http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Whist...i ll_0212.html
John Byrne
Published: Thursday February 12, 2009
So much for keeping the federal government from blowing millions in taxpayer money.
The Senate quietly stripped whistleblower protections from the final stimulus package Wednesday afternoon, as the bill's authors bragged of a bipartisan compromise. The removal is particularly significant because of the bill's $789 billion price tag.
Despite the ugly record of federal spending in Iraq -- where auditors found problems with $88 million in federal contracts, and couldn't account for 8.8 billion dollars -- senators quietly nixed the measure from the bill, without explanation.
Talking Points Memo, which cited a source close to the final bill, said the provision was removed by Republican Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), one of the senators brokering the compromise.
"According to a person following the bill closely, Collins used today's conference committee to drastically water down the measure, citing national security concerns as the reason for her opposition," TPM's Zachary Roth wrote. In the end, the protections were so weakened that House negotiators balked, and the result was that the entire amendment was removed."
Some Republicans take umbrage with the idea of blanket whistleblower protections, saying they could damage the US's ability to collect intelligence.
Project for Government Oversight, a government watchdog group, blasted the removal.
"Accountability got mugged today when congressional leaders stripped federal whistleblower protections from their compromise stimulus bill," the group said in a release.
Part of the reason for government mismanagement of massive federally-funded projects is that federal whistleblowers have few effective protections from retaliation under current law. Of 55 whistleblowers who've filed complaints with the Merit Systems Protection Board for being fired or demoted, just two have won their cases.
"Federal workers who expose lax oversight of drugs at the Food and Drug Administration, cozy relationships between FAA inspectors and certain airlines, hundreds of billions of dollars in conscious "underestimates" for the cost of prescription drug coverage, and billions of dollars wasted in no-bid defense contracts face intimidation and retaliation and often are fired or demoted," the Kennebec Journal wrote in a Wednesday editorial. "And their efforts to go through the chain of command or seek relief from retaliation by agency managers nearly always fail."
The Obama Administration hasn't spoken out about the whistleblower provision's removal. Thus far, they've been relatively accommodating to Republicans' requests -- for example, removing a provision that would have provided money for the prevention of sexually-transmitted diseases.
Yet, the Administration said they'd be protectors of whistleblowers as recently as last week. During his Feb. 5 confirmation hearing, Deputy Attorney General designate David Ogden told a Senate committee that he was "a big believer" in whistleblowers.
“I think what we need is a process that encourages whistleblowing in this administration and any other administration going forward. The business of making sure that we’re doing the right thing is an ongoing business,” Ogden said.
The Center for American Media's Washington Independent bemoaned the measure's removal late Wednesday.
"It’s an odd outcome, given that federal employees are often the first people to notice fraud and other abuses by government contractors, as exhibited in many of the House oversight hearings on the subject over the past few years," the Independent's Daphne Eviatar wrote. "(Remember Bunnatine Greenhouse, who lost her job after blowing the whistle on the no-bid contracts for Halliburton?)"
"The sticking point on the federal workers may be, as I explained before, the strong opposition from Republicans to providing whistleblower protection to intelligence employees," Eviatar added.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
'Fiasco' author: Iraq war may be only 'halfway' over
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Fiasco_author_Iraq_surge_failed_politically_0208.html
The American adventure in Iraq may be only halfway over, nearly six years after former President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. invasion. And the military gains from Bush's "surge" could evaporate this year.
That's according to Thomas Ricks, author of the widely acclaimed 2006 book on the war, Fiasco.
"I think a lot of people back here [in the U.S.] incorrectly think the war is over. We may be only halfway through this thing," Ricks told NBC's David Gregory on Meet the Press Sunday morning.
Ricks, whose new book is called The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008, thinks that the Iraq war is far from over. "This year we're in now, '09, is going to be, I think, a surprisingly tough year," he said.
U.S. commander in Iraq General Raymond Odierno, who the Washington Post calls a "dissenter," sees negative effects of the surge, Rick says: many Iraqis used the breathing space the surge created to "step backwards" to become more sectarian and divided.
Leading Democrats such as Senator Dianne Feinstein have said that the U.S. troop surge in Iraq could fall short of its goal.
"None of the basic problems that the surge was meant to solve, have been solved. All the basic issues facing Iraq are still there," Ricks told Gregory. "Basically the surge succeeded militarily, failed politically."
The Gamble ends with this haunting line from the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker: "The events for which the Iraq war will be remembered have not yet happened."
The American adventure in Iraq may be only halfway over, nearly six years after former President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. invasion. And the military gains from Bush's "surge" could evaporate this year.
That's according to Thomas Ricks, author of the widely acclaimed 2006 book on the war, Fiasco.
"I think a lot of people back here [in the U.S.] incorrectly think the war is over. We may be only halfway through this thing," Ricks told NBC's David Gregory on Meet the Press Sunday morning.
Ricks, whose new book is called The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008, thinks that the Iraq war is far from over. "This year we're in now, '09, is going to be, I think, a surprisingly tough year," he said.
