Commander's Intent: Lt. General Stanley McChrystal May 12 2009 by Marc Ambinder

http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/05/top_secretgst_mcchrystal_torture_and_sy_hershs_book.php



FUNNY THING ABOUT THE NEW COMMANDER OF US FORCES IN AFGHANISTAN, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal: for a brief period of time, his name was left out of the Pentagon phone books. That's because, of course, he was general officer of a series of units whom the Pentagon stubbornly refuses to admit the existence of, even though popular culture and selective leaks have them quite famous and much admired. Since 9/11, the activities of the Joint Special Operations Command have been hidden, and appropriately so, from the perspective of the government. The Bush Administration declassified the existence of one elite unit, "Grey Fox," for the benefit of Bob Woodward's book about the war in Afghanistan. A few commanders of Delta Force, the Army's top counterterrorist/direct action unit, have written books about the failure to capture Osama Bin Laden. McChrystal and theater commander David Petreaus developed a close friendship over the past several years, and Petraeus came to view McChrystal as a kindred spirit who saw the war and its progression as he did. An insurgency expert recently retired from the military told me that McChystal shared what Petraeus's "commander's intent" -- the ability to decipher and implement the strategy as the commander in chief intended. The outgoing commander, McKiernan simply did not inspire Petraeus's confidence. And here we are.

Pentagon officials were reluctant to talk about McChrystal's most recent position but they did not discourage reporters from assuming that his work in special operations meant that the U.S. strategy will rely quite heavily on the capabilities of special operations forces trained in counterinsurgency techniques.

Andrew Exum, a former Army Ranger who served in Iraq, wrote yesterday on his pseudonymous blog, Abu Muqawama, that " I do know that many policy-makers and journalists think that McChrystal's work as the head of the super-secret Joint Special Operations Command was the untold success story of the Surge and the greater war on terror campaigns."

Woodward hinted at some of these missions in his latest book and made a public spectacle out of his refusal to provide details. (Basically, these units used sophisticated biometric identification and advances in signal intelligence technology to track hundreds of militants, and then killed them. The scope of the Pentagon's insurgency biometric program is much larger than has been reported; my sense is that hundreds of U.S. intelligence collectors used data collected from secret cameras and scanners set up throughout the high insurgency areas.)

Sy Hersh is the Howard Zinn to Woodward's conventional historian these days, and Hersh is reportedly working a book that would expose a lot about these Pentagon special missions units in the first few years after 9/11. He has reported in the New Yorker that these units were given the authority to track and kill terrorists with minimal oversight, and that special interrogation task forces organized under a program called "Copper Green" were given a green light to use harsh, unapproved interrogation methods against detainees. The Copper Green program might be the Pentagon' equivalent to the CIA's "GST" umbrella, the covert series of rendition, collection and interrogation programs that are being widely debated in Congress right now. Hersh calls McChrystal the leader of[these "executive assassination" unit and promises to reveal more in the future. One can accept the basic truth of Hersh's allegation -- that Delta Force and Seal Team Six killed lots of insurgents under a broad classified authority granted to them by the Bush administration -- without thinking that the actions were somehow wrong or suspect. On the other hand, if the authority was granted illegally, if the targets were not terrorists... well, then JSOC will have a problem. We will see.

Even though the activities of the JSOC units are as controversial -- if not more so -- than what the CIA or NSA is alleged to have done under the banner of fighting terrorism, there have been few investigations into the conduct, and few calls to investigate. That's because, in part, Congress doesn't know a lot about JSOC's missions and since 2001 has shown them quite a bit of deference. Congressional investigations into detainee policy and Defense Department practices have focused largely on the activities of policy makers and regular units.

McChrystal must be confirmed by the Senate, and some senators have expressed an interest before in learning more about the JSOC's recent history. Knowing how savvy the Defense Secretary is, it's hard to imagine that McChrystal would have gotten the appointment if he'd been mixed up in potential misconduct or extra-legal behavior that Congress could uncover. The only public blight on McChrystal's record is his role in the cover-up of Army Ranger Pat Tillman's death. Congress will be interested to hear him speak about this -- it's hard to get the JSOC commander to testify in public, which was why McChrystal has not spoken about the affair in public -- but his confirmation will probably not be jeopardized by this incident alone.

