State extremists, often with little help from the central government. The killings threaten to undermine the government strategy of mobilizing the Sunni tribes against the Islamic State in the tribes’ areas — a key pillar in efforts to crush the militants.

“We demand that the government does something,” said Sheik Naim al-Gaoud, a tribal leader with the Albu Nimr. “We feel that we have been abandoned and neglected.”"  Washpost

------------------

Let's be real about this.  The notion of working with the Sunni Arab tribes of Iraq against the Islamists was always an American idea.  The Shia run state that we Americans created has NEVER wanted to arm the Sunni tribes.  The Shia see these tribesmen as their natural enemies.  Both the sedentary and rural Shia think of the Sunni Arab tribesmen in much the same way that sheep think of wolves. 

Our colleague, FB Ali, has expressed the belief that having been betrayed once by the Americans and more or less continously by the Shia led government the tribesmen would not rise against IS.  His arguments were so cogent that I had been persuaded by them,  But, behold!  The Albu Nimr and other Sunni tribes want to fight to defend their way of life from the depredations and tyranny of IS.  IS believes that the tribesmen are badly "infected" (from their point of view) with; Islamic folk religion, Sufism and tribal customary law practises.  For a salafi, jihadi, wahhabi fighter, the tribesmen of Iraq are just more murtadoon (apostates).  We all now by now what the fate of murtadoon is when they fall into the hands of IS.

We Americans should push the Baghdad government to one side and begin to directly support these tribesmen from bases in Jordan and the KAR.  Without the tribes we will have little chance of stabilizing a containment and eventual roll back of IS.  DOL  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/effort-to-arm-sunni-tribes-in-iraq-against-islamic-state-faces-hurdles/2014/11/09/4bb4f01e-b383-4a60-b222-fdcae53aefb5_story.html

"For the ashes of his fathers... " Remembrance/Veterans Day

 

" A politician’s stipend and the style in which he lives

Are sometimes disproportionate to the service that he gives.

While the ordinary soldier, who offered up his all,

Is paid off with a medal and perhaps, a pension small.


It’s so easy to forget them for it was so long ago,

That the old Bills of our Country went to battle, but we know

It was not the politicians, with their compromise and ploys,

Who won for us the freedom that our Country now enjoys.


Should you find yourself in danger, with your enemies at hand,

Would you want a politician with his ever-shifting stand?

Or would you prefer a soldier, who has sworn to defend

His home, his kin and Country and would fight until the end?


He was just a common soldier and his ranks are growing thin,

But his presence should remind us we may need his like again.

For when countries are in conflict, then we find the soldier’s part

Is to clean up all the troubles that the politicians start.


If we cannot do him honor while he’s here to hear the praise,

Then at least let’s give him homage at the ending of his days.

Perhaps just a simple headline in a paper that would say,

Our Country is in mourning, for a soldier died today. 

"Just a Common Soldier,” a poem by Lawrence Vaincourt:

 

------------------------------

 

"And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods?"

Macaulay 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Babington_Macaulay,_1st_Baron_Macaulay

 

McCain to hassle DoD as Committee Chairman

"Mr. McCain will also be better able to use nominations, administration legislative proposals and programs as leverage to prod Mr. Obama toward his own views.

“I want the committee to be very active,” Mr. McCain said in an interview after the midterm elections set up Republican control of both houses of Congress. “That’s the beauty of the majority, as you know. Of course we can allocate and authorize certain programs, and we can cut others. The president proposes, and Congress disposes.”

Mr. Obama, as commander in chief, still has the final say in whether American ground troops will be committed to Iraq and Syria; whether the United States will do more to arm moderate rebels in Syria opposed to the government of President Bashar al-Assad; or even whether the United States will take a more muscular posture against Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, over Ukraine."  NY Times

-----------------------

Actually, Obama still has the only say about what existing forces will do.  The House of representatives initiates all funding for the armed forces.  The Congress determines the structure of the armed forces by law, but it has no power to order the armed forces to do anything.

Senator McCain has said he has no conficence in Martin Dempsey, the CJCS.  That is unfortunate but McCain cannot fire Dempsey.  He can't fire anyone except the poor devils who work for him in congressional staffs.

He will cut defense funding to "discipline" Obama?  Ha! Ha!

pl 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/us/politics/mccain-poised-to-press-obama-and-pentagon-at-armed-services-helm.html?_r=0

He tasks me. He tasks me and I shall have him! - TTG

Much like Khan was fixated on Kirk, Washington is fixated on degrading and destroying IS. We are still convinced we are the indespensible nation and must solve all the world's problems. We are not and we cannot.

