What happens if a non-Pashtun wins the upcoming presidential election?
No attempt to answer it of course, because the answer is the Afghan war will get worse as Pashtuns become even more alienated from the Kabul government.
Will there be any consequence for Venezuela's material support for Colombian insurgents?
No, but I'm surprised as all get out that WaPo noticed ...
WHEN THE Colombian government last year unveiled extensive evidence that the government of Venezuela had collaborated with a Colombian rebel movement known for terrorism and drug trafficking, other Latin American governments and the United States mostly chose to look the other way. The evidence was contained on laptops captured in a controversial raid by the Colombian army on a guerrilla base in Ecuador. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez denounced the e-mails and documents as forgeries, and the potential consequences of concluding that Venezuela was supporting a terrorist organization against a democratic government -- which could include mandatory U.S. sanctions and referral to the U.N. Security Council -- were more than the Bush administration was prepared to contemplate.
Now Colombia has made public evidence that will be even more difficult to ignore. In a raid on a camp of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), a group officially designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, Colombian forces captured sophisticated, Swedish-produced antitank rockets. A Swedish investigation confirmed that they were originally sold to the Venezuelan army by the arms manufacturer Saab. What's more, FARC e-mails from the laptops captured in Ecuador appear to refer to the weapons; in one, a FARC operative in Caracas reports discussing delivery of the arms in a 2007 meeting with two top Venezuelan generals, including the director of military intelligence, Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios.
Colombia privately asked Mr. Chávez's government for an explanation of the rockets several months ago; Sweden is now asking as well. But the only response has been public bluster by the Venezuelan caudillo, who on Tuesday withdrew his ambassador from Colombia and threatened to close the border to trade. If he follows through, U.S. drug authorities may well be pleased: A report released last week by the U.S. Government Accountability Office said Venezuela had created a "permissive environment" for FARC that had allowed the group to massively increase its cocaine smuggling across that border. "By allowing illegal armed groups to elude capture and by providing material support, Venezuela has extended a lifeline to Colombian illegal armed groups, and their continued existence endangers Colombian security gains achieved with U.S. assistance," the GAO reported.
This all sounds an awful lot like material support for terrorism -- which raises the question of whether the State Department will look again at whether Mr. Chávez's government or its top officials belong on its list of state sponsors of terrorism. The Bush administration's Treasury Department last year imposed sanctions on Gen. Carvajal and several other officials for supporting the FARC's drug trafficking. But that hardly covers the supply of antitank rockets to a designated terrorist organization. At the moment, the State Department is busy applying sanctions to members of Honduras's de facto government, which is guilty of deposing one of Mr. Chávez's clients and would-be emulators. Perhaps soon it can turn its attention to those in the hemisphere who have been caught trying to overturn a democratic government by supplying terrorists with advanced weapons.
What a novel idea -- punishing states for material assistance to terrorists.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/01/2009 00:00 ||
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Six months into the Obama administration, it should now be clear to all Americans: Hope and Change came to the White House wrapped in brass knuckles.
Ask the Congressional Budget Office. Last week, President Obama spilled the beans on the "Today Show" that he had met with CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf -- just as the number crunchers were casting ruinous doubt on White House cost-saving claims. Yes, question the timing.
The CBO is supposed to be a neutral scorekeeper -- not a water boy for the White House. But when the meeting failed to stop the CBO from issuing more analysis undercutting the health care savings claims, Obama's budget director Peter Orszag played the heavy.
Orszag warned the CBO in a public letter that it risked feeding the perception that it was "exaggerating costs and underestimating savings." Message: Leave the number fudging to the boss. Capiche?
Obama issued an even more explicit order to unleash the hounds on Blue Dog Democrats during his health care press conference. "Keep up the heat" translated into Organizing for America/Democratic National Committee attack ads on moderate Democrats who have revolted against Obamacare's high costs and expansive government powers over medical decisions.
Looks like there won't be a health care beer summit anytime soon.
#1
Had Bush done this kind of strong armed crap, the press would have been up in arms about his Nixonian tendencies (secrecy, stonewalling, etc) and the attempts to create an imperial presidency (arrogance, political thuggery).
A Yale Law School faculty member and military law expert said he is disturbed by allegations that Fort Lewis employed a civilian who spied on an Olympia-based anti-war organization. Eugene R. Fidell, a former judge advocate for the Coast Guard and the president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said such a practice appeared to violate the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that prohibits the use of the Army for conventional law enforcement activities against civilians.
Last week, members of Olympia Port Militarization Resistance presented evidence that John J. Towery, a civilian employee of Fort Lewis Force Protection, infiltrated the group using an assumed name and conducted surveillance of its members for about two years.
OlyPMR member Brendan Maslauskas Dunn said that after the information came to light, Towery admitted that he was spying on members using the name John Jacob. As John Jacob, Towery was one of five administrators of OlyPMR's listserv e-mail list, giving him names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of all members.
OlyPMR opposes the Iraq war. Members have conducted protests at Washington ports, aiming to block Fort Lewis from transporting Stryker vehicles and other military equipment used in the war to and from public ports. OlyPMR member Drew Hendricks has said that Towery was privy to members' observation strategies and operations before the group conducted protests at local ports.