Obama’s New Commander In Afghanistan Was Cheney’s Chief Assassin

Obama’s appointment of General Stanley McChrystal reflects a grave new military escalation of his Afghanistan war.


http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2009/05/18/obamas-new-commander-in-afghanistan-was-cheneys-chief-assassin/#more-12075







“The Deltas are psychos…You have to be a certified psychopath to join the Delta Force…”, a US Army colonel from Fort Bragg once told me back in the 1980s. Now President Obama has elevated the most notorious of the psychopaths, General Stanley McChrystal, to head the US and NATO military command in Afghanistan.

McChrystal’s rise to leadership is marked by his central role in directing special operations teams engaged in extrajudicial assassinations, systematic torture, bombing of civilian communities and search and destroy missions. He is the very embodiment of the brutality and gore that accompanies military-driven empire building. Between September 2003 and August 2008, McChrystal directed the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations (JSO) Command which operates special teams in overseas assassinations.

The point of the ‘Special Operations’ teams (SOT) is that they do not distinguish between civilian and military oppositions, between activists and their sympathizers and the armed resistance. The SOT specialize in establishing death squads and recruiting and training paramilitary forces to terrorize communities, neighborhoods and social movements opposing US client regimes. The SOT’s ‘counter-terrorism’ is terrorism in reverse, focusing on socio-political groups between US proxies and the armed resistance. McChrystal’s SOT targeted local and national insurgent leaders in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan through commando raids and air strikes. During the last 5 years of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld period the SOT were deeply implicated in the torture of political prisoners and suspects.

McChrystal was a special favorite of Rumsfeld and Cheney because he was in charge of the ‘direct action’ forces of the ‘Special Missions Units. ‘Direct Action’ operative are the death-squads and torturers and their only engagement with the local population is to terrorize, and not to propagandize. They engage in ‘propaganda of the dead’, assassinating local leaders to ‘teach’ the locals to obey and submit to the occupation. Obama’s appointment of McChrystal as head reflects a grave new military escalation of his Afghanistan war in the face of the advance of the resistance throughout the country.

The deteriorating position of the US is manifest in the tightening circle around all the roads leading in and out of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul as well as the expansion of Taliban control and influence throughout the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Obama’s inability to recruit new NATO reinforcements means that the White House’s only chance to advance its military driven empire is to escalate the number of US troops and to increase the kill ratio among any and all suspected civilians in territories controlled by the Afghan armed resistance.

The White House and the Pentagon claim that the appointment of McChrystal was due to the ‘complexities’ of the situation on the ground and the need for a ‘change in strategy’. ‘Complexity’ is a euphemism for the increased mass opposition to the US, complicating traditional carpet ‘bombing and military sweep’ operations. The new strategy practiced by McChrystal involves large scale, long term ’special operations’ to devastate and kill the local social networks and community leaders, which provide the support system for the armed resistance.

Obama’s decision to prevent the release of scores of photographs documenting the torture of prisoners by US troops and ‘interrogators’ (especially under command of the ‘Special Forces’), is directly related to his appointment of McChrystal whose ‘SOT’ forces were highly implicated in widespread torture in Iraq. Equally important, under McChrystal’s command the DELTA, SEAL and Special Operations Teams will have a bigger role in the new ‘counter-insurgency strategy’. Obama’s claim that the publication of these photographs will adversely affect the ‘troops’ has a particular meaning: The graphic exposure of McChrystal’s modus operendi for the past 5 years under President Bush will undermine his effectiveness in carrying out the same operations under Obama.

Obama’s decision to re-start the secret ‘military tribunals’ of foreign political prisoners, held at the Guantanamo prison camp, is not merely a replay of the Bush-Cheney policies, which Obama had condemned and vowed to eliminate during his presidential campaign, but part of his larger policy of militarization and coincides with his approval of the major secret police surveillance operations conducted against US citizens.

Putting McChrystal in charge of the expanded Afghanistan-Pakistan military operations means putting a notorious practitioner of military terrorism - the torture and assassination of opponents to US policy - at the center of US foreign policy. Obama’s quantitative and qualitative expansion of the US war in South Asia means massive numbers of refugees fleeing the destruction of their farms, homes and villages; tens of thousands of civilian deaths, and eradication of entire communities. All of this will be committed by the Obama Administraton in the quest to ‘empty the lake (displace entire populations) to catch the fish (armed insurgents and activists)’.

