Obama v. The Military (Part 441): Odierno Launches an Offensive from Iraq

Related Post: UPDATED - General Odierno Backs Down?
Related Post: Video and Transcript - General Odierno on CNN’s State of the Union

Even as I was writing about the challenge of General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, to the Obama strategy on Afghanistan, another military commander was re-launching an offensive against the President.

General Raymond Odierno's battlefield is Iraq, where he supervises US troops. For months, he has been unhappy over the Obama plan to reduce American forces. So, only weeks after the compromise of a 19-month withdrawal was announced, Odierno has returned to the attack.

His initial campaign was in The Times of London, which gave him a couple of pages on Thursday. As we predicted, the recent "uptick in violence" in Iraq will be used by Odierno to resist the July deadline to take US troops out of Iraqi cities:

[The violence] is not going to be solved quickly and it’s about having constant security across Baghdad and you have to be that way a while longer....The agreement says that combat forces out of the cities by June 30 so all of our support forces will remain. But we will be prepared to assist them if they need it.

Of course, the general has to maintain the Looking Glass View that, while violence is getting worse, the situation is getting better: "What is different now from 2004 is that we do have Iraqi security forces that people still have faith in, we do have a government in place that will come out and make comments."

What is most striking in Odierno's public-relations campaign is that his definition of the fight in Washington is much clearer than the fight in Iraq. He rattles off a check-list of challenges --- integrating the "Sons of Iraq", the Sunni militias that the US built up from 2007, into the Iraqi military; Arab-Kurd tensions; "Iranian influence"; Al Qa'eda; "a common vision by all political leaders for Iraq" --- without any apparent distinction between those issues or a strategy on how to approach them.

For all the puffery on how the Odierno of 2009 is different from the Odierno of 2003/4, who led his division in the breaking down of Iraqi doors and alienating of local sympathies, the general still holds up "Iraq" as this abstract political space in which bad guys lurk: "In a region such as the Middle East you are going to continue to have people who want to use violence, whether it be al-Qaeda, whether it be Iranian surrogates."

That, however, is an advantage if your primary concern is not Iraqi political stability but the defense of your military operations, which never really come to an end.

Odierno's next campaign appearance? Today on CNN's flagship political programme with John King.

Rabble-Rouser on Fire: Glenn Beck, Tom Paine, and Obama's Pearl Harbor/9-11 Fascism

All of us at Enduring America are currently captivated by the comedy-horror of Fox News's Glenn Beck as he calls for a revolution void of thought, sense, and sensibility. Last Wednesday, as "Barack Obama", he pretended to douse a Fox staffer in gasoline/petrol and set him on fire:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOBGgde6mFs[/youtube]

As appalling as that was, my colleagues think Beck exceeded himself in bat-shit craziness two days later in the video below.

Beck claimed to be the great-great-grandson of the American philosopher Tom Paine. "Tom" then magically appeared, not to recite his own words from Common Sense, but to mouth Beck's uncommon nonsense comparing Obama's economic programme to the evils of Pearl Harbor and 9/11:

Your complacency will only aid and abet our national suicide. Remember, they wouldn't dare bomb Pearl Harbor, but they did. They wouldn't dare drive two planes into the World Trade Center, but they did. They wouldn't dare pilot a plane through the most sophisticated air defenses in the world and crash into the Pentagon, but they did. They wouldn't dare pass the largest spending bill in history, in open defiance of the will of the people.

Don’t Blink: Obama Administration Funds the Civil War in Palestine

Related Post: Gaza War - How the US Re-Armed Israel

On April 9, President Obama sent his 2009 supplemental budget request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to Congress. Predictably, most of the media coverage was simply carried over and adapted from the previous battle over funding for the military.

For example, some attention has centered upon the stiff opposition to Secretary of Defense Gates' decision not to order additional F-22 fighters. While this discussion is important, particularly on the usefulness of F-22 fighter planes in Iraq, there was something else in this supplemental budget that seems to have escaped notice.

We find this on page 6:

$0.8 billion to support the Palestinian people, strengthen the Palestinian Authority, and provide humanitarian assistance for the crisis in Gaza.

