Posts Tagged ‘Iraq’
U.S. spy agencies see no move by Iran to build a nuclear bomb
Even as the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said in a new report Friday that Iran had accelerated its uranium enrichment program, American intelligence analysts continue to believe that there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb.
Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies.
…There is no dispute among American, Israeli and European intelligence officials that Iran has been enriching nuclear fuel and developing some necessary infrastructure to become a nuclear power. But the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies believe that Iran has yet to decide whether to resume a parallel program to design a nuclear warhead — a program they believe was essentially halted in 2003 and which would be necessary for Iran to build a nuclear bomb. Iranian officials maintain that their nuclear program is for civilian purposes…
Not that fact has the slightest effect on the ideology of American chickenhawks.
Sarah Palin was as ignorant of foreign policy, military command, as you thought she was
Sarah Palin believed that the Queen rather than the prime minister was responsible for the decision to keep British forces in Iraq, according to research done for a new film chronicling her brief political rise.
The former Alaska governor reportedly made the comment during the 2008 presidential campaign as aides to John McCain, the Republican candidate, scrambled to bring his surprise-pick running mate up to speed on foreign affairs.
Her confusion emerged during a coaching session with Steve Schmidt, a top McCain adviser, who asked Mrs Palin what she would do if Britain began to waver in its commitment to the Iraq war.
In one of the many rambling responses that steadily eroded her credibility during the campaign, Mrs Palin reportedly replied that she would “continue to have an open dialogue” with the Queen…
The incident was revealed during research for Game Change, an HBO ‘docu-drama’ based on a book about the 2008 campaign by two leading American journalists.
While the film is a dramatisation – with the Oscar-nominated actress Julianne Moore playing Mrs Palin – its producers conducted dozens of research interviews and Mr Schmidt confirmed its accuracy in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
The incident can be added to a long list of policy gaffes made by Mrs Palin during her three months as the Republican vice-presidential candidate…
Game Change describes panicked cramming sessions during the campaign, with aides beginning their history tutorial with the Spanish Civil War and carrying through to post-9/11 era.
Mrs Palin was initially enthusiastic, making notes on hundreds of coloured flash cards, but became increasingly sullen and was described by tutors as going into a “catatonic stupor“.
Perhaps a catatonic stupor might be less embarrassing to the Republican Party than the confidently 19th Century noises brayed by the current herd of presidential candidates?
The Pentagon not only wastes our money — they managed to lose $2 billion they got from Iraq!
Pentagon policy on issuing contracts for Iraq reconstruction
The U.S. Defense Department cannot account for about $2 billion it was given to cover Iraq-related expenses and is not providing Iraq with a complete list of U.S.-funded reconstruction projects, according to two new government audits…
The Iraqi government in 2004 gave the Department of Defense access to about $3 billion to pay bills for certain contracts, and the department can only show what happened to about a third of that, the inspector general says…
Although the Department of Defense had “internal processes and controls” to track payments, the “bulk of the records are missing,” the report says, adding that the department is searching for them. Other documents are missing as well, including monthly reports documenting expenses, the audit says.
“From July 2004 through December 2007, DoD should have provided 42 monthly reports. However, it can locate only the first four reports…”
Sounds like the Pentagon performed exactly up to the standards required by Bush and Cheney. Which means none at all.
Separately, the inspector general’s office sent a letter Sunday to the U.S. ambassador to Iraq complaining that the U.S. government is not providing Iraq with a complete list of reconstruction projects…
The Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction was created in 2004 to continue oversight of Iraq reconstruction programs.
In some nations, civil servants and bureaucrats are part of an honorable profession. They exist and function on behalf of the best interests of the country.
The tradition in much of our local, state and federal bodies is to either have a safe, secure job offering a better life of retirement than private industry – or to have a safe, secure job offering an easy way to steal.
Pentagon and Obama offer very little reform of military spending
I’m here to sign the checks
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
The United States should give up the capability to fight two major ground wars simultaneously, according to a Pentagon review that will be presented this week, [said the inevitable unnamed] U.S. official.
Chris Lawrence plays into the Pentagon PR boys just like Wolf always did. The only difference is he won’t receive the Marvin Kalb Award for undercover service to the Mossad.
The review will be publicly outlined by President Barack Obama, the White House announced. The president will join Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Thursday at the Pentagon to discuss the military posture vision.
The official [same guy, I guess], who was not authorized to speak publicly, said the strategic review presents priorities to guide the military into the future, but “they are proposals, not all of them set in stone.”
The review sets forth potentially big changes in U.S. strategy, including, the official said, removing up to 4,000 troops from Europe and downsizing the overall ground forces even further. The 2012 budget request already called for cuts of 27,000 soldiers and 20,000 Marines in the next four years, and those numbers could increase.
The military would not maintain its ability to wage two large conflicts at the same time, such as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan, the official said. But the United States would still be able to deploy troops and equipment to “deter a second adversary” while engaged in a major ground conflict.
Iraq celebrates U.S. withdrawal – of course
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki declared a new dawn on Saturday as Iraq celebrated the departure of American troops at a ceremony held amid tight security and without Maliki’s key political rivals…
Saturday marked the end of the 2008 security pact agreed by then-President George W. Bush and was the last day for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq, nearly nine years after the invasion that toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein and allowed the Shi’ite majority to take power.
Except for a small military contingent attached to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, the last of the American troops departed nearly two weeks ago.
“I declare this day, the 31st of December, on which the withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq is complete, as a national day,” said Maliki in a televised ceremony, surrounded by security officials in dress uniforms.
“It is Iraq’s day. It is a feast for all Iraqis. It is the dawn of a new day in Mesopotamia … Your country is free.”