Obama’s restoration of all of the most notorious Bush Era policies and the appointment of Bush’s most brutal commander is based on his total embrace of the ideology of military-driven empire building. Once one believes (as Obama does) that US power and expansion are based on military conquests and counter-insurgency, all other ideological, diplomatic, moral and economic considerations will be subordinated to militarism. By focusing all resources on successful military conquest, scant attention is paid to the costs borne by the people targeted for conquest or to the US treasury and domestic American economy. This has been clear from the start: In the midst of a major recession/depression with millions of Americans losing their employment and homes, President Obama increased the military budget by 4% - taking it beyond $800 billion dollars.

Obama’s embrace of militarism is obvious from his decision to expand the Afghan war despite NATO’s refusal to commit any more combat troops. It is obvious in his appointment of the most hard-line and notorious Special Forces General from the Bush-Cheney era to head the military command in subduing Afghanistan and the frontier areas of Pakistan.

It is just as George Orwell described in Animal Farm: The Democratic Pigs are now pursuing the same brutal, military policies of their predecessors, the Republican Porkers, only now it is in the name of the people and peace. Orwell might paraphrase the policy of President Barack Obama, as ‘Bigger and bloodier wars equal peace and justice’.

By James Petras
Posted May 18, 2009.

Impunity for CIA Torturers : The Debate Intensifies

http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/spip.php?article1211







Translated mardi 12 mai 2009, par Claire Scammell






Obama, who had assured agents that they would not be brought to trial despite disclosures of their use of torture, has been forced to concede the possibility of an inquiry.

By opening the door to a possible inquiry into those responsible for the use of torture, Barack Obama has reopened the debate - after having maintained that there would not be any legal action against CIA agents, who were acting in “good faith”.

Obama had received, at the time, an enthusiastic welcome in Langley, home of the CIA headquarters. It was under pressure from those who had contributed so much to his election that the president had to find a way to respond to the split in opinion over the impunity granted to political sponsors of torturers.

The results of polls have been contradictory ; early last week 70% of citizens polled, shocked by the confidential documents made public by the president, were in favour of immediate legal action against the intolerable acts. Yesterday, a new poll by the Washington Post and ABC News showed a split in opinion over the use of torture on terrorists but also approval from more than 70% for the policies delivered by Obama in his first one hundred days in office.

On the other hand, the wind has turned for those who, in a way never seen before, rallied opinion in favour of a young black candidate ; today, nobody is talking about the colour of his skin. Nineteen humanitarian associations (backed by the multimillionaire George Soros), the internet site Move On (five million subscribers), which played a decisive role in the democratic candidate’s battle for presidency, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU 500,000 members) are proposing a petition calling for the immediate trial of those responsible for the use of torture.

The ACLU has, moreover, announced that it has won the right to publish several dozen photos, taken inside CIA prisons, which prove the systematic use of torture inside the walls of the Abu Ghraib prison. The photos will be published on May the 28th but the press are already evoking the damning content.

It has been heard, from a Senate committee inquiry, that the CIA torturers had started their training immediately after the attacks of 11th September 2001; before the texts which legalised illegality were written. It was also a question of creating, through the use of torture, links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein in order to find another justification for a war started by the biggest lie of the century, that of the existence of weapons of mass destruction.

Author of legal texts, the judge Jay Bybee, who today sits on the Federal Court of Appeal, is the subject of a call for impeachment lodged at the Senate by the Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold. The debate has been drawn out across the two chambers where the majority of Republicans, including John McCain, oppose putting the Bush team under the spotlight. The former vice president, Dick Cheney, who is being questioned, appeared on television to defend the methods “which allowed the CIA to defend the security of the United States”. This is an issue that the CIA, having become more cautious, has indicated it could not assess.

One of the members of the presidential team, the Admiral Dennis Blair, head of national intelligence, has taken a stand against the proceedings, whereas in January, he stated before the Senate that he condemned torture and that it did not yield reliable intelligence.

The White House itself is split. Hoping to conjure up a storm which would risk putting the spotlight on the defence secretary Robert Gates, who held the same post in the Bush administration, Barack Obama has chosen to off-load the responsibility onto the Attorney General, Eric Holder – an advocate for abandoning all investigation – who will have to judge if there is need to open an inquiry, and onto Congress, where a bipartite truth-commission could decide whether there is need to open proceedings which couldn’t fail to put the spotlight on George Bush. This is just the beginning.