U.S. commander in Iraq General Raymond Odierno, who the Washington Post calls a "dissenter," sees negative effects of the surge, Rick says: many Iraqis used the breathing space the surge created to "step backwards" to become more sectarian and divided.
Leading Democrats such as Senator Dianne Feinstein have said that the U.S. troop surge in Iraq could fall short of its goal.
"None of the basic problems that the surge was meant to solve, have been solved. All the basic issues facing Iraq are still there," Ricks told Gregory. "Basically the surge succeeded militarily, failed politically."
The Gamble ends with this haunting line from the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker: "The events for which the Iraq war will be remembered have not yet happened."
Halliburton spinoff prepares to admit bribery
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stor...bribery-020609/
The Associated Press
4:44 p.m. February 6, 2009
HOUSTON — A spinoff of Halliburton Co. is on the verge of pleading guilty to federal bribery charges.
Court papers filed in Houston on Friday show Kellogg, Brown & Root LLC is preparing to plead guilty to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for promising and paying tens of millions of dollars in bribes to officials in Nigeria in exchange for engineering and construction contracts between 1995 and 2004.
The government filed a criminal information in federal court, a document which is often used as part of a plea deal.
KBR, a major engineering and construction services company with operations around the world, was split off as a separate public company from Halliburton in 2007.
KBR spokeswoman Heather Browne said the company had no comment Friday and referred to KBR's quarterly SEC filing last October.
In that document, KBR said Halliburton "agreed to indemnify us for, among other things, liabilities unrelated to our business, for certain other agreed matters relating to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigations ... and for other litigation matters related to Halliburton's business."
In the filing, KBR said it was in settlement discussions with the Securities and Exchange Commission and/or the Justice Department and was providing documents sought by investigators.
The company is expected to appear in federal court next week as part of a plea deal.
Justice Department spokeswoman Angela Dodge in Houston referred inquiries about the case to department headquarters in Washington. A spokeswoman there who asked not to be named said the time and date of the court appearance was not immediately determined.
The papers charge that $95 million in corrupt payments were made to various international consultants to bribe government and political party officials in Nigeria.
The planned corporate plea follows a guilty plea last September by KBR's former CEO, Albert "Jack" Stanley. He headed the subsidiary within Halliburton, the oil field services conglomerate whose chief executive from 1995 to 2000 was Dick Cheney, the former vice president.
Stanley also pleaded guilty to a separate count of conspiring to defraud KBR and others, admitting to receiving $10.8 million in kickbacks from a consultant hired by the company at his behest.
Under his plea agreement, Stanley, 65, faces a sentence of seven years and payment of $10.8 million in restitution.
The Associated Press
4:44 p.m. February 6, 2009
HOUSTON — A spinoff of Halliburton Co. is on the verge of pleading guilty to federal bribery charges.
Court papers filed in Houston on Friday show Kellogg, Brown & Root LLC is preparing to plead guilty to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for promising and paying tens of millions of dollars in bribes to officials in Nigeria in exchange for engineering and construction contracts between 1995 and 2004.
The government filed a criminal information in federal court, a document which is often used as part of a plea deal.
KBR, a major engineering and construction services company with operations around the world, was split off as a separate public company from Halliburton in 2007.
KBR spokeswoman Heather Browne said the company had no comment Friday and referred to KBR's quarterly SEC filing last October.
In that document, KBR said Halliburton "agreed to indemnify us for, among other things, liabilities unrelated to our business, for certain other agreed matters relating to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigations ... and for other litigation matters related to Halliburton's business."
In the filing, KBR said it was in settlement discussions with the Securities and Exchange Commission and/or the Justice Department and was providing documents sought by investigators.
The company is expected to appear in federal court next week as part of a plea deal.
Justice Department spokeswoman Angela Dodge in Houston referred inquiries about the case to department headquarters in Washington. A spokeswoman there who asked not to be named said the time and date of the court appearance was not immediately determined.
The papers charge that $95 million in corrupt payments were made to various international consultants to bribe government and political party officials in Nigeria.
The planned corporate plea follows a guilty plea last September by KBR's former CEO, Albert "Jack" Stanley. He headed the subsidiary within Halliburton, the oil field services conglomerate whose chief executive from 1995 to 2000 was Dick Cheney, the former vice president.
Stanley also pleaded guilty to a separate count of conspiring to defraud KBR and others, admitting to receiving $10.8 million in kickbacks from a consultant hired by the company at his behest.
Under his plea agreement, Stanley, 65, faces a sentence of seven years and payment of $10.8 million in restitution.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Britain: US threatened to cut off intel if evidence of torture released
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/UK_US_will_cut_off_shared_0204.html
White House confirms; ACLU: 'Hope flickering'
The British government says that the United States threatened to withhold shared intelligence if evidence of the torture of a UK citizen at Guantanamo Bay is released
To the shock and horror of civil liberties watchdogs, the Obama administration later appeared to stealthily confirm that position.
