The Afghan Protection Racket

23 Wednesday Jun 2010

Posted by in Afghanistan, Obama administration, Politics, terrorism, war on terror

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I thought part of the strategy of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan was to stop corruption by officials in the Karzai government, not become an active participant in it. Turns out I was wrong, there’s a Mafia-style protection racket going on there, funded by you and me, which even includes payments to our supposed enemies–-the Taliban. And of course, Hamid Karzai and some more of his crooked relatives have their hands in the pie as well. What a surprise:

“The U.S. military is funding a massive protection racket in Afghanistan, indirectly paying tens of millions of dollars to warlords, corrupt public officials and the Taliban to ensure safe passage of its supply convoys throughout the country, according to congressional investigators.

The security arrangements, part of a $2.16 billion transport contract, violate laws on the use of private contractors, as well as Defense Department regulations, and “dramatically undermine” larger U.S. objectives of curtailing corruption and strengthening effective governance in Afghanistan, a report released late Monday said.”

Not that any of this is news to the DOD:

“The report describes a Defense Department that is well aware that some of the money paid to contractors winds up in the hands of warlords and insurgents.”

What do they care, it’s our money, and there’s always plenty more where that came from.

“In testimony shortly after Obama’s strategy announcement, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that “much of the corruption” in Afghanistan has been fueled by billions of dollars’ worth of foreign money spent there, “and one of the major sources of funding for the Taliban is the protection money.”

It must have been a momentary case of amnesia that caused Secretary Clinton to neglect to mention that the US happens to be a major source of that “foreign money.” Just an unintentional oversight, I’m sure.

But not to worry, this is what Gen. McChrystal calls “entrepreneurship.”

“Unlike in the Iraq war, the security and vast majority of the trucks are provided by Afghans, a difference that Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has praised as promoting local entrepreneurship.”

And wherever there’s corruption the Karzai-leone crime family can’t be far behind:

“The report describes a system in which subcontractors — most of them well-known warlords who maintain their own militias — charge $1,500 to $15,000 per truck to supply guards and help secure safe passage through territory they control. The most powerful of them, known as Commander Ruhullah, controls passage along Highway One, the principal route between Kabul and Kandahar, under the auspices of Watan Risk Management, a company owned by two of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s cousins.

Overall management of who wins the security subcontracts, it said, is often controlled by local political powerbrokers such as Karzai’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, head of the Kandahar provincial council.”

The Afghan warlords, the Taliban, and the Karzai family would like to express their appreciation to the American taxpayers for their continued support. And they hope we hang around another 10 or 20 years.

Senate Turns Down Extension of Unemployment Benefits

17 Thursday Jun 2010

Posted by in budget, Congress, Democrats, economy, Politics, Republicans

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The Republicrats in the Senate gave a big middle finger to the long-term unemployed yesterday, as 12 Democrats joined all the Republicans in voting down the extension of unemployment benefits, citing their hypocritical concerns about increasing the deficit as the reason:

“I’ve said all along that we have to be able to pay for what we’re spending,” said Sen. Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat who voted against the bill. “$77 billion or more of this is not paid for and that translates into deficit spending and adding to the debt, and the American people are right: We’ve got to stop doing that.”

Funny, Sen. Nelson didn’t have any problem with deficit spending when he voted for $165 billion to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2008 and 2009.

Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) also voted again the extension over her concerns that unemployment benefits are so generous that they encourage people to not look for a job:

“We have 99 weeks of unemployment insurance,” Feinstein said. “The question comes, how long do you continue before people just don’t want to go back to work at all?”

Right DiFi, the unemployed are getting fat and happy living on benefits that are about one-third of their previous wages. This coming from the ninth richest member of Congress whose assets in 2005 were estimated at $40 million. And oh by the way, whose husband, Richard Blum, just happens to own two defense contractors that benefitted greatly from Sen. Feinstein’s time as chairman of the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee.

Feinstein was echoing what Congressman John Linder (R-GA) said last week:

“Georgia Republican Rep. John Linder suggested Thursday that extended unemployment benefits keep people from looking for work…”[N]early two years of unemployment benefits are too much of an allure for some,” said Linder.”