Joint Statement of Communist and Workers Parties of Europe, 18 March 2009

18 March 2009






The Czech EU presidency in the midst of a capitalist economic crisis,has taken the initiative to organize a series of events to bring anticommunists and now attempt to equate communism and Nazism, to rewrite history and manipulate people's minds, especially the generation of youth, with a view to the future rather than the past.

The intention expressed in the EU (in countries where the Communist Party has already been outlawed),is to characterize communism and class struggle as crimes, it not only seeks to attack the Communists, nor is it limited only to countries in the EU.


Anticommunist hysteria that erupted a few years ago with the "Memorandum" on the need for international condemnation of crimes of totalitarian communist regimes "in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, hysteria which continues today, militates against the working class and other popular sectors.



They want to beat the leading forces of the popular movement and its anti-fighting plans and attempt to make the workers pay for the global crisis. They want to eliminate the struggle against the system operator and negate the possibility of a just society, as expressed by the ideology and the struggle of the communists. They want to beat the forces of resistance and counter them based on the popular anti-communist hysteria, lies and persecution. They have announced new attacks against Socialist Cuba and the peoples who are resisting imperialism.



We condemn these actions by the EU presidency and call on the peoples of Europe to react strongly and unreservedly condemned.

The Parties

* Communist Party of Belarus
* Workers' Party of Belgium
* New Communist Party of Britain
* Party of Bulgarian Communists
* AKEL, Cyprus
* Communist Party in Denmark
* Communist Party of Estonia
* Communist Party of Finland
* Communist Party of Greece
* Hungarian Communist Workers’ Party
* Communist Party of Ireland
* Workers' Party of Ireland
* Party of the Italian Communists
* Socialist Party of Latvia
* Communist Party of Luxembourg
* New Communist Party of the Netherlands (NCPN)
* Communist Party of Norway
* Communist Party of Poland
* Portuguese Communist Party
* Communist Party of Soviet Union
* Communist Party of the Russian Federation
* Communist Workers Party of Russia-Party of Communists of Russia (RKRP-RPC)
* New Communist Party of Serbia
* Communist Party of Peoples of Spain
* Communist Party of Sweden
* Communist Party of Turkey
* Communist Party of Ukraine
* Union of Communists of Ukraine



*** Many thanks to the CP of Peoples of Spain for the Spanish translation

Statement by Farman Ali, Secretary LPP Pukhtoon Khawa (Labour Party of Pakistan) excerpt

Source: Labor Party of Pakistan

"Until the Afghanistan situation is better, and NATO forces leave Afghanistan, the Pakistan situation will not be better. Afghanistan is on the borders. The Taliban takes inspiration from there. They are linked with the Afghan Taliban. They help each other. American imperialist are not interested in peace in this area. They are escalating the war. They are pressurizing the Pakistani government to take more military actions against the Taliban. But Taliban are not affected, it is the people of the area that are hit badly. We are paying the price of the new liberal agenda. We must oppose the both."

Communist Party USA Statement on North Korean Nuclear Test

Andrew Taylor's Note:

I publish this Statement in order to educate my readers on the current line of the cpusa. I do not endorse it and in my Op-Ed below provide my reasons for principled dissent from this political line. I do not agree that "The general direction of the Obama administration's foreign policy is at odds with that of any administration in the past 30 years, if not longer". If that were so why are 2 million Pakistanis currently displaced in an Obama-ordered Pakistani Civil War? Why is Obama sending 30,000 additional US troops to secure the occupation of Afghanistan? I do not agree that "the movement for peace and against imperialism is that much more difficult" because of N Korea. The primary locus of world imperialism was and is American imperialism with its reckless domestic war-mongering and aggressive, inhuman foreign war-making.
_____________ ________________________ ____________________
By Communist Party USA
Original source: CPUSA.org

The Communist Party USA is shocked and appalled at North Korea's recent nuclear test, as well as its subsequent test firing of at least two missiles.

We see these acts as incredibly provocative and irresponsible. Unfortunately, they are not a surprising departure from the way the DPRK leadership has handled itself in recent years. Even North Korea's most important ally, China, was horrified by, and condemned, the tests.