The allegation was made by British foreign secretary David Milliband, who told the United Kingdom's High Court that if evidence was disclosed, the US would stop sharing intelligence with the UK, an action that would directly threaten British national security.
The UK resident, Binyam Mohamed, launched a challenge in British court to force the public release of documents detailing his treatment. Mohamed is presently in a hunger strike at the US detainee camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at last report was in an emaciated state. He says confessions he made regarding his involvement with terrorism resulted from torture.
The statement by Milliband led to scathing criticism from two High Court judges who were nevertheless compelled to rule that the documents must remain secret because of the US threat.
"In the light of the long history of the common law and democracy which we share with the United States," the judges said, "it was in our view difficult to conceive that a democratically elected and accountable government could possibly have any rational objection to placing into the public domain such a summary of what its own officials reported, as to how a detainee was treated by them and which made no disclosure of sensitive intelligence matters.
"Indeed we did not consider that a democracy governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials," they continued, "relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be.
"We had no reason," said the judges, "to anticipate there would be made a threat of the gravity of the kind made by the United States government that it would reconsider its intelligence sharing relationship, when all the considerations in relation to open justice pointed to us providing a limited but important summary of the reports."
The ruling sparked the ire of Conservative MP David Davis, who said in Parliament that UK ministers must answer to charges that Britain was complicit in torture and demanded a statement by Milliband to the House of Commons explaining "what the devil is going on."
The US threat had been originally issued by the Bush administration, Davis charged, adding that Milliband must explain "whether the new Obama administration supported its predecessor's stance on the issue."
For its part, the office of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, "We have not engaged with the [Obama] administration on the detail of this case" and that the UK government "would 'unreservedly condemn' the use of torture and any allegations of mistreatment would be taken 'very seriously.'"
The White House later officially commented on the situation via written statement, saying that the US "thanks the UK government for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information and preserve the long-standing intelligence sharing relationship that enables both countries to protect their citizens."
Obama's statement stunned civil libertarians wearied by eight years of Bush administration policies. The ACLU responded in a news release, "Hope is flickering. The Obama administration's position is not change. It is more of the same."
Author, journalist and Raw Story contributor Andy Worthington, who has closely monitored US torture and ongoing detentions, says "the bitter truth ... is that Guantanamo is still being run as if the Bush administration remains in control."
Former Bush vice president Dick Cheney seemed to reassert his influence even today, warning that the new administration's anti-terror policies risked exposing the US to a catastrophic attack and saying that President Obama would regret his determination to close down Gitmo and end harsh interrogations of terror suspects.
Said journalist and columnist Joe Klein in reaction to the former VP's withering criticism, "Cheney has done here what the Bush administration did throughout: he has politicized terror."
White House confirms; ACLU: 'Hope flickering'
The British government says that the United States threatened to withhold shared intelligence if evidence of the torture of a UK citizen at Guantanamo Bay is released
To the shock and horror of civil liberties watchdogs, the Obama administration later appeared to stealthily confirm that position.
The allegation was made by British foreign secretary David Milliband, who told the United Kingdom's High Court that if evidence was disclosed, the US would stop sharing intelligence with the UK, an action that would directly threaten British national security.
The UK resident, Binyam Mohamed, launched a challenge in British court to force the public release of documents detailing his treatment. Mohamed is presently in a hunger strike at the US detainee camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at last report was in an emaciated state. He says confessions he made regarding his involvement with terrorism resulted from torture.
The statement by Milliband led to scathing criticism from two High Court judges who were nevertheless compelled to rule that the documents must remain secret because of the US threat.
"In the light of the long history of the common law and democracy which we share with the United States," the judges said, "it was in our view difficult to conceive that a democratically elected and accountable government could possibly have any rational objection to placing into the public domain such a summary of what its own officials reported, as to how a detainee was treated by them and which made no disclosure of sensitive intelligence matters.
"Indeed we did not consider that a democracy governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials," they continued, "relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be.
"We had no reason," said the judges, "to anticipate there would be made a threat of the gravity of the kind made by the United States government that it would reconsider its intelligence sharing relationship, when all the considerations in relation to open justice pointed to us providing a limited but important summary of the reports."
The ruling sparked the ire of Conservative MP David Davis, who said in Parliament that UK ministers must answer to charges that Britain was complicit in torture and demanded a statement by Milliband to the House of Commons explaining "what the devil is going on."
The US threat had been originally issued by the Bush administration, Davis charged, adding that Milliband must explain "whether the new Obama administration supported its predecessor's stance on the issue."
For its part, the office of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, "We have not engaged with the [Obama] administration on the detail of this case" and that the UK government "would 'unreservedly condemn' the use of torture and any allegations of mistreatment would be taken 'very seriously.'"
The White House later officially commented on the situation via written statement, saying that the US "thanks the UK government for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information and preserve the long-standing intelligence sharing relationship that enables both countries to protect their citizens."