OK, Rep. Linder, let’s apply your logic to the Pentagon. Since you also voted for the $165 billion in funding for Iraq and Afghanistan, isn’t that “too much of an allure” for the continuation of both wars? Let’s cut off their funding and end their addiction.

Last but not least, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) turned up the stoopid yesterday with his proposal that the unemployed undergo drug tests in order to receive benefits. Right, Orrin. The 46% of the unemployed who have been out of work for more than 6 months, the highest number since the Labor Department started keeping that statistic in 1948, would rather sit around the house, get high and watch the tube than go to work. Idiot.

I propose that members of Congress undergo drug testing. Or maybe more appropriately, brain scans.

An Idea to Help Pay For the Cleanup—Corporate Sponsorships

16 Wednesday Jun 2010

Posted by in BP, Deepwater Horizon, Energy, Environment, Gulf Oil Spill

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I have an idea to help pay for the oil spill cleanup. The Feds can sell corporate sponsorships, like sports arenas and stadiums do. The government agencies involved are already doing BP’s bidding at every turn thus far, they might as well bring in some revenue to help defray the costs.

There’s the BP/EPA, who ordered that a less toxic dispersant than Corexit be used—almost a month ago. Corexit is still being dumped in the Gulf.

There’s BP/OSHA who said that cleanup workers don’t need respirators, despite increasing reports of illness. No respirators are needed because BP’s own air quality tests said there’s no need. Case closed.

There’s the BP/Coast Guard who threatened to arrest CBS journalists who were trying to cover the spill’s damage. “BP’s rules.”

There’s the BP/FAA, who denied Southern Seaplane permission to fly over the affected areas when they found out a photojournalist was on board.

There’s the BP/DHS, who told Senator Bill Nelson that there would be no journalists allowed on a trip he was taking on a BP/Coast Guard vessel.

Finally there’s the BP/Louisiana Dept. of Wildlife and Fisheries whose employee told Mac McClelland of Mother Jones that he had to leave Isle Grand Terre, LA because “WE don’t need this on camera.”

“This” meaning this; a beach covered in oil with no cleanup crew in sight:

And a dead dolphin.

The way I see it, if all these agencies are going to be BP’s bitches, they may as well get paid for it.

Supremes Refuse to Hear Torture Appeal

15 Tuesday Jun 2010

Posted by in Bill of Rights, Constitution, Justice Department, Obama administration, Supreme Court, terrorism, torture, war on terror

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That old-fashioned notion of equal justice under the law was dealt another blow by the Supreme Court yesterday as they refused to hear the appeal of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was detained, tortured, and imprisoned for over a year, without charges, because he was labeled an “al-Qaeda suspect” by the Bush administration. And in what is become an all too familiar occurrence:

“…the Obama administration chose to come to the defense of Bush administration officials, arguing that even if they conspired to send Maher Arar to torture, they should not be held accountable by the judiciary.”

Have to look forward, dontcha know. Mother Jones has a synopsis of Mr. Arar’s ordeal:

“On Sept. 26, 2002, Arar was detained by American authorities during a layover at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport. He was interrogated. Less than two weeks later, he shackled and hooded and placed on a plane bound for Jordan. Once in Jordan, he was transferred overland to Syria. While in Syria, Arar was tortured at the behest of the American government, according to a 1,200-page report released by a Canadian government inquiry that concluded up in 2006.

Here’s how Arar describes a few of his first days in Syria:

Early in the morning on October 10 Arar is taken downstairs to a basement. The guard opens the door and Arar sees for the first time the cell he will live in for the following ten months and ten days.

It is three feet wide, six feet deep and seven feet high. It has a metal door, with a small opening which does not let in light because of a piece of metal on the outside for sliding things into the cell. There is a one by two foot opening in the ceiling with iron bars. This opening is below another ceiling and lets in just a tiny shaft of light. Cats urinate through the ceiling traps of these cells, often onto the prisoners. Rats wander there too.