Even compared to the $85 billion plus total of the supplemental budget, $800 million for Palestine is nothing to sneeze at. And assuming you stop reading here, almost a billion dollars to “support the Palestinian people” actually sounds like a pretty good idea. But that’s not the entirety of it. The money is broken down into several sections scattered throughout the budget.

A section called “Migration and Refugee Assistance” has $150 million, including:

$25 million for assistance to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and $125 million to support emergency humanitarian needs in Gaza and the West Bank

Then we have a massive chunk of money in the “Economic Support Fund” section:

$556 million for West Bank/Gaza including $200 million for budget support to the Palestinian Authority; $93 million for institutional capacity building, and investments in education and social services in the West Bank; $12 million for humanitarian assistance in the West Bank; $60 million to promote West Bank economic growth; $30 million to support governance and rule of law in the West Bank; $95 million to support programs in Gaza to improve basic human needs, support economic recovery, create jobs, and restore some humanitarian essential services; $61 million for immediate humanitarian and food relief to Gazans through well-established international organizations; $5 million for contractor and locally engaged staff, program oversight, and related security and other support costs

And finally, hidden away in the “International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement” section, we find this gem:

$109 million to train and equip Palestinian security forces and to enhance security along the Gaza border [emphasis added]

What’s missing? There’s no mention of Hamas. That’s because:

This provision prohibits the use of Supplemental funds for assistance to Hamas, Hamas-controlled entities, or any power-sharing government of which Hamas is a member. Assistance may be provided to a power-sharing government acceptable to the United States if the President certifies to the standards in section 620K(b)(1)(A) and (B) of the Foreign Assistance Act. It is expected that such a power-sharing government would speak authoritatively for the entire Palestinian Authority government, including its ministries, agencies and instrumentalities. This provision also would allow the President to utilize the waiver authority provided in the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006 for the purposes provided. [emphasis added]

Got that? Let’s break it down.

First off, note that only a slice of the money is even allocated to the Gaza Strip, under the control of the democratically elected Hamas government, while the majority goes to the West Bank, held in the iron grip of Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority. While the Palestinian Authority, like Hamas, was also democratically elected, their electoral mandate expired long ago, and by the time this money reaches them, their term limits will be ancient history. The idea of any democratic government existing in the midst of Fatah’s repressive police state is a highly dubious proposition, but contrasted with the internationally certified elections that brought Hamas to power in the Gaza Strip, the notion of democracy in the West Bank is simply laughable.

Second, the budget essentially nullifies any diplomatic efforts being carried out between the leadership of Hamas and Fatah. Perversely, it does this by ensuring that any diplomatic arrangement would have to be absurdly unacceptable to both parties. Either Hamas accepts a “power-sharing” deal in which they have no power at all over the Fatah “government, including its ministries, agencies and instrumentalities”, or Fatah agrees to share power with Hamas at the price of losing $815 million a year in US funding, not to mention whatever the International Community is paying them.

Mahmoud Abbas, President of Palestinian Authority, with Ramadan Shallah, Secretary General of Islamic Jihad

Finally, this funding ensures that there will continue to be violent confrontations in the Gaza Strip. Where does $109 million worth of paramilitary training go in Gaza if it can’t go to Hamas? It goes to Fatah, or more specifically, to their military wing. That would be the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an internationally designated terrorist group responsible for at least 130 Israeli deaths, and that’s just counting the suicide bombings.

The Al-Aqsa brigades are also known to collaborate with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. They are the group fond of lobbing Qassam rockets at schoolchildren in southern Israel. So not only will this money provoke conflict between Hamas and these freshly equipped and trained Fatah militants, but these resources will undoubtedly be used in acts of terrorism against Israel, and we know how Israel usually responds to these things in Gaza.

There you have it: for the low price of $815 million, American tax-payers have propped up an oppressive dictatorship, intensified a Palestinian civil war, enabled acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians, and provided the excuses Israel needs to further pummel the Palestinian population.

And all this tucked away in a supplemental budget. No, not even the regular US government budget, this is the extra money they spend just on fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But hey, at least they’re not talking to Hamas. Those guys are terrorists.

