U.S. Military: Military Mafia in Iraq

Apparently the U.S. Military is not influencing the Iraq Military, it's the other way around. There are muted reports of American Military Officers stealing large sums of cash appropriated to the Iraqi people.There are reports of murder, bribery, shakedowns and general corruption with in and out of the U.S. military in Iraq. To top it off, our government isn't influencing the Iraqi nation to become more Democratic: the Iraqi's are influencing the U.S. to become more "fundamentalist".

       

Amy Goodman was interviewing Seymour Hersh on how the Bush Administration tried to fix the elections in Iraq and Hersh mumbled something about the American Military being corrupted in Iraq. He began to say he has heard so many stories about colonels (in the U.S. military) being corrupted by large sums of cash. They he cut himself off. Here's the transcript:

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AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, there was a report in the Financial Times right before the election in Iraq -- it was around January 10 -- that said the electoral group headed by Iyad Allawi, the interim Iraqi Prime Minister, handed out cash to journalists to insure coverage of the press conferences. Your response to that?

SEYMOUR HERSH: I just don't know that but, you know, when you talk about cash in Iraq, you don't just talk about cash. You talk about pallet loads of cash. There's an awful lot of money.

If anybody wanted to read about this -- the London Review of Books recently did an amazing article -- they took the six last State Department and U.N. reports on the missing cash in Iraq. Twenty billion dollars, much of it Iraqi oil money, has just disappeared, and there's no accounting for it. I shouldn't say all of it has disappeared, but the accounting is very lax. The corruption of Iraq and the corruption of our military by the dollars around, the invidious and systematic corruption of our military is just beyond belief. And we will pay a price for that in the end, too. You just cannot have that much money around. There were all kinds of colonels -- look, and it just doesn't matter. I'm getting ahead of myself, because I -- I don't want too talk about things I can't prove, but I can tell you in the London Review of Books in the last issue, the most recent issue, was a very, very serious essay about the extent of financial corruption and how much money simply disappeared from view, and we're not talking about hundreds of millions, we're talking about billions.)

...Of course this is a very natural occurrence. The Bush Administration is incompetent. The Military is therefore ordered to act outside it's own competence as it follows Bush's orders to destroy- and then rebuild- Iraq in an illegal, pointless, self destructive and indulgent war. It is no secret that millions and billions of dollars in cash have been used by the U.S. to pay- to and to pay off- Iraqi and American Contractors.

There is this famous picture showing how contractors are paid: Contractors Payment

It appears and entire company of 130 soldiers of the California National Guard may have been using old style mafia tactics to extort money from Iraqi shop owners. They offered "protection" from "terrorists" to shop owners if the shop owners paid them. This is just like mobsters walking into a business and saying. "nice place you got here, we'd hate so see anythiing happen ot it. If you pay us, will protect you." Translation: " We won't blow up your shop and then blame it on the terrorists if you pay us off! " So the army is extorting money from innocent Iraqi's in addition to all the other things they have been accussed of. Here we have an entire company put on restrictive duty. Other companies appear to be involved too, so it is endemic, not an isolated case. Lt. Col. Patrick Frey, has been suspended while the investigation is conducted, he is the battlion commander.Shakedown

The result of this corrupt war so far is an alliance with the Shiites of Iraq with the Shiites of Iran and the hoped for replacement of the U.S. support of the Jaafari government by the on coming military and financial support of the Iranians. Bush is nurturing fundamentalism here and abroad. He appears to be working for Bin Laden, for terrorism and not against it. Could this be? Could it be that Bush is simply a very disturbed, self destructive, perverse man surrounded by other like-minded people who know not their own motivations? Well.. That's ridiculous! Like Seymour Hersh, I think I must be getting ahead of myself. Let's get back to the corruption.

This from the London Review of Books

London Review of Books

"Staff at the CPA head office in Baghdad usually worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, often on three-month postings. They didn't trust the computer network so many of them put their records on USB sticks and in private computer files that couldn't be opened by their replacements. At one point there was only one officer at the CPA account manager's office clearing all the paying agents throughout Iraq. Paying agents in the field often couldn't get - let alone be bothered with - the paperwork, which was frustrating for the honest ones and a boon to their crooked colleagues. So where did the money go? You can't see it in Hillah. The schools, hospitals, water supply and electricity, all of which were supposed to benefit from this money, are in ruins. The inescapable conclusion is that many of the American paying agents grabbed large bundles of cash for themselves and made sweet deals with their Iraqi contacts. "