Early the next morning Arar is taken upstairs for intense interrogation. He is beaten on his palms, wrists, lower back and hips with a shredded black electrical cable which is about two inches in diameter.

The next day Arar is interrogated and beaten on and off for eighteen hours. Arar begs them to stop. He is asked if he received military training in Afghanistan, and he falsely confesses and says yes [another testimony to the effectiveness of “enhanced interrogation techniques”]. This is the first time Arar is ever questioned about Afghanistan. They ask at which camp, and provide him with a list, and he picks one of the camps listed.

In October 2003—more than a year after he had been sent to Syria—Arar was finally returned to Canada. He was never charged with a crime.”

And for this no one will be held accountable. But hey, at least the DOJ has their priorities straight. A federal prosecutor is investigating allegations of blood doping in the Tour de France.

Convenient Timing of “Newly Discovered” Mineral Assets in Afghanistan

14 Monday Jun 2010

Posted by in Afghanistan, war on terror

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Speaking of Afghanistan, with nothing but bad news coming out of there lately, I find the timing of the announcement of these “previously unknown” and “newly discovered” mineral deposits just a little too convenient. Mostly because they are neither previously unknown nor newly discovered. Sounds to me like a good excuse reason for us to stay indefinitely.

“The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

[…]

The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries.”

But later in the article it says that in 2004 American geologists “stumbled upon” some old charts and data that had been compiled by Soviet mining experts during their occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980’s.

“Armed with the old Russian charts, the United States Geological Survey began a series of aerial surveys of Afghanistan’s mineral resources in 2006, using advanced gravity and magnetic measuring equipment attached to an old Navy Orion P-3 aircraft that flew over about 70 percent of the country.

The data from those flights was so promising that in 2007, the geologists returned for an even more sophisticated study, using an old British bomber equipped with instruments that offered a three-dimensional profile of mineral deposits below the earth’s surface. It was the most comprehensive geologic survey of Afghanistan ever conducted.

The handful of American geologists who pored over the new data said the results were astonishing.

But the results gathered dust for two more years, ignored by officials in both the American and Afghan governments.”

So why release it now? Something’s rotten in Kabul—and at the Pentagon. For instance:

“The Pentagon task force has already started trying to help the Afghans set up a system to deal with mineral development. International accounting firms that have expertise in mining contracts have been hired to consult with the Afghan Ministry of Mines, and technical data is being prepared to turn over to multinational mining companies and other potential foreign investors. The Pentagon is helping Afghan officials arrange to start seeking bids on mineral rights by next fall, officials said.”

Since when did the Pentagon get into the mineral development business? I smell another round of no-bid contracts in the near future. Does Halliburton do mining?

America’s Longest War Drags On, and On, and On, and….

11 Friday Jun 2010

Posted by in Afghanistan, Obama administration, Politics, war on terror

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As America’s longest war drags on, and on, and on…. the two operative phrases seem to be “ still a long way to go” and “taking longer than expected.” In Marjah (McChrystal’s “bleeding ulcer”):

“Residents of this onetime Taliban sanctuary see signs that the insurgents have regained momentum in recent weeks, despite early claims of success by U.S. Marines. The longer-than-expected effort to secure Marja is prompting alarm among top American commanders that they will not be able to change the course of the war in the time President Obama has given them.”

In the time President Obama has given them or ever, it appears.

“We’ve come a long way,” said Lt. Col. Cal Worth, the commander of one of the two Marine infantry battalions in Marja. “But there’s still a long way to go.”

In Kandahar:

“On Thursday, during a visit to NATO headquarters here, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal admitted that preparations for perhaps the most critical operation of the war — the campaign to take control of Kandahar, the Taliban’s birthplace — weren’t going as planned. He said winning support from local leaders, some of whom see the Taliban fighters not as oppressors but as their Muslim brothers, was proving tougher than expected. The military side of the campaign, originally scheduled to surge in June and finish by August, is now likely to extend into the fall.”

There’s also some backpedaling on the importance of Kandahar:

“In March, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, described Kandahar as Afghanistan’s “center of gravity” and the key to reversing the Taliban’s momentum this year, Obama’s goal when he ordered the troop surge in December.