On Sunday morning, President Obama told Bob Schieffer the fight against ISIS has reached a turning point and the “coalition” is about to go on the offensive . That’s a lovely sentiment. I wonder if he really believes that? It goes well with the decision to double our bootless troop strength in Iraq and the request for an additional 5.6 billion dollars for that mission. Beyond its value as a sales pitch, this talk of a “new phase” is pure BS. The only thing that has been established is that the IS is not militarily invincible. This is going to be a long, tough slog and the final outcome will most likely not be to Washington’s liking. 

Our own Babak Makkinejad summed up a course of action and the probable outcome quite well in one of his recent comments. “I think the best policy for NATO states is to cut and run. This would focus the minds of their erstwhile allies like the proverbial death sentence and give leverage to NATO to shepherd into some sort of order. I think also given the weaknesses of the Muslim states, order in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan and Palestine cannot be restored. I expect the new Salafi state in Western Iraq and Eastern Syria to endure and become - in time - a UN member.”  

I generally agree with Babak’s prescription and prognosis. The solution to the problems in the region must come from within the region. I think we can do more militarily than cutting and running, but not much more. As an example, we should be aiming to replace our air campaign with organic mortar and artillery among the Kurdish forces and other Iraqi forces willing to stand up to IS attacks. Think indigenous and sustainable. They need training in the effective use of those indirect fire weapons. I’ve seen videos of Kurdish mortars in action and it was painful to watch. IMO the idea of a JUWTF that came out of our recent SST wargame would be most helpful in this regard. We should reinforce indigenous solutions rather than try to, once again, rebuild an Iraqi Army in our image.

I also like the Russian view as expressed by Vitaly Naumkin in Al-Monitor. “In Russian official circles, Damascus is considered the force most capable of stopping the jihadists from the Islamic State (IS) and other terrorist organizations, and cooperation with the Syrian government is vital to the struggle against IS. Moscow is decisively against classifying the extremists as “bad” or “good,” viewing such positions by Western and some regional countries as short-sighted.” (Al-Monitor) We really need to open our eyes to this reality and drop this “Assad must go” nonsense. At the same time we need to drop our regime change fixation on Iran. Like the song says, “Let it go.” Of course, this is hard to do with Netanyahu and our own “Israel Firsters” playing the part of Grima Wormtongue.  

Finally, I leave you with these two reports without comment.  

A reluctant former communications technician working for Islamic State, now going by the pseudonym ‘Sherko Omer’, who managed to escape the group, told Newsweek that he travelled in a convoy of trucks as part of an ISIS unit from their stronghold in Raqqa, across Turkish border, through Turkey and then back across the border to attack Syrian Kurds in the city of Serekaniye in northern Syria in February. “ISIS commanders told us to fear nothing at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks,” said Omer of crossing the border into Turkey, “and they reassured us that nothing will happen, especially when that is how they regularly travel from Raqqa and Aleppo to the Kurdish areas further northeast of Syria because it was impossible to travel through Syria as YPG [National Army of Syrian Kurdistan] controlled most parts of the Kurdish region.” (Newsweek)

Two-hundred km (120 miles) to the west lies Afrin, which, like Kobani, is one of three Kurdish regions that declared itself autonomous from the Syrian government earlier this year. It could face a fate similar to Kobani's at the hands of the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, according to the woman who runs Afrin's local government as its prime minister. "Afrin is surrounded by Nusra, we're ready to defend ourselves," Hevi Mustefa said during a visit to the Turkish capital Ankara to raise awareness of Afrin's plight. "We're grateful for the international community's efforts at Kobani, but it was late. We want support from them so that the situation in Kobani doesn't repeat itself," she told Reuters in an interview. (Reuters)

 TTG

Strategy and international relations (FB Ali)

William R Polk, a distinguished former US diplomat and academic, has recently written a brilliant paper on the dangerous path that the US (and the West) are currently following in international relations, and analyses what is going wrong by discussing three ‘case studies’. He also focusses on the West's current problems in the Muslim world, and discusses their root cause.

His conclusion:

 

       "Today, when religious beliefs are also intertwined with post-colonial angers, thwarted ambitions and relative deprivation, passions are perhaps even more sensitive than they were in the Thirty Years War. If, as I believe, this is true or even if it is only a part of the whole story, the ability of outsiders to affect the course of events is similarly restricted.  