....Isn't using pallet loads of cash to pay people for work done, kind of a questionable idea? This money has to be delivered to Iraq by someone: Military personnel. Then it is kept somewhere by someone: more military personnel. Colonels, Generals, high-ranking military and perhaps civilian personnel have easy access to this cash that is lying around on pallets. If it's so easy to get at, and, the record keeping is known to be sometimes non--existent, what's to stop military personnel who are so inclined from making arrangements to have the money shipped back to the U.S. ? Is this happening? Why wouldn't it be? The U.S. military is not only being corrupted by the cash floating around Iraq, they are being corrupted by the situation they are in. They are an illegal occupying force sent to a sovereign nation on false pretenses. They are there immorally. They are not liked and not wanted by anybody. Not even the current Iraqi government wants them there.

The current Jaafari government no longer is feeling so strongly that U.S. support is required for their protection. Jaafari and Talabani feel they can get that from Iran, very soon. And they feel the withdrawal of the U.S. army will weaken the motives for the insurgency more than any continued U.S. "presence". Additionally Iraq's government wants to use the militias against remaining insurgents. But they are afraid to tell the Americans to leave. The Americans might kill them for asking. Dale Stoffel a contractor in Iraq (and not necessarily an honest one) did not like the shakedown he was getting from his Iraqi counterpart a Mr. Zayna, in a deal to rebuild Iraq. "Rebuilding " consisted in this case of 283 million dollars so Iraq could have a new. ...Tank brigade for the Iraqi Army. What a tank brigade can do against insurgents is another question.

Stoffel it turns out worked for Wye Oak Technologies a company whose website describes it's work as bascially a software company. The Website just doesn't look right. Perhaps it is a Brewster-Jennings type company. The kind that Valerie Plame worked for. It turns out that Mr. Stoeffel has a record as an arms dealer. Perhaps he is working as an operative in Iraq, keeping an eye on the Iraqis and our own military for the CIA in regard to weapons of mass destruction. In any case, he sent an E-mail to General Petraeus: Stoffel complained to General Petraeus:

""If we proceed down the road we are currently on, there will be serious legal issues that will land us all in jail," Stoffel wrote in an e-mail to a senior assistant to U.S. Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who was overseeing the task force in charge of the arms deal, according to the story."

....I assume that Stoffel is saying here that the U.S. Military, specifically General Petraeus and his assistant, Colonel David Styles were engaging in illegal activity and it had to stop or they might all go to jail.

The London Book Review article continues:

"Stoffel complained about the situation in letters written to Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn Hills) and to a senior Pentagon official. Stoffel also e-mailed U.S. Army Col. David Styles, who is Petraeus' assistant on the project. "

Stoffel was murdered 8 days after sending the E-mail to General Petraeus.

Immediately after his killing a never heard of before "terrorist group" claimed credit for the killing on another odd looking website. Was this a phony website? A phony terrorist group? Who would have wanted him killed: Mr. Zayna? Col. David Styles or General Petraeus? Seymour Hersh's comment about corruption rings loudly. Mr. Stoeffel is now dead and General Petraeus is doing business with Mr. Zayna. What does that say?

It says at least this much...in spite of the fact that Stoeffel complained about the corruption of Mr. Zayna, and was subsequently killed (and as a result of the suspicious circumstances the FBI is investigating), General Petraeus and Colonel Styles went ahead with and did business with Mr. Zayna. Why would they do that under the circumstances? What would Mr. Zayna do if he was not allowed to continue to do business with the General and his colonel? Did he know something that perhaps the General and the Colonel didn't want made public about their dealings with him? Was that something their actions "along the path" that Stoffel alluded to that could wind them up in jail?

The London Book of Review article continues:

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"Since the killing, U.S. military officials have continued working with Zayna. He is doing construction work on a U.S.-controlled military base outside Baghdad related to the project, said officials with the U.S.-led coalition.

"Stoffel's firm tried unsuccessfully to keep the contract. Wye Oak Technology sent a letter to U.S. and Iraqi officials on Jan. 25 saying it was prepared to resume work so long as "transparency and accountability" were established."

....Summing up the overall attitude of the U.S. Military in Iraq is this from one of our colonels in Iraq just after the war began in 2003, as quoted in the New York Times:

"With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them." That colonel is our representative in Iraq. He is the ambassador of our values. He speaks for you and me. If he is the ugly American, so are we. ". . .