Obama's statement stunned civil libertarians wearied by eight years of Bush administration policies. The ACLU responded in a news release, "Hope is flickering. The Obama administration's position is not change. It is more of the same."
Author, journalist and Raw Story contributor Andy Worthington, who has closely monitored US torture and ongoing detentions, says "the bitter truth ... is that Guantanamo is still being run as if the Bush administration remains in control."
Former Bush vice president Dick Cheney seemed to reassert his influence even today, warning that the new administration's anti-terror policies risked exposing the US to a catastrophic attack and saying that President Obama would regret his determination to close down Gitmo and end harsh interrogations of terror suspects.
Said journalist and columnist Joe Klein in reaction to the former VP's withering criticism, "Cheney has done here what the Bush administration did throughout: he has politicized terror."
Madoff whistleblower blasts SEC
A fraud investigator told Congress that he'd warned the agency about Madoff's Ponzi scheme years ago. But his efforts went nowhere.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/04/new..._whistleblower/
2/4/2009
NEW YORK (CNN) -- A whistleblower who repeatedly warned the Securities and Exchange Commission that Bernard Madoff was perpetrating a massive investment fraud testified Wednesday that the regulatory agency that oversees financial markets is inept, "financially illiterate" and far too cozy with the financial titans it is supposed to be regulating.
"The SEC is also captive to the industry it regulates and it is afraid of bringing big cases against the largest most powerful firms," said Harry Markopolos, an independent financial fraud investigator. "Cleary the SEC was afraid of Mr. Madoff."
Markopolos began contacting the SEC at the beginning of the decade to warn that Madoff was a fraud. He sent detailed memos, listing dozens of red flags, laying out a road map of instructions for SEC investigators to follow, even listing contacts and phone numbers of Wall Street experts whom he said would confirm his findings. But, Markopolos' whistle-blowing effort got nowhere.
"I gift wrapped and delivered the largest Ponzi scheme in history to them and some how they couldn't be bothered to conduct a thorough and proper investigation because they were too busy on matters of higher priority," Markopolos told the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises.
Agency squabbles
After at first receiving an encouraging reception from the SEC's Boston Bureau Chief, Edward Manion, Markopolos said the New York SEC office, which supervised Boston, blocked a further investigation.
"In 2000 Mr. Manion warned me that relations between the New York and Boston regional offices was about as warm and friendly as the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry and that New York does not like to receive tips from Boston," Markopolos testified.
Markopolos said it took him five minutes to conclude that Madoff was a fraud after looking at his reported investment performance, and four hours of actual number-crunching analysis to confirm his suspicions.
Bernard Madoff, who is now under 24-hour house arrest at his Upper East Side luxury apartment, faces one charge of securities fraud for allegedly running a scheme that cost investors around the globe tens of billions of dollars. The single criminal count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Madoff estimated the investment loss at $50 billion, according to the criminal complaint.
Markopolos initiated his investigation after one of his bosses at his former employer, Rampart Investment Management, asked him to replicate Madoff's investment strategy.
As he dug deeper, Markopolos said he began to fear for his life, convinced that Russian mobsters and Latin American drug cartels were Madoff clients. When he tried to deliver an investigative file to former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Markopolos said he wore gloves to ensure his fingerprints would not be on the documents.
Markopolos said the SEC is in need of a major overhaul. Senior managers should be replaced, lawyers should be separated from financial investigators, and the agency should hire employees who have years of Wall Street experience, he said.
"You want reverse age discrimination. Hire the old foxes to police the henhouse," he said.
Senior SEC staff directors told the Committee they are dedicated to protecting investors and cracking down on fraud.
"We assure the Subcommittee that the Commission and its staff take the alleged Madoff fraud very seriously. The losses incurred by investors as the result of Mr. Madoff's alleged fraud are tragic, and we appreciate the impact of those losses on the lives of investors," SEC Director of Enforcement Linda Chatman Thomsen said in a statement.
Markopolos said he intends to turn in a "mini-Madoff" who has engaged in a $1-billion financial fraud tomorrow when he meets with the SEC's Inspector General David Kotz.
Kotz, who is studying the SEC's failure to respond to Markopolos' warnings about Madoff, confirmed to CNN that on Thursday he is scheduled to meet with Markopolos.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/04/new..._whistleblower/
2/4/2009
NEW YORK (CNN) -- A whistleblower who repeatedly warned the Securities and Exchange Commission that Bernard Madoff was perpetrating a massive investment fraud testified Wednesday that the regulatory agency that oversees financial markets is inept, "financially illiterate" and far too cozy with the financial titans it is supposed to be regulating.
"The SEC is also captive to the industry it regulates and it is afraid of bringing big cases against the largest most powerful firms," said Harry Markopolos, an independent financial fraud investigator. "Cleary the SEC was afraid of Mr. Madoff."
Markopolos began contacting the SEC at the beginning of the decade to warn that Madoff was a fraud. He sent detailed memos, listing dozens of red flags, laying out a road map of instructions for SEC investigators to follow, even listing contacts and phone numbers of Wall Street experts whom he said would confirm his findings. But, Markopolos' whistle-blowing effort got nowhere.