       Worse, it is likely to be even self-defeating.   The more we intervene, the more intense and long-lasting is likely to be the reaction.  The more violent our intervention the more long-term damage we are likely to do.  The record of the past few years is compelling.  The numbers of displaced, wounded, killed, of stunted children,  of widespread misery, of the loss of civic decency and the rise of terror among the survivors, of the set-back to the feeble growth of legal, social, cultural and political institutions, of blasted infrastructure which took decades to develop, of the enormous wastage of financial and human resources desperately needed throughout the world and of the often alarming and dangerous impact on fragile ecosystems – all of these make evident the dangers of intervention in situations in which we lack the knowledge, the tools and the acceptability that we often think we have.  As the terrifying “joke” of the Vietnam war put it, “we destroyed the village in order to save it.” 

       And even when we did so to stop the ugliness and viciousness of “the bad guys,” we often resorted to tools and practices that were hardly more humane:  like many Americans I carry in my memory the picture of the little Vietnamese girl running down a street on fire from napalm.  We used napalm later also in  Iraq.  Was it more humane than poison gas or cutting off peoples' heads?   Decapitation is surely barbaric.  But let us not forget that the French did that publicly until the eve of the Second World War; the Saudis still do it and the Iraqis actually decapitated Saddam Husain with a rope rather than a sword.  If I had to choose my form of execution, I believe I would find decapitation preferable to be burned alive.   Is carpet bombing which kills the bystanders or chemical defoliation which can induce cancer and birth defects less horrible than suicide bombing?  Were Saddam Husain's or Qaddafi's  prisons more cruel than Abu Ghuraib or Guantanamo?   If any of those comparisons redound to our credit, they surely are very narrow calls".

Download Polk on Strategy and International Relations (2014)

"Know when to hold'em, know when to fold'em..."

"While former presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan all responded to midterm election losses with high-profile firings, Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, said there would be no shake-up.

“I don’t see anything like that on the horizon,” McDonough said in an interview with Al Hunt on the “Charlie Rose” show, which airs on PBS and Bloomberg Television.

Obama senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said the president wouldn’t scale back his immigration plans, which may result in millions of people getting a reprieve from deportation. Pfeiffer said Obama also wouldn’t shrink from using his unilateral authority to move his agenda ahead during his remaining two years in office.

“We’re going to do what we think is best for the country,” Pfeiffer told reporters and editors yesterday at a Bloomberg Politics breakfast in Washington. “If they have disagreements about the things we do, they have the capacity to legislate.”"  Businessweek

 

--------------------------

 

Well, well, pilgrim...  Delusional?  Narcissistic? Megalomaniacal?  What do you say, Walrus?

 

I have it on good authority that Democratic Party seniors have appealed to the president to rid himself of the succubus of his inner circle, a group that is dragging him toward his doom.  Apparently, their pleas mean nothing to this entrenched clique.

 

According to the two fellows quoted above, Obama intends to govern by imperial fiat without reference to whatever it is that a Republican Congress and a Republican dominated SCOTUS might want.

 

I can't get Typepad to accept this as a comment, so...

Babelfish

The blockade, was absolutely devastating to the Confederates.  The retention of the US Navy was an advantage that could only be overcome if the Northern will to accept the kinds of losses that the Confederate Army inflicted failed.  The political effect of those losses was visible in the mid-term election in Lincoln's first term.

- "The Killer Angels"  Shaara was a Longstreet man through and through His book is great literature but it is not history any more than my version of Gettysburg in TBC is history.  In the great Confederate feud that erupted after Lee's death in 1870, Longstreet claimed that Ewell and Early caused Lee not to continue the 2nd Corps attack on Cemetery and Culp's hills on the evening of the first day.  This is untrue.  Early had been urging Ewell the corps commander to attack immediately when Lee arrived on the scene. Shaara implies that Early had done the opposite.  This is not so.  Ewell did it all by himself.

- I don't think Longstreet ever said anything about Fremantle.  Shaara invented that.

-In the Overland Campaign Grant intended to destroy the AoNV by advancing through the Wilderness focused on Richmond thus forcing Lee to commit his much smaller forces repeatedly to decisive engagement. What he had missed about the probabilities in this was how well Lee had predicted his avenues of advance and had done such things as build "corduroyed" roads through the forest paralleling Grant's western line of advance SE along the Brock Road.  Lee very nearly broke Grant's column of advance along that axis where the Orange Plank road meets the Brock Road and then a day or so later nearly turned Grant back in the big attack south of there in which Longstreet was severely wounded and the attack fell apart.  Grant retreated into his tent the night of the first day and sobbed himself to sleep.  I don't blame him a bit.  Meade's staff officers had tried to tell him that "you don't know war until you have met Bobby Lee and his boys."  To the surprise of his men Grant continued down the Brock Road.  Lee figured that out and beat him to Spotsylvania down the forest track that he had built in the winter.