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Judith Miller a Government Operative?

It seems apparent to me that Judith Miller worked for the Vice Presidents Office of Special Plans and was in fact a formal or informal government agent.

Wolfowitz and Feith set up the OSP. They urged against CIA advice not to use the claim that Sadaam had sought Uranium from Niger in Bush SOTU speech. The idea of using what was probably an earlier CIA black ops report on Iraq trying to get yellow cake uranium from Niger began in this office. This is another case of one branch of the government believing a false story planted by the CIA (at an earlier time for reasons having nothing to do with an invasion of Iraq) and acting on it as reality. Some of these schemes have been outlined in the documentary "The Power of Nightmares". I had the opportunity to see the entire 3 part series on video tape.

http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares

The Office of Special Plans provided much of Powell's speech to the U.N., which was at odds with the CIA. This is the backdrop to the CIA purge and the resignations of Tenet and Pavitt.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4157.htm

The main source of information for the Office of Special Plans on Sadaams WMD was Ahmed Chalabi. His relationship with Judith Miller was very special.

This from
http://www.williambowles.info/media/massing_media.html

"Last May, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post wrote of an e-mail exchange between Miller and John Burns, then the Times bureau chief in Baghdad, in which Burns rebuked Miller for writing an article about Chalabi without informing him. Miller replied that she had been covering Chalabi for about ten years and had "done most of the stories about him for our paper." Chalabi, she added, "has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper."

Ahmed Chalabi always thinking into the future arranged interviews for Miller with people like Khidir Hamza who was seen frequently on US television glibly assuring all Americans that Sadaam was months away from having Nuclear Weapons and possessed WMD. These were set-ups by Chalabi. Perhaps he paid these people off to tell Miller what Miller and the OSP were only to glad to here.

Chalabi's plan was for a US invasion, overthrow of the Sadaam Regime and then removal of U.S. forces as quickly as possible to be replaced by Iranian financial and military support. He all along was working for and with Iranian, not U.S. interests. We now see this more clearly with the current governments close ties to Iran, which includes a recently signed agreement authorizing Iranian training for Iraqi troops. We are also to understand that the Bush Administration no longer favors Chalabi. The Administration is fearful of him as he can easily expose them publicly as to how he duped them and then some. He is clearly head and shoulders on another level of political intelligence, worldliness and savvy than the provincial (Jackson Hole Wyoming) Dick Cheney. Using the United States to invade Iraq was like taking candy from a baby. It is certainly what the baby wanted anyway.

Judith Miller is in jail. I believe she is in jail because she is the first member of the press to learn that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. She learned this from Cheney's office, apparently from Libby. I believe that she informed other members of the press and was part of an OSP operation to discredit Joe and Valerie Wilson. This is the "plot against Wilson" that one appellate judge referred to. Judith Miller is not merely a reporter, she is an operative herself who worked for the OSP, which stood in opposition to the CIA. Miller has never written about Valerie Plame, her job was to spread the information, not to write about it. The OSP with Fieth, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz sought to replace the CIA as the fulcrum of influence in espionage activity. Miller like many other journalists, we are finding out, works for the government first and in her case, the New York Times second.

Judith Miller cannot testify because she would incriminate herself on a number of levels. She may be part of the plot to discredit Wilson, not just reporter receiving information. She might have to reveal that she in fact works for the government planting stories as other reporters have been know to do. She may be on a government payroll or perhaps her work is fee based or perhaps she receives nothing and she works out of a sense of what I would call misguided patriotism. That's another word for being stupid.

Now what gets complicated is Patrick Fitzgerald's position toward her from a political point of view and from a procedural one I don't think anyone wants to hear about that at this time.

Plame Case Going Nowhere. Is it Fitzgerald or FIXgerald

Tim Russert asked Matt Cooper today on NBC:" Is this going anywhere?"
Matt Cooper replied that he "didn't know", sometime it seems like it could be big and sometimes it just looks like" politics as usual."

Matt Cooper, who has testified before the Grand Jury, says he's not sure if this investigation will lead to anything. So before you start tuning in your TV sets to watch Karl Rove going to jail you must remember that all of this hinges on the attitudes and ambition of Patrick Fitzgerald who was appointed by James Comey who was appointed by George Bush to be the Deputy to John Ashcroft and it is John Ashcroft who asked Comey to pick a prosecutor (Fitzgerald describes Comey as his best friend). Would Fitzgerald screw his best friend Comey by making him look bad to Bush who gave him his job?