"I gift wrapped and delivered the largest Ponzi scheme in history to them and some how they couldn't be bothered to conduct a thorough and proper investigation because they were too busy on matters of higher priority," Markopolos told the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises.
Agency squabbles
After at first receiving an encouraging reception from the SEC's Boston Bureau Chief, Edward Manion, Markopolos said the New York SEC office, which supervised Boston, blocked a further investigation.
"In 2000 Mr. Manion warned me that relations between the New York and Boston regional offices was about as warm and friendly as the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry and that New York does not like to receive tips from Boston," Markopolos testified.
Markopolos said it took him five minutes to conclude that Madoff was a fraud after looking at his reported investment performance, and four hours of actual number-crunching analysis to confirm his suspicions.
Bernard Madoff, who is now under 24-hour house arrest at his Upper East Side luxury apartment, faces one charge of securities fraud for allegedly running a scheme that cost investors around the globe tens of billions of dollars. The single criminal count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Madoff estimated the investment loss at $50 billion, according to the criminal complaint.
Markopolos initiated his investigation after one of his bosses at his former employer, Rampart Investment Management, asked him to replicate Madoff's investment strategy.
As he dug deeper, Markopolos said he began to fear for his life, convinced that Russian mobsters and Latin American drug cartels were Madoff clients. When he tried to deliver an investigative file to former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Markopolos said he wore gloves to ensure his fingerprints would not be on the documents.
Markopolos said the SEC is in need of a major overhaul. Senior managers should be replaced, lawyers should be separated from financial investigators, and the agency should hire employees who have years of Wall Street experience, he said.
"You want reverse age discrimination. Hire the old foxes to police the henhouse," he said.
Senior SEC staff directors told the Committee they are dedicated to protecting investors and cracking down on fraud.
"We assure the Subcommittee that the Commission and its staff take the alleged Madoff fraud very seriously. The losses incurred by investors as the result of Mr. Madoff's alleged fraud are tragic, and we appreciate the impact of those losses on the lives of investors," SEC Director of Enforcement Linda Chatman Thomsen said in a statement.
Markopolos said he intends to turn in a "mini-Madoff" who has engaged in a $1-billion financial fraud tomorrow when he meets with the SEC's Inspector General David Kotz.
Kotz, who is studying the SEC's failure to respond to Markopolos' warnings about Madoff, confirmed to CNN that on Thursday he is scheduled to meet with Markopolos.
Monday, February 2, 2009
US-IRAQ: Generals Seek to Reverse Obama Withdrawal Decision
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45640
By Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (IPS) - CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, supported by Defence Secretary Robert Gates, tried to convince President Barack Obama that he had to back down from his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months at an Oval Office meeting Jan. 21.
But Obama informed Gates, Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen that he wasn't convinced and that he wanted Gates and the military leaders to come back quickly with a detailed 16-month plan, according to two sources who have talked with participants in the meeting.
Obama's decision to override Petraeus's recommendation has not ended the conflict between the president and senior military officers over troop withdrawal, however. There are indications that Petraeus and his allies in the military and the Pentagon, including Gen. Ray Odierno, now the top commander in Iraq, have already begun to try to pressure Obama to change his withdrawal policy.
A network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilising public opinion against Obama's decision.
Petraeus was visibly unhappy when he left the Oval Office, according to one of the sources. A White House staffer present at the meeting was quoted by the source as saying, "Petraeus made the mistake of thinking he was still dealing with George Bush instead of with Barack Obama."
Petraeus, Gates and Odierno had hoped to sell Obama on a plan that they formulated in the final months of the Bush administration that aimed at getting around a key provision of the U.S.-Iraqi withdrawal agreement signed envisioned re-categorising large numbers of combat troops as support troops. That subterfuge was by the United States last November while ostensibly allowing Obama to deliver on his campaign promise.
Gates and Mullen had discussed the relabeling scheme with Obama as part of the Petraeus-Odierno plan for withdrawal they had presented to him in mid-December, according to a Dec. 18 New York Times story.
Obama decided against making any public reference to his order to the military to draft a detailed 16-month combat troop withdrawal policy, apparently so that he can announce his decision only after consulting with his field commanders and the Pentagon.
The first clear indication of the intention of Petraeus, Odierno and their allies to try to get Obama to amend his decision came on Jan. 29 when the New York Times published an interview with Odierno, ostensibly based on the premise that Obama had indicated that he was "open to alternatives".
The Times reported that Odierno had "developed a plan that would move slower than Mr. Obama's campaign timetable" and had suggested in an interview "it might take the rest of the year to determine exactly when United States forces could be drawn down significantly".
The opening argument by the Petraeus-Odierno faction against Obama's withdrawal policy was revealed the evening of the Jan. 21 meeting when retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, one of the authors of the Bush troop surge policy and a close political ally and mentor of Gen. Petraeus, appeared on the Lehrer News Hour to comment on Obama's pledge on Iraq combat troop withdrawal.