But Gates on Wednesday made clear he believed Kandahar was one part of the equation.

“Kandahar and Helmand are important but they are not the only provinces in Afghanistan that matter in terms of the outcome of this struggle,” he said.”

“Only one part of the equation?” Derrick Crowe at Newshoggers has this chart from the Pentagon’s most recent Afghanistan report to Congress:


So which is it? Meanwhile the casualties mount, 23 Americans killed so far this month. And suicide and attempted suicide rates in every branch of the military are at all-time highs.

How much longer? How much more blood and treasure are we going to pour into this Graveyard of Empires? How long before we realize that this country that’s not really a country but just an area on the map with lines drawn around it is an unwinnable, unfixable quagmire? How long before we stop repeating history and learn from it?

Nobody seems to know.

Another Republican For Bailouts

10 Thursday Jun 2010

Posted by in bailout, BP, Congress, Gulf Oil Spill, Politics, Republicans

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From TPMDC:

“In response to a question from TPMDC, House Minority Leader John Boehner backed Tom Donohue, President of the Chamber of Commerce, in saying taxpayers should help pick up the tab.

“I think the people responsible in the oil spill–BP and the federal government–should take full responsibility for what’s happening there,” Boehner said at his weekly press conference this morning.

On Friday, Donohue made clear that he opposes efforts to stick BP, a member of the Chamber, with the bill. “It is generally not the practice of this country to change the laws after the game,” he said. “Everybody is going to contribute to this clean up. We are all going to have to do it. We are going to have to get the money from the government and from the companies and we will figure out a way to do that.”

So I asked Boehner, “do you agree with Tom Donohue of the Chamber that the government and taxpayers should pitch in to clean up the oil spill?” The shorter answer is “yes”.

“I could while away the hours, conferrin’ with the flowers
Consultin’ with the rain.
And my head I’d be scratchin’ while
my thoughts were busy hatchin’
If I only had a brain.”

Frank and Dodd Set to Serve Their Corporate Masters

10 Thursday Jun 2010

Posted by in Congress, Democrats, economy, financial reform, financial regulation, Obama administration, Politics, special interests, Wall Street

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With the conference committee set to start meeting today to come up with a final version of financial reform legislation, the finance industry whores on the committee (aka Barney Frank and Chris Dodd) are doing their best to backpedal on Blanche Lincoln’s provision to force the big banks to spin off their derivatives operations.

“Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd [$3.1 million from Finance Industry PACs], a skeptic on the Lincoln plan, called it a “strong provision” and said she “was on the right track.” He did not, however, agree with his Democratic colleagues Wednesday who said Lincoln’s election win would make it harder to eliminate the provision.

And Frank [$2.3 million], who is chairing the conference committee, gave no indication Wednesday of where he intended to steer the House-Senate conference on the issue.”

No big surprise here either:

“The plan faces opposition from the administration, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve.”

Change you can believe in.

Priorities at the DOJ–Blood Doping Over Experimentation on Detainees

10 Thursday Jun 2010

Posted by in Justice Department, Obama

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It’s nice to see that the Department of Justice has its priorities straight. Accusations of medical experimentation on terrorist detainees? Nothing to see here, move along. We must look forward, not back.

Blood doping in the Tour de France? Send in the prosecutors. We have to get to the bottom of this.

Idiots.

Peeling Back the Layers of the Deepwater Horizon Onion

10 Thursday Jun 2010

Posted by in BP, Deepwater Horizon, Energy, Environment, Gulf Oil Spill, Obama administration, oil exploration, Politics

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Being a long-time fan of Seinfeld, I kind of relate things and events to memorable episodes and lines from that show. As more light continues to be shed on the ongoing  Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in Gulf of Mexico, it brings to mind the episode where George leaves the running tape recorder inside the brief case after he exits the board room. The quote is, “this thing is like an onion, the more layers you peel back the more it stinks.”