Hendricks said OlyPMR is committed to nonviolence and has never threatened or tried to harm soldiers.
Fort Lewis spokesman Joseph Piek said that the base has appointed an officer to conduct an inquiry into the OlyPMR's allegation that Towery spied on it and other organizations, including anarchist groups in Tacoma.
This week, OlyPMR shared an e-mail identifying Towery as a member of Fort Lewis Force Protection that was obtained as part of a public-records request from the city of Olympia. OlyPMR members then obtained Towery's address in Spanaway by checking a database of registered voters. PMR members conducted surveillance to verify that Towery and Jacob were the same person.
Piek has confirmed that Towery is a civilian employed with Fort Lewis Force Protection. Fidell said he would like to know more about what Towery's superiors authorized him to do.
"What you've told me is enough to think that there's a domestic spying program at Fort Lewis," he said. "And if there is, that's a big deal."
Fidell said he's glad the Army is conducting an investigation. "I hope it's a thorough one," he said. "If the facts are as they seem to be, I hope that someone gets their knuckles rapped."
He added, "I think that someone's going to get sued over this."
Another legal expert, Stanford Law School lecturer Steven Weiner, said there are exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act that allow the secretary of defense to authorize the Army to pass on information to local law enforcement agencies when it is gathered through normal military training and operations. Weiner said that does not sound like what happened in Olympia. Weiner, an expert in national security law, added that for the military to use "an employee as a covert operative ... is probably over the line."
"The basic rule is the military's not supposed to be engaged in law enforcement activities," he said.
Weiner said he doubts that someone high up in the Army chain of command would authorize spying on OlyPMR. When told about OlyPMR's activities, he said it sounded as though the group "is not actively imperiling national security" in a manner that would justify violating Posse Comitatus.
An official at the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General referred questions from The Olympian to the Pentagon. Retired Lt. Col. George Wright, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, responded in an e-mail.
"We're aware that there is an investigation in progress," he wrote. "It is, however, inappropriate and premature to comment beyond what Fort Lewis has already provided on the matter."
On Tuesday, Piek e-mailed The Olympian a definition of Fort Lewis Force Protection.
"The Fort Lewis Force Protection Division, under the Directorate of Emergency Services, consists of both military and civilian employees whose focus is on supporting law enforcement and security operations to ensure the safety and security of Fort Lewis, soldiers, family members, the workforce and those personnel accessing the installation," the e-mail reads. Piek said he could not reveal the number of employees in the Force Protection Division.
Tuesday's e-mail continues, "In support of that focus, the Force Protection Division executes Force Protection (FP), Anti-terrorism (AT), and Criminal Intelligence collection, processing, analysis, reporting and dissemination."
In a separate e-mail Monday, Piek stated that Fort Lewis cannot discuss Towery's specific duties with force protection because he "performs sensitive law enforcement work with the installation law enforcement community."
#1
what "law enforcement activities" did he conduct? He infiltrated a group of peurile anti-American tools on his own, and as a civilian. They're just upset they were scammed. P*ssies. I wish they would roll the trucks and trains right over their protesting bodies
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/01/2009 11:18 Comments ||
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#2
Interesting issue here is was the anti-war group in any way involved in threatening DoD activities or assets? Force Protection permits CONUS based DoD assets to ascertain threats and evaluate. LE actions would then devolve to local police, FBI JTTF or other federal LE agencies for enforcement actions.
If this guy was working this on his own as a private citizen, did he commit any fraud by using an assumed name? If not, hard cheese for the anarchists, whoi by the way, by their very title, imply a threat to organized government do they not?
#4
If some enthusiastic individual proposed this to me, I would have "requested and required" that he prepare a 10-page essay on the concept of "plausible deniability", before he do anything else.
Grading his paper, if he made less than a 'B' in comprehension of the concept, it would have been aborted.
#5
The question here is: Does an installation or unit commander in CONUS or anywhere else have the obligation to his very command to assess all threats to his command, and the obvious answer is yes, and it is an obligation which supercedes the Posse Comitatus Act by about a thousand years.
It can be well argued by the military that the presumed spying was strictly a military activity meant to ascertain that anti-military protesters were not posing any threat to military activities such as passing information about military facilities meant to pose a threat to either the military or those employed by the military.
FWIW, that the protesters were peaceful doesn't mean they were not actively involved in activities which could pose a threat to military units. In fact the contention that protesters were peaceful was an obvious canard meant to change the subject.
[The News (Pak) Top Stories] Government decisions, in total disregard to merit, fair play and transparency, based on personal monetary gains for a few individuals in the government have grossly compounded the economic miseries of Pakistan and turned several government organisations into insolvent corporate entities, according to an investigation during which dozens of well-placed and informed sources in the government and corporate sectors were interviewed.
Positioning of several handpicked corrupt and incompetent officials in key appointments at the government-run companies, in many cases without an active approval of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, has left a trail of incredible cases of corruption never witnessed before.
Many policy decisions with financial implications in the government-run corporations routinely carry an imprint of a few individuals, who maintained close personal and business ties with some of the most important people in the government between 1997 and 2008.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
08/01/2009 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