Keane, who had certainly been briefed by Petraeus on the outcome of the Oval Office meeting, argued that implementing such a withdrawal of combat troops would "increase the risk rather dramatically over the 16 months". He asserted that it would jeopardise the "stable political situation in Iraq" and called that risk "not acceptable".
The assertion that Obama's withdrawal policy threatens the gains allegedly won by the Bush surge and Petraeus's strategy in Iraq will apparently be the theme of the campaign that military opponents are now planning.
Keane, the Army Vice-Chief of Staff from 1999 to 2003, has ties to a network of active and retired four-star Army generals, and since Obama's Jan. 21 order on the 16-month withdrawal plan, some of the retired four-star generals in that network have begun discussing a campaign to blame Obama's troop withdrawal from Iraq for the ultimate collapse of the political "stability" that they expect to follow U.S. withdrawal, according to a military source familiar with the network's plans.
The source says the network, which includes senior active duty officers in the Pentagon, will begin making the argument to journalists covering the Pentagon that Obama's withdrawal policy risks an eventual collapse in Iraq. That would raise the political cost to Obama of sticking to his withdrawal policy.
If Obama does not change the policy, according to the source, they hope to have planted the seeds of a future political narrative blaming his withdrawal policy for the "collapse" they expect in an Iraq without U.S. troops.
That line seems likely to appeal to reporters covering the Iraq troop withdrawal issue. Ever since Obama's inauguration, media coverage of the issue has treated Obama' s 16-month withdrawal proposal as a concession to anti-war sentiment which will have to be adjusted to the "realities" as defined by the advice to Obama from Gates, Petreaus and Odierno.
Ever since he began working on the troop surge, Keane has been the central figure manipulating policy in order to keep as many U.S. troops in Iraq as possible. It was Keane who got Vice President Dick Cheney to push for Petraeus as top commander in Iraq in late 2006 when the existing commander, Gen. George W. Casey, did not support the troop surge.
It was Keane who protected Petraeus's interests in ensuring the maximum number of troops in Iraq against the efforts by other military leaders to accelerate troop withdrawal in 2007 and 2008. As Bob Woodward reported in "The War Within", Keane persuaded President George W. Bush to override the concerns of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the stress of prolonged U.S. occupation of Iraq on the U.S. Army and Marine Corps as well its impact on the worsening situation in Afghanistan.
Bush agreed in September 2007 to guarantee that Petraeus would have as many troops as he needed for as long as wanted, according to Woodward's account.
Keane had also prevailed on Gates in April 2008 to make Petraeus the new commander of CENTCOM. Keane argued that keeping Petraeus in the field was the best insurance against a Democratic administration reversing the Bush policy toward Iraq.
Keane had operated on the assumption that a Democratic president would probably not take the political risk of rejecting Petraeus's recommendation on the pace of troop withdrawal from Iraq. Woodward quotes Keane as telling Gates, "Let's assume we have a Democratic administration and they want to pull this thing out quickly, and now they have to deal with General Petraeus and General Odierno. There will be a price to be paid to override them."
Obama told Petraeus in Baghdad last July that, if elected, he would regard the overall health of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps and the situation in Afghanistan as more important than Petraeus's obvious interest in maximising U.S. troop strength in Iraq, according to Time magazine's Joe Klein.
But judging from Petraeus's shock at Obama's Jan. 21 decision, he had not taken Obama's previous rejection of his arguments seriously. That miscalculation suggests that Petraeus had begun to accept Keane's assertion that a newly-elected Democratic president would not dare to override his policy recommendation on troops in Iraq.
*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.
By Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (IPS) - CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, supported by Defence Secretary Robert Gates, tried to convince President Barack Obama that he had to back down from his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months at an Oval Office meeting Jan. 21.
But Obama informed Gates, Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen that he wasn't convinced and that he wanted Gates and the military leaders to come back quickly with a detailed 16-month plan, according to two sources who have talked with participants in the meeting.
Obama's decision to override Petraeus's recommendation has not ended the conflict between the president and senior military officers over troop withdrawal, however. There are indications that Petraeus and his allies in the military and the Pentagon, including Gen. Ray Odierno, now the top commander in Iraq, have already begun to try to pressure Obama to change his withdrawal policy.
A network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilising public opinion against Obama's decision.
Petraeus was visibly unhappy when he left the Oval Office, according to one of the sources. A White House staffer present at the meeting was quoted by the source as saying, "Petraeus made the mistake of thinking he was still dealing with George Bush instead of with Barack Obama."
Petraeus, Gates and Odierno had hoped to sell Obama on a plan that they formulated in the final months of the Bush administration that aimed at getting around a key provision of the U.S.-Iraqi withdrawal agreement signed envisioned re-categorising large numbers of combat troops as support troops. That subterfuge was by the United States last November while ostensibly allowing Obama to deliver on his campaign promise.
Gates and Mullen had discussed the relabeling scheme with Obama as part of the Petraeus-Odierno plan for withdrawal they had presented to him in mid-December, according to a Dec. 18 New York Times story.