-At the North Anna, the marble man worked out a plan that would have allowed him to destroy US II Corps but he came down with heart trouble and Grant was able to draw back from the trap.

-By the time they reached Cold Harbor just north of Richmond Grant had lost more men than Lee had in his whole army when Grant crossed the Rapidan and Grant still had the same numbers that he had when he crossed the river.  "Those people" as the Confederate Lee always referred to the US Army kept bringing more and more men forward in poorer and poorer units.  Lee's men butchered those heavy artillery units and new USCT regiments like they were sheep but there were just too many.

-Part of Grant's overall plan had been for Ben Butler to land from the sea and do exactly what you say with regard to railroad lines leading west and south from Richmond.  Smith, Kautz, Butler et all were defeated in all their efforts to do that in May and June.  The Battle of Drewry's Bluff just south of Richmond finished off that possibility.  pl

Stolterberg? He should stay on his meds.

"NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday reaffirmed the alliance's commitment to stabilizing Afghanistan and ensuring that the gains made are preserved after the foreign combat mission ends in 2014.

Afghan security forces have been largely left to fight the Taliban on their own this year, in their first real test since the militant Islamists were ousted from power in 2001 by U.S.-led forces.

Government forces hold cities and towns and district centers have also largely held out but police and army casualties have been described as "unsustainable" and the Taliban have regained territory in strategic provinces where they have resumed the role of de facto government."  Reuters

***************

"Afghan forces are dying at an unsustainable rate on the battlefield, a senior U.S. commander said Wednesday , in a troubling sign ahead of the departure of most U.S. and NATO troops by the end of this year.

Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, a senior commander for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said 4,634 members of Afghanistan’s police and army have been killed in action this year. That is already an increase from the total for 2013, when 4,350 members died in the line of duty.

“This is not sustainable,” he told reporters in a video briefing from Afghanistan.""  Washpost

------------------

The Taliban are once again governing large parts of Afghanistan.  The Afghan armed forces cost about 25% of Afghan GDP.  Most of that military budget money comes from the US.  Lucky us!  There are 195,000 people in their armed forces.

Now we learn from this man Anderson that KIA losses are so high that they are "unsustainable."

Excuse me?  What is it that we think we are doing there?  pl  

 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/06/us-afghanistan-nato-idUSKBN0IQ18220141106

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/afghan-forces-casualties-not-sustainable-us-commander-says/2014/11/05/a3df595a-6514-11e4-bb14-4cfea1e742d5_story.html

Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Alonzo H. Cushing - MOH

"Cushing graduated from the United States Military Academy in the class of June 1861, and received commissions as second and first lieutenant on the same day. He was brevetted major following the Battle of Chancellorsville.^[5] Cushing commanded Battery A, 4th U.S. Artillery at Gettysburg, and was hailed by contemporaries as heroic in his actions on the third day of the battle. He was wounded three times. First, a shell fragment went straight through his shoulder. He was then grievously wounded by a shell fragment which tore into his abdomen and groin. This wound exposed Cushing's intestines, which he held in place with his hand as he continued to command his battery. After these injuries a higher-ranking officer said, "Cushing, go to the rear." Cushing, due to the limited number of men left, refused to fall back. The severity of his wounds left him unable to yell his orders above the sounds of battle. Thus, he was held aloft by his 1st Sergeant Frederick Füger, who faithfully passed on Cushing's commands. Cushing was killed when a bullet entered his mouth and exited through the back of his skull. He died on the field at the height of the assault."  Wiki

------------------------

 "Cushing stood with his guts in his hands as the charge came up to the wall."

From "John Brown's Body"

If ever anyone deserved the Medal of Honor it was this man.

Henry Burgwyn was the colonel of the 26th North Carolina Infantry.  He and Cushing fell thirty yards from each other.  They were about the same age.

 

Meditations on Yesterday's Entertainment (political)

pl

"Deck the Halls with Howls of Folly" By Richard Sale

By now everyone’s eyes are half blind from the endless glare of the electoral aurora borealis, and our ears deafened by the roar and rattle of the artillery of candidates seeking our vote. The call, ordinary vision that sees ordinary life as something urbane, dispassionate and good humored has been buried by tons of sludge composed mainly of falsehood, exaggeration and unsound hyperbole. It is a vile time. 