US Politics: Republican Teabagging Revolution Begins

Latest Post: Tea Parties, Violence, and Politics (And, Yes, This is a Serious Post)

Related Post: Enduring America - Your #1 Site for Republican Teabagging

This week activists in the Republican Party and Fox News, bouncing back from months of defeat, will unleash a potent weapon against the economic liberalism of President Obama.

"Teabagging."

Preparing for Tea Parties on 15 April, the deadline for filing US tax returns, the new revolutionaries have sent hundreds, maybe thousands, of teabags to members of Congress. They are promising to "Teabag Obama" and "Teabag Liberal Democrats". Even John McCain, whose views are considered suspect by many activists, may be teabagged.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Video and Transcript: Guantánamo Lawyers Facing US Jail Time?

Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour, lawyers for a number of Guantánamo Bay detainees, have been summoned to court over a letter they sent to President Obama detailing the torture their client Binyam Mohamed claims he faced. Stafford Smith and Ghappour face charges of 'unprofessional conduct' and revealing classified evidence, and will attend a hearing in Washington, DC on May 11. Stafford Smith has called the charges "frivolous", pointing out that all information in the letter, classified or otherwise, had been redacted by censors, leaving only the subject line "In re: torture of Binyam Mohamed". Like Stafford Smith I'd also question the sanity a law that makes revealing classified information about Guantántamo Bay to the President of the United States a crime.



AMY GOODMAN: This last story, an unusual development in the case of Binyam Mohamed, the British resident recently released after seven years in US custody, where he claims he was repeatedly tortured, first in a secret CIA prison, later at Guantanamo. Binyam Mohamed’s lawyers, Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour, could face six months in a US prison, The Guardian newspaper revealed last week, because of a letter they sent to President Obama explaining their client’s allegations of torture by US agents.

Officials from the Department of Defense who monitor and censor communication between Guantanamo prisoners and their lawyers filed a complaint against Mohamed’s lawyers for “unprofessional conduct” and for revealing classified evidence to the President. The memo the lawyers sent to Obama was completely redacted except for the title. It had urged the President to release evidence of Mohamed’s alleged torture into the public domain. Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour have been summoned before a D.C. court on May 11th.

I’m joined now in these last few minutes by Clive Stafford Smith, director of the British legal charity Reprieve.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Clive Stafford Smith, you’re afraid of being arrested if you come into this country?

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: No, I’m going to come to the country, because I want to face the charges. I mean, the charges are, to my mind, frivolous, because—it may be confusing to your listeners when you say that we supposedly revealed classified evidence and then say it was all censored—it was all censored. There wasn’t one iota of classified evidence revealed. So the real question, I guess, here is why the government continues to cover up the evidence of Binyam Mohamed’s torture.

AMY GOODMAN: But please explain, because I think this can be very confusing, what it is they said you did in this letter to President Obama. You are Binyam Mohamed’s lawyer.

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Well, I wrote a letter to President Obama and attached to it a memorandum that was going to originally be the evidence that showed that Binyam was tortured. But that evidence we had to submit through the classification review process. So, ultimately, the two-page memo of evidence that Binyam had been tortured was all redacted, as you mentioned, so it was all blacked out. I mean, even to the President it was blacked out. And the only thing left in it was, you know, “In re: torture of Binyam Mohamed.”

What we were trying to do was get President Obama the information he needs to make a judgment as to whether the US should continue to cover up this evidence of torture. And it’s paradoxical that the President of the United States is not being permitted to make that judgment in a meaningful way.

AMY GOODMAN: So you will come to the United States for this May 11th hearing?

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Oh, my goodness, yes. I mean, I am, I will say, offended by this process, but nothing would keep me away. I want to clear both mine and Ahmad’s name. And I want the real issue to be why the government continues to cover up the evidence of Binyam’s torture, because how can it be that we, as Americans, are not allowed to know when our government officials have committed criminal offenses against people like Binyam Mohamed? That just makes no sense at all. And if, indeed, someone should be on trial here, it should be the people who tortured Binyam.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave it there. Clive Stafford Smith, thank you very much for this update.

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Thank you.
Video of the exchange on Democracy Now! as well as the transcript are available here.