Obama decided against making any public reference to his order to the military to draft a detailed 16-month combat troop withdrawal policy, apparently so that he can announce his decision only after consulting with his field commanders and the Pentagon.
The first clear indication of the intention of Petraeus, Odierno and their allies to try to get Obama to amend his decision came on Jan. 29 when the New York Times published an interview with Odierno, ostensibly based on the premise that Obama had indicated that he was "open to alternatives".
The Times reported that Odierno had "developed a plan that would move slower than Mr. Obama's campaign timetable" and had suggested in an interview "it might take the rest of the year to determine exactly when United States forces could be drawn down significantly".
The opening argument by the Petraeus-Odierno faction against Obama's withdrawal policy was revealed the evening of the Jan. 21 meeting when retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, one of the authors of the Bush troop surge policy and a close political ally and mentor of Gen. Petraeus, appeared on the Lehrer News Hour to comment on Obama's pledge on Iraq combat troop withdrawal.
Keane, who had certainly been briefed by Petraeus on the outcome of the Oval Office meeting, argued that implementing such a withdrawal of combat troops would "increase the risk rather dramatically over the 16 months". He asserted that it would jeopardise the "stable political situation in Iraq" and called that risk "not acceptable".
The assertion that Obama's withdrawal policy threatens the gains allegedly won by the Bush surge and Petraeus's strategy in Iraq will apparently be the theme of the campaign that military opponents are now planning.
Keane, the Army Vice-Chief of Staff from 1999 to 2003, has ties to a network of active and retired four-star Army generals, and since Obama's Jan. 21 order on the 16-month withdrawal plan, some of the retired four-star generals in that network have begun discussing a campaign to blame Obama's troop withdrawal from Iraq for the ultimate collapse of the political "stability" that they expect to follow U.S. withdrawal, according to a military source familiar with the network's plans.
The source says the network, which includes senior active duty officers in the Pentagon, will begin making the argument to journalists covering the Pentagon that Obama's withdrawal policy risks an eventual collapse in Iraq. That would raise the political cost to Obama of sticking to his withdrawal policy.
If Obama does not change the policy, according to the source, they hope to have planted the seeds of a future political narrative blaming his withdrawal policy for the "collapse" they expect in an Iraq without U.S. troops.
That line seems likely to appeal to reporters covering the Iraq troop withdrawal issue. Ever since Obama's inauguration, media coverage of the issue has treated Obama' s 16-month withdrawal proposal as a concession to anti-war sentiment which will have to be adjusted to the "realities" as defined by the advice to Obama from Gates, Petreaus and Odierno.
Ever since he began working on the troop surge, Keane has been the central figure manipulating policy in order to keep as many U.S. troops in Iraq as possible. It was Keane who got Vice President Dick Cheney to push for Petraeus as top commander in Iraq in late 2006 when the existing commander, Gen. George W. Casey, did not support the troop surge.
It was Keane who protected Petraeus's interests in ensuring the maximum number of troops in Iraq against the efforts by other military leaders to accelerate troop withdrawal in 2007 and 2008. As Bob Woodward reported in "The War Within", Keane persuaded President George W. Bush to override the concerns of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the stress of prolonged U.S. occupation of Iraq on the U.S. Army and Marine Corps as well its impact on the worsening situation in Afghanistan.
Bush agreed in September 2007 to guarantee that Petraeus would have as many troops as he needed for as long as wanted, according to Woodward's account.
Keane had also prevailed on Gates in April 2008 to make Petraeus the new commander of CENTCOM. Keane argued that keeping Petraeus in the field was the best insurance against a Democratic administration reversing the Bush policy toward Iraq.
Keane had operated on the assumption that a Democratic president would probably not take the political risk of rejecting Petraeus's recommendation on the pace of troop withdrawal from Iraq. Woodward quotes Keane as telling Gates, "Let's assume we have a Democratic administration and they want to pull this thing out quickly, and now they have to deal with General Petraeus and General Odierno. There will be a price to be paid to override them."
Obama told Petraeus in Baghdad last July that, if elected, he would regard the overall health of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps and the situation in Afghanistan as more important than Petraeus's obvious interest in maximising U.S. troop strength in Iraq, according to Time magazine's Joe Klein.
But judging from Petraeus's shock at Obama's Jan. 21 decision, he had not taken Obama's previous rejection of his arguments seriously. That miscalculation suggests that Petraeus had begun to accept Keane's assertion that a newly-elected Democratic president would not dare to override his policy recommendation on troops in Iraq.
*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
After eleven days in office, Newsweek puts Obama in Vietnam
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Newsweek_puts_Obama_in_Vietnam_0131.html
Coming to newsstands Monday: 1965.
That's the year then-President Lyndon Johnson officially expanded America's involvement in Vietnam, expanding the number of US troops from 3,500 in March to 200,000 by December.