Ken Mehlman said today on Meet the Press that he has "tremendous faith in Patrick Fitzgerald". He said this REPEATEDLY. He did not need to say this, he did not need to point this out repeatedly in order to emphasize that everyone should wait until the Grand Jury has concluded. I think he was saying that Patrick Fitzgerald is one of our guys. He is correct. Fitzgerald is a Republican who was appointed by the Administration to investigate itself.

Why is Judith Miller in Jail? Judith Miller has been rumored to be an operative of the government while working as a news reporter. I think this makes sense. Her articles of WMD in Iraq were lies propagated by the government through the news media. Apparently she spoke to the Vice Presidents office, learned about Plames identity and then told fellow reporters who told Rove and then Rove told other reporters. This resulted in a kind of perfect circle that has no beginning or end.

Judith Miller is the only connection to the original source in the V.P. Office. That is why she will not testify. She has to go to jail. Since she is probably the original news source (and this surely would have come out in Grand Jury testimony), Fitzgerald would have no other option but to demand she go to jail, anything else would expose his probable prejudicing of this case. She will remain in jail for 5 months and sign book deals and become fabulously wealthy. It is very unpleasant in jail however and she is and will suffer greatly. I suspect she imagines herself to be a true patriotic operative for the government.

So, is this case going anywhere?

FIXGERALD: Fixing the Plame Investigation

Remember that Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed indirectly through John Ashcroft. Remember that Fitzgerald is a Republican. He is not an independent prosecutor at all. There is nothing independent about his investigation. Fitzgerald was appointed by partisan political officials and in all likelihood he is conductiing a partisan political investigation.

REMEMBER THAT NOVAK HAS IMPLIED THAT HE HAS IMMUNITY FROM PROSECUTION.

Novak has not been pressured like Miller and Cooper. Why is that? There certainly must be some agreement between Fitzgerald and Novak. Novak is the person who first published information outing Plame. Novak is not being pressured by Fitzgerald. He is a conservative columnist with a long history of ties to Republican administrations.

If he has in fact been granted immunity, does this mean that Novak can lie about his conversation with Rove? That Novak takes the heat but isn't liable and this gets Rove off the hook? That Novak says he told Rove about Plame being CIA operative and Rove merely mentioned it in passing to another reporter and therefore did not knowingly out a CIA agent, since a civilian member of the public press told him of her status. Is this then a set up by Fitzgerald to get Rove and the Whitehouse off the hook? Is it something that Fitzgerald is engineering to diminish the fall out from this scandal?

Joe Wilson has said he thinks Fitzgerald is doing a good job. But he could not be expected to say anything else.

If Fitzgerald is acting as a partisan politician, it is within his power to arrange the presentation of the facts in the case without himself breaking the law. He has a great deal of power in his presentation to build, formulate and arrange the sequence and flavor of events so that they yield a desired result.
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So far the investigation has been attacking reporters from the so-called liberal Time magazine and the New York Times. So far it has been the press that has been put on trial and punished as a result of the investigation, not Karl Rove. There has been much speculation about Karl Rove but the only results so far have been the real effects of censoring the press. Political news stories by investigative reporters involving corruption have been held back as a result of this investigation as reporters no longer feel they can protect their sources.

These actions, so far, are to the administrations liking. The administration and Bush do not like leaks, unless they are doing the leaking

If you want to know what's going on in this investigation you must understand where Patrick Fitzgerald's sympathies lie. There is precious little about him on the internet except for his prosecution of Islamic extremists and his prosecution of George Ryan a Republican Governor of Illinois who is clearly being railroaded by Fitzgerald. Ryan was perhaps, one of the most liberal governors in America. Ryan was more liberal than any Democratic governor I can think of. He was not liked by the administration. He was the first Governor to stop the use of the death penalty in the nation and commuted numerous sentences of death row inmates based on DNA evidence presented in their defense. There was nothing unusual about his activities as a politician though he is presented as a villian by the Chicago Press. His actions as governor were very humane and reasonalbe and he got along very well with Democrats in the state..

The question is: Just how well is Patrick Fitzgerald getting along with Republicans these days?