A lengthy piece  in Rolling Stone by Tim Dickinson entitled, “The Spill, The Scandal, and the President” peels back several layers of this onion. And it stinks to high heaven. It’s the kind of investigative journalism we used to get from the Washington Post during the Watergate era but is rarely seen in major news sources any more. Here are a few excerpts, but please read the entire article:

“…the disaster in the Gulf was preceded by ample warnings – yet the [Obama] administration had ignored them. Instead of cracking down on MMS, as he had vowed to do even before taking office, Obama left in place many of the top officials who oversaw the agency’s culture of corruption. He permitted it to rubber-stamp dangerous drilling operations by BP – a firm with the worst safety record of any oil company – with virtually no environmental safeguards, using industry-friendly regulations drafted during the Bush years.

[…]

Most troubling of all, the government has allowed BP to continue deep-sea production at its Atlantis rig – one of the world’s largest oil platforms. Capable of drawing 200,000 barrels a day from the seafloor, Atlantis is located only 150 miles off the coast of Louisiana, in waters nearly 2,000 feet deeper than BP drilled at Deepwater Horizon.

According to congressional documents, the platform lacks required engineering certification for as much as 90 percent of its subsea components – a flaw that internal BP documents reveal could lead to “catastrophic” errors. In a May 19th letter to [Interior Secretary Ken] Salazar, 26 congressmen called for the rig to be shut down immediately. “We are very concerned,” they wrote, “that the tragedy at Deepwater Horizon could foreshadow an accident at BP Atlantis.”

The administration’s response to the looming threat? According to an e-mail to a congressional aide from a staff member at MMS, the agency has had “zero contact” with Atlantis about its safety risks since the Deepwater rig went down.

[…]

The tale of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is, at its core, the tale of two blowout preventers: one mechanical, one regulatory. The regulatory blowout preventer failed long before BP ever started to drill – precisely because Salazar kept in place the crooked environmental guidelines the Bush administration implemented to favor the oil industry.

[…]

Nowhere was the absurdity of the policy more evident than in the application that BP submitted for its Deepwater Horizon well only two months after Obama took office. BP claims that a spill is “unlikely” and states that it anticipates “no adverse impacts” to endangered wildlife or fisheries. Should a spill occur, it says, “no significant adverse impacts are expected” for the region’s beaches, wetlands and coastal nesting birds. The company, noting that such elements are “not required” as part of the application, contains no scenario for a potential blowout, and no site-specific plan to respond to a spill.

Instead, it cites an Oil Spill Response Plan that it had prepared for the entire Gulf region. Among the sensitive species BP anticipates protecting in the semitropical Gulf? “Walruses” and other cold-water mammals, including sea otters and sea lions. The mistake appears to be the result of a sloppy cut-and-paste job from BP’s drilling plans for the Arctic.

Even worse: Among the “primary equipment providers” for “rapid deployment of spill response resources,” BP inexplicably provides the Web address of a Japanese home-shopping network. Such glaring errors expose the 582-page response “plan” as nothing more than a paperwork exercise. “It was clear that nobody read it,” says Ruch, who represents government scientists.

“This response plan is not worth the paper it is written on,” said Rick Steiner, a retired professor of marine science at the University of Alaska who helped lead the scientific response to the Valdez disaster. “Incredibly, this voluminous document never once discusses how to stop a deepwater blowout.”

The article goes on to expose the incompetence at every level of the government bureaucracy and the money-saving, corner-cutting practices of BP which put profits over people, like this about the Texas City explosion (emphasis added) :

“In 2005, 15 workers were killed and 170 injured after a tower filled with gasoline exploded at a BP refinery in Texas. Investigators found that the company had flouted its own safety procedures and illegally shut off a warning system before the blast.

An internal cost-benefit analysis conducted by BP – explicitly based on the children’s tale The Three Little Pigs – revealed that the oil giant had considered making buildings at the refinery blast-resistant to protect its workers (the pigs) from an explosion (the wolf). BP knew lives were on the line: “If the wolf blows down the house, the piggy is gobbled.” But the company determined it would be cheaper to simply pay off the families of dead pigs.”

Despicable. I need a shower.