Newsweek invites the comparison with a bold cover, titled, "OBAMA'S VIETNAM," going to press less than two weeks after Obama takes office. Johnson, like Obama, inherited a troubled US conflict from his predecessor.
"A wave of reports, official and unofficial, from American and foreign (including Afghan) diplomats and soldiers, present and former, all seem to agree: the situation in Afghanistan is bad and getting worse," the magazine's Evan Thomas and John Barry write, in a news story that accompanies an opinion piece by Fahreed Zakaria. "Some four decades ago, American presidents became accustomed to hearing gloomy reports like that from Vietnam, although the public pronouncements were usually rosier. John F. Kennedy worried to his dying day about getting stuck in a land war in Asia; LBJ was haunted by nightmares about "Uncle Ho." In the military, now as then, there are a growing number of doubters. But the default switch for senior officers in the U.S. military is "can do, sir!" and that seems to be the light blinking now. In Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, when in doubt, escalate. There are now about 30,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration appear to agree that the number should be twice that a year or so from now."
Johnson escalated the Vietnam conflict after a purported attack on the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964. A declassified NSA intercept, however, revealed that there was no attack at all. In the following year, America's involvement soared.
Newsweek's authors disparage liberals, to whom "all American interventions after Vietnam have been potential 'quagmires,'" and after saying "Vietnam analogies can be tiresome," go on to compare Afghanistan to Vietnam -- in detail.
"Vietnam analogies can be tiresome," they write. "To critics, especially those on the left, all American interventions after Vietnam have been potential "quagmires." But sometimes clichés come true, and, especially lately, it seems that the war in Afghanistan is shaping up in all-too-familiar ways."
And yet, the authors are also careful to draw the disconnects between Vietnam and the now-poppy state of Afghanistan (though not nearly as careful as the magazine's editors, who don't even place a question mark after their headline).
"Even 60,000 troops is a long way from the half million American soldiers sent to Vietnam at the war's peak; the 642 U.S. deaths sustained so far pale in comparison to the 58,000 lost in Vietnam," Thomas and Barry add.
"Still, consider this: that's a higher death toll than after the first nine years of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. And what is troubling is that no one in the outgoing or incoming administration has been able to say what the additional troops are for, except as a kind of tourniquet to staunch the bleeding while someone comes up with a strategy that has a chance of working. The most uncomfortable question is whether any strategy will work at this point."
If anything is for certain, it's that Obama's media honeymoon is over.
Coming to newsstands Monday: 1965.
That's the year then-President Lyndon Johnson officially expanded America's involvement in Vietnam, expanding the number of US troops from 3,500 in March to 200,000 by December.
Newsweek invites the comparison with a bold cover, titled, "OBAMA'S VIETNAM," going to press less than two weeks after Obama takes office. Johnson, like Obama, inherited a troubled US conflict from his predecessor.
"A wave of reports, official and unofficial, from American and foreign (including Afghan) diplomats and soldiers, present and former, all seem to agree: the situation in Afghanistan is bad and getting worse," the magazine's Evan Thomas and John Barry write, in a news story that accompanies an opinion piece by Fahreed Zakaria. "Some four decades ago, American presidents became accustomed to hearing gloomy reports like that from Vietnam, although the public pronouncements were usually rosier. John F. Kennedy worried to his dying day about getting stuck in a land war in Asia; LBJ was haunted by nightmares about "Uncle Ho." In the military, now as then, there are a growing number of doubters. But the default switch for senior officers in the U.S. military is "can do, sir!" and that seems to be the light blinking now. In Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, when in doubt, escalate. There are now about 30,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration appear to agree that the number should be twice that a year or so from now."
Johnson escalated the Vietnam conflict after a purported attack on the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964. A declassified NSA intercept, however, revealed that there was no attack at all. In the following year, America's involvement soared.
Newsweek's authors disparage liberals, to whom "all American interventions after Vietnam have been potential 'quagmires,'" and after saying "Vietnam analogies can be tiresome," go on to compare Afghanistan to Vietnam -- in detail.
"Vietnam analogies can be tiresome," they write. "To critics, especially those on the left, all American interventions after Vietnam have been potential "quagmires." But sometimes clichés come true, and, especially lately, it seems that the war in Afghanistan is shaping up in all-too-familiar ways."
And yet, the authors are also careful to draw the disconnects between Vietnam and the now-poppy state of Afghanistan (though not nearly as careful as the magazine's editors, who don't even place a question mark after their headline).
"Even 60,000 troops is a long way from the half million American soldiers sent to Vietnam at the war's peak; the 642 U.S. deaths sustained so far pale in comparison to the 58,000 lost in Vietnam," Thomas and Barry add.
"Still, consider this: that's a higher death toll than after the first nine years of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. And what is troubling is that no one in the outgoing or incoming administration has been able to say what the additional troops are for, except as a kind of tourniquet to staunch the bleeding while someone comes up with a strategy that has a chance of working. The most uncomfortable question is whether any strategy will work at this point."
If anything is for certain, it's that Obama's media honeymoon is over.
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