Most everyone knows the plain facts of life, but groups drastically vary in understanding their political importance of such facts. Both groups have but a limited understanding of the other. One party looks at the ideals of the other with skeptical distaste. Both can scarcely believe that the other can be of the same race and history. The result is that both are easily attracted by the flashy but unsound. 

 

A marvellish foreign policy (by CP)

In response to my last post, lally posted the following:

"The foolishness of such a scenario was attributed to the worse-than-Hitler evil lust for blood that consumed a deranged Assad"

I think that is an excellent observation, and an excellent starting point. After all, we encounter this odd phenomenon time and time again.

(Master)Mindlessly Evil

I wrote that Assad would have to be a complete moron to have comitted Ghouta the way and at the time it happened:

First he aims for deniability, and builds a deniable improvised rocket, fills it with deniable kitchen Sarin, the idea being either to pin it on the rebels, or to, finally, be able to do a Saddam, and poison his opposition, too.

Then, out of sheer excitement, he blows his load prematurely - by doing it at a time he promises chemical disarmament and when he has inspectors in country who can be expected to be tasked with investigating the matter, opening himself up to not only being caught, but to be convicted as a liar and war criminal at the same time. What an opportunity!

But - trifles! The answer to the question why he would do that anyway is simple: He is simply mindlessly evil, beyond comprehension, which is why any logical approach to his actions must fail. All that is required to know is the enemy and to suspend that nagging disbelief by revelling in the glory of being on the side of the angels.

Cartoonisation

America's without exception personifies its enemies. Judging by narratives, the US fought not Iraq but Saddam, they fight not Syria but Assad, they fought not Libya but Ghaddafi, not Afghanistan but Mullah Omar and OBL, and not Russia but Putin etc pp. In doing so, they turn the targeted country's leaders into cartoon villains. They are illegitimate, usurpers, and their governments are 'regimes'.

This cartoonisation is a general trend in American foreign policy and foreign policy coverage over the last decades. Politics take the lead, the media follow, with great glee and enthusiasm. As a result, America's narratives of their various arch villain's conduct read much like a Marvel comic, and indeed, we are to marvel at the events in light of the infathomable evil projected on America's enemies.

Moderate Syrian Rebels - An Endangered Species -Walrus.

As predicted, the moderate Syrian rebel forces are no more. When will Col. Lang be callled back to the colours?

At some point President Obama will require a scapegoat for the stupidity of his strategy. As a general rule scapegoats are not chosen for their guilt but for expediency. Look out Gen. Dempsey! Who should really go?

.........

Two of the main rebel groups receiving weapons from the United States to fight both the regime and jihadist groups in Syria have surrendered to al-Qaeda.

The US and its allies were relying on Harakat Hazm and the Syrian Revolutionary Front to become part of a ground force that would attack the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

For the last six months the Hazm movement, and the SRF through them, had been receiving heavy weapons from the US-led coalition, including GRAD rockets and TOW anti-tank missiles.

But on Saturday night Harakat Hazm surrendered military bases and weapons supplies to Jabhat al-Nusra, when the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria stormed villages they controlled in northern Idlib province.

The development came a day after Jabhat al-Nusra dealt a final blow to the SRF, storming and capturing Deir Sinbal, home town of the group's leader Jamal Marouf............

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/11203825/Syrian-rebels-armed-and-trained-by-US-surrender-to-al-Qaeda.html

 

PENTAGON IN REVOLT AGAINST OBAMA WHITE HOUSE INCOMPETENCE by Harper

For the past week, top Pentagon officials have been busy engaging in something that they rarely relish:  Domestic politics.  In a series of leaks, beginning on Oct. 26 in the New York Times, "unnamed" Pentagon officials have disclosed a deep and growing rift between the military and the Obama White House and National Security Council over the managing of the war against the Islamic State.  The original New York Times story reported on a memo written by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to National Security Advisor Susan Rice in early October, spelling out deep flaws in the White House managing of the Iraq and Syria operations against IS.  Hagel demanded, among other things, a clarification from the President on how to pursue the anti-IS campaign in Syria, where the only viable fighting force on the ground is the Syrian Army.  The Pentagon has made clear from the outset of the US air operations against the Islamic State that there is no possibility of defeating the jihadists by air war alone.  Boots on the ground--preferably non-American boots--are going to be required to actually defeat the IS.  In the case of Syria, there is no UN authorization or Congressional approval for the American actions, which means that the US must be very careful not to take any actions aimed against the Assad government.