Maliki said he would work to maintain freedom and “respect political, intellectual and religious diversity…”
Has Obama brought us to a new beginning for Iraq?
Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Barack Obama
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
Iraq is today a shattered society, shaped by two major international wars, bombings, debilitating sanctions, civil war, emigration of millions of its best-educated people, deadly insurgency and counterinsurgency and foreign occupation over 20 years.
While Iraq never achieved full unity after it was cobbled together by the British in 1920 from three large and mutually alien communities — the Sunni Muslim Kurds in the northern highlands, the Sunni Muslim Arabs in the central plains and the partly Farsi-speaking Shia Muslim Arabs in the southern lowlands — Iraq had made great social and economic progress. By 1990, it was the most advanced of the Arab countries. Now that is all gone.
Yet, even today, there is a memory of collective statehood, or Iraqiyah. Some of us who have lived among the Iraqis believe they have a chance to invigorate a new beginning of Iraqiyah but that the return to something like the state that existed before will take years.
How is the American withdrawal regarded? My hunch, from having known Iraq and Iraqis of all persuasions for more than half a century, is that most will be happy to see us leave. But, at the same time, they have learned to fear one another, so their politically effective attitudes will vary from one community to the next.
Afghans ask the “Coalition of the Willing” for decades of aid
If you don’t stick to the script I’ll let Cheney have you!
BONN, Germany — As dozens of nations and organizations met here on Monday to plan a transition beyond the withdrawal of American and other international forces from Afghanistan in 2014, the Afghan government had a new deadline in mind: 2024.
President Hamid Karzai and other Afghan officials here called for political and military support for at least another decade — and financial assistance that would not end until 2030. That would be nearly three decades after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 that led to the international intervention in Afghanistan.
While Mr. Karzai and others celebrated the strides made in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban — 60 percent of Afghans now have mobile phones, he said, compared to none — the conference highlighted the multiple challenges facing a fragile government undermined by corruption and threatened by a resilient insurgency…
Instead, as the months have passed, the tempo of the war has shown little sign of winding down, despite an optimistic assessment from NATO that it had reversed the momentum of the Taliban insurgents…
Even though President Obama and other NATO leaders created a timetable for withdrawal by 2014, few officials now expect any reconciliation talks to even begin by then. That has raised questions about security and the stability of Mr. Karzai’s government once international troops steadily begin to withdraw.
Mr. Karzai’s government presented a paper to the conference outlining Afghanistan’s plans for developing an economy now almost entirely dependent on international military and development spending…
…Just meeting the cost of Afghanistan’s military forces — which by 2014 are expected to total 400,000 soldiers — is estimated to cost $3.5 billion to $6 billion a year. By then, Afghanistan, the world’s 40th largest country, would have the world’s 12th largest military.
Thanks, George.
And let us offer up thanks to all the Republicans and Democrats who rubber stamped every foreign adventure of the Bush/Cheney years. Let us offer up thanks to Barack Obama who campaigned to bring the troops home – not over a vague and changeable schedule – but, as soon as he was inaugurated
Please, let us remember come Election Day how many lies we listened to over the years from the cesspool of corruption that is political Washington.
U.S. leaves tons of gear behind in Iraq as a memorial to our corruption
At the peak of the United States’s war in Iraq, the U.S. military had more than 170,000 troops, 500 bases replete with tents and toilets, kitchens and motor pools, and an airline that flew hundreds of times a day across the country.
The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq after nearly nine years of war is believed to be one of the largest removal jobs in history. At the start of the year logistics experts calculated there were nearly 3 million pieces of equipment to be moved, from airplanes, helicopters and tanks to laptops and lights…
Since September 2010, around 2 million pieces of equipment have been redeployed, U.S. officials say, some back to the United States, others to Afghanistan or other locations…
“Someday I truly believe that future military classes … will study the logistics (of our) move out of Iraq.”
What will be studied is the lies accepted as mandate. Agitprop given greater weight than historic fact. No-bid contracts and supply streams whose size, content and volume were determined by cronyism and donations to the Republican Party.
Never before has such a volume of death and destruction been wasted to satisfy the greed and corruption of so few.
12% of US funds for Iraqi police actually gets to policing
Directing traffic in Baghdad
A US government watchdog has criticised a programme to train Iraqi police, saying it could become a “bottomless pit” for American money.
The report said only some 12% of the money spent in 2011 would be spent directly helping Iraq’s police. It also pointed out that the programme had yet to gain the support of the Iraqi government…
The programme for police training is run by the Department of State, which took over the role from the Department of Defense this month.
The report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) said the Department of State had failed to put a plan in place for assessing the current and future capabilities of the Iraqi police…
“What tangible benefit will Iraqis see from this police training program? With most of the money spent on lodging, security, support, all the MOI [Iraqi Ministry of the Interior] gets is a little expertise, and that is if the program materialises,” Iraqi Deputy Interior Minister Adnan al-Assadi was cited as telling the report’s authors…
SIGIR’s inspector general said the state department did not fully co-operate with the report… Har!
According to the SIGIR report [.pdf], the US has spent about $8 billion on training Iraq’s police force since the US-led invasion in 2003, which by 2010 included 412,000 officers.
There was a great quote on Tom Keene’s mid-day TV show, today, when an economics professor was asked [in a different context] about changes in governance between George W. Bush and Barack Obama: “We were promised change and what we got was continuity.”
The incompetence and inefficiencies of outsourcing military tasks to mercenaries is consistent throughout post-invasion responsibilities in Iraq. Crap building of infrastructure is matched by crap governance, crap security and policing.