Charges to Be Dropped That Saddam Gassed His Own People

Soon to be made pulbic is the fact that the Iraqi prosecutor in the forthcoming
trial of Sadaam Hussein is dropping charges Sadaam gassed his own people

http://www.lewrockwell.com/wanniski/wanniski44.html

This follows of course the fact that Saddaam did not have chemical weapons, nuclear weapons,
mobile gas labs, drones, anything to do with 911 or Al Queda and he did not bury 400,000
people in mass graves.

http://sf.indymedia.
org/news/2003/04/1602606.php

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/
0%2C12956%2C1263901%2C00.html

http://www.13wham.com/news/national/story.aspx?content
_id=422B960A-26BA-4891-9E60-21C8818788D4

Iran is Central to the Support of the Iraqi Government-Not the United States

It may come as a great surprise to hear that the Iraqi government headed by Jaafari and Talabani do not like their own army or the United States Army. The two most hated entities in Iraq are the United States Army and the Iraqi Army. Hated by Shiite and Sunni alike. The American soldiers by and large detest the Iraqi Army. The Iraqi people no matter what their persuasion dislike the army. Who does like the Iraqi Army? No one. Not even the Bush administration. For all their public ranting about progress, the Bush administration recognizes that the Iraq Army is a failure. But they will not say so in public. They hint at their dissapointment.

This from Baghdad Burning website referring to Bush's presidential address.

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

"As to Iraqi forces...there was too much to quote on the new Iraqi forces. He failed to mention that many of their members were formerly part of militias, and that many of them contributed to the looting and burning that swept over Iraq after the war and continued for weeks.

"The new Iraqi security forces are proving their courage every day."

Indeed they are. The forte of the new Iraqi National Guard? Raids and mass detentions. They have been learning well from the coalition. They sweep into areas, kick down doors, steal money, valuables, harass the females in the household and detain the men. The Iraqi security forces are so effective that a few weeks ago, they managed to kill a high-ranking police major in Falluja when he ran a red light, shooting him in the head as his car drove away."

The Iraqi Army does not work and never will work.

The Iraqi government prefers the Badr Brigade. These are Iraqi Shiite but Iranian trained troops who were trained to overthrow Sadaam and are now being used as death squads in the South. The Iraqi government also likes the 100,000 man Peshmerga Army of Kurds in the North.

Jaafari and Talabani are allied to Iran - not the United States. This is the conundrum the U.S. is finding itself in. They have arranged for an election that has produced a government that appears to be getting stronger in their alliance with Iran. Iran is the biggest supporter of the Iraqi government, not the United States.

I have long said that soon we will discover the United States will switch sides and support the insurgents who are the United States natural allies compared to the Fundamentalist in Iran who are actively involved, encouraging and supporting the Jaafari/Talabani Government that is getting stronger. But it is not getting stronger form the U.S. it is getting stronger with aid and direction from Iran. Chalabi is playing a big role in all of this.

Iranians who once lived in Iraq and were kicked out by Sadaam are being allowed to return and claim their homes!

This from Juan Coles website a quote from a Iraqi homeowner:

http://www.juancole.com/

"When Iranians were kicked out of Iraq some years ago, their homes were confiscated and sold to Iraqis. Now the new government has granted but 60 days to those now occupying those homes to vacate, so that they can be returned to the original Iranian owners.

"This is causing a lot of consternation in Baghdad for at least two reasons:

there is a property claims order and commission that could be utilized to mediate and find an equitable solution to this problem, which all admit is difficult; and

this again exemplifies the close position of the government to Iran. As the weeks go on, we are becoming more and more convinced that Iran and the Badr Brigade are running the country. Your blog has been particularly helpful at making that trend known"

This affirms that in the opinion of the man quoted, the Badr Brigade is taking over from the Iraqi Army in some areas and the Iranians not only have influence but appear to be calling the shots for the government. The Iraqi government will continue to act on their own in concert with Iran and ignoring the United States government which is incompetent and unable to communicate anything in Iraq except to it's own soldiers. The language barrier alone has defeated the U.S. military in Iraq.
The Iraq invasion has been based on many lies, and is a total, complete, final military, political, ideological and moral defeat for the United States.

The United States cannot hope to stay because it is incompetent.

The U.S. is unable to communicate in the language of Iraq. Simple items like fixing a road, water, oil pipelines become fiascos due to language. The Iraqi government as personified by Ahmed Chalabi simply talks circles around the U.S. like a Cantinflas character leaving them confused, frustrated and defeated.

For all the condescension of the United States has exhibited in Iraq, it seems clear that the "strongest military and economic power" in the world, is just " livin' in a fools paradise" in Iraq.