Sunday, December 9, 2007

BushWars Inc. - We Finance Weapons For EVERYONE! No Money Down... EZ Payment Plan!

Cross-posted in slightly different format as a comment on Juan Cole's Informed Comment:

From the USG Open Source Center translation of "an article from an opposition Afghanistan newspaper alleging that Washington it (sic) deploying Pakistani tribal levies against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.":
"When the White House attacked Afghanistan in 2001 and occupied this country, it dispersed the Taleban and Al-Qa'idah in the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia. In the second phase, it maintained direct contacts with the senior leaders of this group. Therefore, America has been using Al-Qa'idah as a tool since the symbolic and self-made event on 11 September 2001."

What part of this doesn't the American public understand? The U.S. Government is backing almost EVERYONE'S insurgencies in the Middle East. Even organizations that have goals diametrically opposed to the stated 'needs & goals' of U.S. foreign policy.

Two examples: Hersh: U.S. Funds Being Secretly Funneled To Violent Al Qaeda-Linked Groups
New Yorker columnist Sy Hersh says the single most explosive element of his latest article involves an effort by the Bush administration to stem the growth of Shiite influence in the Middle East (specifically the Iranian government and Hezbollah in Lebanon) by funding violent Sunni groups.

Hersh says the U.S. has been pumping money, a great deal of money, without congressional authority, without any congressional oversight for covert operations in the Middle East where it wants to stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence.

Hersh says these funds have ended up in the hands of three Sunni jihadist groups who are connected to al Qaeda but want to take on Hezbollah.

Historically:
"During his stint as NATO Supreme Commander (1997-2000), Wesley Clark was in permanent liaison with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Under Wesley Clark's command, NATO directly sponsored a terrorist paramilitary army, with links to Al Qaeda and the trans-Balkan narcotics trade."
That from GlobalResearch. More about AQ, NATO and the West on their site.

Lets not forget the PKK and affiliated Kurdish rebels (BushCo WILL abandon them again too... already have.): Professor Cole on the topic

John Robb @ Global Guerrillas on the topic: How to bait Turkey Into A Regional War...

What we have going on globally are 'Straw' insurgencies. I mean... If we can't make peace with them... sell/give them weapons and money through back channels that destabilize their region, give them enough local social control to allow their group a modicum of western media coverage, and maybe NEXT YEAR (or the year after that...) we can make a boogey-organization out of their actions and cut one of those AC-130 gunships and a DynCorp air crew loose from the Horn of Africa (or the Colombian drug wars) to supress them, an organization we initially allowed to prosper.

Here's a writeup one of the (Weapons/Logistics) movers & shakers... Central Asia, Middle East, Africa.

Victor Bout, the Russian Mobster/Former KGB officer whose Bosnian airline 'vanished' 200,000 AK-47s in Iraq which the Pentagon/CPA contracted for shipment to the Iraqi Security Forces: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Bout

All General Petraus had to say about that was essentially... 'The bookkeeping was bad'.
Petraeus blames bookkeeping for missing weapons
Thursday, August 9, 2007


Bookkeeping problems are to blame for the inability to account for nearly 200,000 weapons issued to Iraqi security forces, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said late Tuesday.

In Full @ Stars & Stripes

Bout has worked for the U.N., NATO in Kosovo (the KLA connection?), AND the Taliban.

Extrapolate!...At some point in recent history, Osama bin-Laden's buddies flew Victor Bout's air transport network.

We're dealing $$$ with the world's 'finest' thugs in the name of some dysfunctional 'democracy'. An affluent 'democracy' so dysfunctional & callous that can't even willingly supply housing for it's own disabled homeless INCLUDING veterans of their nasty little wars.

disabled homeless

Perhaps this is what the government has in mind for our Veterans:

tankchair

Just add weapons and send 'em back into action.

Just like they do when they've seen one too many of their buddies blown to bloody mush and have to be medicated into submission.
Las Vegas Sun:

September 06, 2007
Rushed back to the front


Experts: A depressed soldier on a potentially dangerous drug needed more time

By Ed Koch and Mary Manning

A Las Vegas Army infantryman who was prescribed Prozac for depression and several weeks later killed himself in Iraq should have undergone at least three months of observation before returning to normal duties, psychiatrists and other medical experts said in interviews Wednesday.

Family and friends of Pfc. Travis Virgadamo say he told them he was prescribed daily doses of 12.5 milligram s of the anti depressant Prozac beginning in July. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound last Thursday outside of Baghdad, the military said.

Medical experts interviewed by the Sun said anyone given prescription anti depressants should be watched carefully and kept out of high-stress duty for at least three months. In Full


Blackwater maskedMore thugs, American thugs... Blackwater... Not just killers of 'in-the-way' Iraqi civilians but implicated in the smuggling of CPA Glock pistols to the Kurdish PKK and onward into the Turkish underworld.

This is one of the secretive parts of Henry Waxman's Blackwater investigation we may NEVER hear about again.
"Officials in Washington said the smuggling investigation grew from internal Pentagon and State Department inquiries into U.S. weapons that had gone missing in Iraq. Turkish authorities protested to the U.S. in July that they had seized American arms from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, rebels." Dead WaPo Archive Link. Google returns nothing

Another take @ McClatchy:
A former Blackwater employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the investigation includes a look at whether Blackwater shipped weapons from its Moyock headquarters to Iraq hidden in pallets wrapped tightly in shrink wrap.
.
.
"In December, the prosecutors obtained guilty pleas from two former Blackwater employees, Kenneth Wayne Cashwell of Virginia Beach, Va., and William Ellsworth "Max" Grumiaux of Clemmons, N.C. The men and their lawyers either refused to comment or did not return calls.


The court files are stingy on details of the crimes..."

"...the federal (Nb. criminal) investigation of Blackwater is proceeding behind closed doors," In Full via archive.today

[Update May 18 2014... A Blackwater official responsible for running guns to Syria's 'rebels' is named. Odds are it was one of the names mentioned in the Waxman investigation]

It's called feeding the voracious maw of the military industrial complex.
The only major "industrial industry" left in America.

You can thank twenty or more years of federal job non-creation negligence for this outcome.

The government's motto for all those years?

"The private sector will provide".

They did... for their corporate friends.

Meanwhile, Detroit and other American cities are becoming ghost towns.

Abandoned MI Home

We need a reality check here people.

FoMoCo sells a few cars...

But the REAL $$$ is in Hydrogen powered military UAVs.

Ford Powered UAV

I'll bet you wish they spent those R&D bucks on H-powered Excursion SUVs...

...But they won't. Unless the American people DEMAND IT.

That would require Americans to actually DO SOMETHING besides watching '24' & L.A. Law re-runs on the tell-unh-vision.

It will require MORE than simply voting for the hand-picked (just like Iraq) candidates offered up for U.S. presidency.

Truly unlikely, which leaves us rather permanently 'screwed' into war, and rumors of war...

--Da' Buffalo