 

"The Day Israel Attacked America" Al-Jazeera.com

"Earlier this year, I acquired a copy of the audiotape of the attack as it had unfolded, the real time conversations between Israeli Air Force pilots and their controllers back at base. It had never been broadcast before." Richard Belfield speaking of his Al-Jazeera production.

----------------

I quote below from my Athenaeum post written in 2010 and entitled "What I know About the USS Liberty.

It appears that Belfield, an Englishman,  (chapeau) has obtained through FOIA the tapes of the in flight conversations among the Israelis concerning the strikes on USS Liberty.  I wrote in my post quoted below of having read transcripts in the Spring 0f 1968 that were of exactly the same material.  It seems likely that this is the same material now released by NSA.   My wife has a contemporary memory of me mentioning the existence of this material. 

pl

 "Dear Jim

I was a student in the Military Intelligence Officer Advanced Course at Ft. Holabird, Maryland (Baltimore) in 1967-1968.  The course lasted about ten months.  We students were required to take several electives from a group offered and I took a course in Cryptology.  This was taught by people from the NSA School at nearby Ft. Meade.    This course was taught in the winter or early spring of 1967-1968.  There were several sub-courses, one of which had to do with voice intercepts.  In the course of this, the instructor introduced a booklet produced at Ft. Meade as material for the course.  It contained various course materials.  Among them were transcripts of the translated intercepts of radio conversations between the Israeli strike commander and his base before and during the attacks on USS Liberty.  The instructor, a retired cryptologic warrant officer or NCO identified the transcript as being of the Liberty incident.  It was also so marked in the booklet.

In the transcript, the flight leader spoke to his base to report that he had the ship in view, that it was the same ship that he had been briefed on and that it was clearly marked with the US flag.  I think he said that the ship was displaying the US flag on an upper deck, but my memory of that might be inexact.  He asked for confirmation of his orders to attack the ship and seemed reluctant (understandably) to attack the ship.  He asked more than once and was told to carry out his orders and attack the ship.

There was some further discussion of damage to the ship.

That is all I remember."   pl

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2014/10/day-israel-attacked-america-20141028144946266462.html

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/the_athenaeum/uss-liberty/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JRgXie2teo 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40111.htm 

 

Chlorine Bombings, Ghouta, Atrocity Propaganda and False Narratives (by CP)

Chlorine and Iraq

Chlorine was first used as a chemical weapon by Germany on April 22, 1915 in the Second Battle of Ypres. It was pioneered by a German scientist later to be a Nobel laureate, Fritz Haber of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, in collaboration with the German chemical conglomerate IG Farben, who developed methods for discharging chlorine gas against an entrenched enemy.

Chlorine was quickly utilized by both sides as a chemical weapon, but was soon replaced by more deadly substances. It hasn't been used as a chemical weapon ever since because of its comparable ineffectiveness. Until recently, that is.

Recently there have been allegations that ISIS had used Chemical Weapons, that is, Chlorine, near Balad, north of Iraq. The article states that apparently ...

"... fighters for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, set off an explosive that unleashed a mass of yellow smoke that hung close to the ground, The Washington Post reported. The Post said that hospital officials who treated the men, as well as an unnamed Iraqi Defense Ministry official, confirmed the men’s suspicion that chlorine gas had been used against them. Eleven officers were made ill, though all survived."

The author cautiously continues:

Unconfirmed reports of improvised bombs made with chlorine gas and used by militants have arisen from time to time since the Islamic State began seizing territory in Iraq at the beginning of the year.

Mastery of the mighty Google would have allowed him to know that Islamists in Anbar Province actually have a record  of having used chlorine in bombings throughout the first half of 2007.

A tragic consequence of these bombings in Iraq at the time was that, because of the use of chlorine spiked bombs, Jordan halted export of chlorine to Iraq in 2007. Chlorine is in Iraq essential for water purification. Probably because of that Iraq experienced a cholera outbreak in 2007.

"A lack of clean drinking water in Iraq in 2007 led to an outbreak of cholera. A total of 181 people were infected, with 10 deaths reported.

According to Dr. Ryadh Abdul Ameer, the director of the Basra health ministry, basic water sterilization became impossible in some places due to restrictions on the availability of chlorine for water sterilization."