Of course, North Korea is right to say that it has been, and still is, the victim of imperialist aggression, specifically from the US. It is true that the United States has never made reparations for the destruction of the Korean War, has repeatedly threatened North Korea, and encroached upon its right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to peacefully use nuclear power.

In addition, the United States has helped to isolate North Korea from the rest of the world, encroaching upon its sovereign rights and hindering its economic development, and therefore providing the basis for the problems afflicting the region.

It was the United States that fought the Korean War, and partitioned the nation into two separate states. The line of demarcation between north and south is one of the most militarized in the world. Currently, tens of thousands of US troops remain in South Korea, and the US routinely practices joint military drills with south Korea, simulating a ground invasion of the North.

Nonetheless, we are resolutely opposed to the use or development of any nuclear weapons by any nation.

Nuclear weapons threaten the very existence of humanity itself. The tests heighten tensions in the region: The sections of Japan's leadership that want to see Japan change its “peace constitution” so that Japan can maintain a standing army have seized upon these provocative tests to push forward the changes they want.

Further, the results of the tests are in direct contradiction to the stated aims of battling imperialism. The general direction of the Obama administration's foreign policy is at odds with that of any administration in the past 30 years, if not longer. While Obama has to navigate the political realities of the US, his administration has sought to reduce the nuclear threat, as well as the threat that the US poses to other, oppressed nations. Consequently, powerful sections of the U.S. ruling class have made their aim to derail the Obama administration altogether.

The fight for progressive forces is to make sure that Obama, and the social strata that are part of the Obama movement – the working class, women and the racially and nationally oppressed especially – meets success.

The ultra-right has already seized upon North Korea's nuclear tests to attack Obama, Obama has been forced to respond sharply, and the movement for peace and against imperialism is that much more difficult. We believe peace is possible in today’s world, but this nuclear test, on the contrary, strengthens the ultra-right and imperialism, not the cause of peace.

The Communist Party USA, along with North Korea's neighbors, including socialist China and Vietnam, and many other progressive forces around the world, condemn these tests and urge the North Korean leadership to abandon its policy of brinkmanship.

Further, we urge all parties, including the United States and Japan, to exercise restraint in response. As we have always said, the main way to solve the nuclear issue, as well as the problems of Northeast Asia more generally, is through good-faith dialogue, through the six-party talks or some other mechanism, and not through military saber-rattling and brinkmanship from any quarters.

The Giant and Jack, or, The USA lectures N. Korea about Nuclear Arms

It embarrassed me to read mainstream western Statements on the N Korean missile tests. I include the CPUSA Statement in the mainstream reactions.

For long years, N Korea has called for a replacement of the Cold War truce with a peace treaty that would permit a normalisation of relations with the USA. Washington has refused to sign any such peace treaty, and so remains technically at war with North Korea for the past 60 years.

The USA maintains 10,000 nuclear warheads and performs regular extensive tests with the most hi-tech weaponry in the world. Moreover the USA has launched aggressive predatory war after war, as well as multiple actions of nuclear blackmail, campaigns of economic destabilization illegal covert actions and coup d'etat.

Yet the US military imperial machine in Washington is seen by the "reasonable men" of the bourgeoisie as the "responsible" power while North Korea is portrayed as a wicked rogue state for only testing their very elementary, small arsenal. And apparently because US imperialism has a new leader the international community is no longer to focus on the continuing objective character of the USA as the centre of .

I ask those who make this counsel why 2 Million Pakistanis are fleeing displaced and homeless at Obama's Command? Is this not imperialism? Is the new heightened war in Afghanistan not an imperialist "WAr of Choice" launched by Obama? Is the maintenance of 50,000 troops of occupation in Iraq not an imperialist policy? Is the failure to bring a formal Inquiry into the Bush-Cheney administration not a political calculation that sends a message of collusion and timidity regarding fascism and war-crimes? Other "irrelevant" issues such as the USA's winking/cooperating in the maintenance of Israel's 200+ Nuclear Missiles are seen as "distractions" from the threat at hand according to the Ruling Class and their mouthpieces."Distractions" as in: "don't distract us, we're screwing N. Korea"...

Washington’s repeated threats of economic and military aggression have given N Korea a basic life and death choice: Acquire Arms you can use as a leverage with the Imperialists, or be decimated.