Turkey set to attack Kurds in Iraq

Ximena Ortiz
Asia Times
Thursday, October 11, 2007

Turkey has defied the wishes of the United States by giving its military a green light to cross the border into Iraq, following a number of ambushes apparently waged by a Kurdish rebel group with bases in northern Iraq. And on Wednesday, Turkish warplanes and helicopter gunships attacked suspected rebel positions close to the Iraq border.

Turkey's decision could come to imperil the already precarious stability and prosperity of Iraq’s Kurdish region. And while the stakes for the United States, Iraq and Turkey in Iraqi Kurdistan are substantial in broad economic and geopolitical terms, one of the major factors is the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), a rag-tag group numbering in the low-thousands and holed up in rugged, mountainous terrain.

In the face of ambushes on Sunday linked to the PKK, in which more than 10 Turkish soldiers were killed, and the subsequent escalation of tension with Turkey, the Iraqi Kurdish leadership appears to be facing the situation with a certain aplomb - at least in its rhetoric. In a telephone interview, the foreign minister for the Kurdish area of Iraq, Falah M Bakir, said, "Of course we understand Turkey’s concerns, but we don’t believe that crossing the border will effectively address them."

Bakir, who is in New York for a meeting of the UN General Assembly, said that his regional government and Turkish officials are currently reduced to communicating with each other through the media. In the wake of the recent elections in Turkey, Bakir said he and his colleagues had held out the hope that a constructive dialogue with Turkey would begin. "Unfortunately there is no dialogue right now. But we are ready for talks."

When asked about Turkey’s concerns that Iraqi-Kurdish officials are not doing enough to counter the PKK, Bakir said that the group is trying to further its goals through peaceful, political aims. But when asked, he did not deny that the group could be responsible for the recent attacks in Turkey. He added that the PKK is spread out in a mountainous terrain on the border, does not have formal bases that can be attacked, and is not part of the official political structure of his regional government.

The long-suffering and persecuted Kurds have agitated both militarily and politically for greater autonomy or independence in the countries where they have a presence: Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran. The PKK is to some the torchbearer of the Kurdish struggle. But the group has seen its capabilities severely diminished since its apogee in the 1990s.

In 1999, the group called a unilateral ceasefire that lasted almost until the end of 2005. Since then, the group has launched some seemingly almost half-hearted attacks in Turkey, but those have paled in comparison with the success of its recent ambushes.

According to some experts, Bakir's low key statements may also reflect the generally restrained response of the Turkish government, until now. Carole O'Leary, a Scholar in Residence at the American University Center for Global Peace, said the current Turkish government has been responsible in its reactions to PKK provocations. "While generally wary of Islamic governance, I have been very supportive of the actions of the ruling AK Party in Turkey," she said.

She added that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul must show the Turkish people that they can and will uphold law and order in Turkey. "A more nationalist, far right government," she said, "clearly by now would have intervened militarily in a major way" in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
On Tuesday, Erdogan’s office said in a statement: "The order has been given for every kind of measure to be taken [to counter the PKK], including if needed a cross-border operation" into northern Iraq. Turkey has already been shelling parts of northern Iraq, said Professor Henri Barkey, chair of the international relations department at Lehigh University. Since it would be too difficult for the Turkish military to move large artillery into the areas where PKK fighters camp out, the Turks probably have in mind targeted air-strikes or limited helicopter commando raids, said Barkey. Such a scenario would not worry the Kurdish regional government excessively.

Still, an escalation of Turkish military activity within the Kurdish region of Iraq could be risky. If the Turkish military hits civilians, Iraq would respond to Turkey, potentially causing far-reaching problems in bilateral relations. And then there is the question of civil-military relations in Turkey. The current government, with its ostensible Islamic leanings, already has strained relations with the military, which is seen by some as the caretaker of secularism in Turkey.

In this regard, noted Barkey, the Kurdish issue could be the Achilles' heel for the Turkish government, and could be used by the military to agitate the nationalist constituency in Turkey if the government isn’t seen responding forcefully. An intentional provocation of Iraqi Kurds by the Turkish military to undermine the Turkish government is also within the realm of possibility.

For the United States, balancing the interests of the generally pro-American Iraqi Kurds, whose region is the only showcase of stability in Iraq, and NATO ally Turkey, will continue to demand diplomatic dexterity, noted Barkey. Such dexterity is something which is in short supply in the lower levels of the US State Department, at the assistant-secretary level, he added.

And there is another fresh wrinkle. Turkey warned on Thursday that relations with the US would be harmed by a US House committee’s approval on Wednesday of a non-binding resolution calling the 1915 massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks "genocide". The 27-21 decision by the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee comes before a vote in the full House in coming weeks, and occurred in spite of a warning from President George W Bush that cooperation with Turkey and the fate of US troops in Iraq could be at stake.

”Our government regrets and condemns this decision," a statement from the Turkish government said of the House vote. "It is unacceptable that the Turkish nation has been accused of something that never happened in history."

Interestingly though, political questions aside, the Iraqi Kurds and the Turkish government have commercial interests that could bind them. Exploration in the Kurdish region of Iraq indicates that significant amounts of oil could come online and Turkey would be the natural corridor for new pipelines. Given some progress between Turkish and Iraqi-Kurdish relations, new pipelines could bind these two US allies, and thereby help them in overcoming the age-old blood feud long besetting the sides.

But while Saddam-era pipelines between Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey already exist, new construction would require a triumph over long-held sectarian and nationalist sentiments.

Gates Says Military Faces More Unconventional Wars

DAVID S. CLOUD
The New York Times
October 11, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Wednesday that the Army needed to improve its ability to train foreign militaries and to prepare for other unconventional conflicts that it was likely to face in coming decades.

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates spoke in Washington on Wednesday to a gathering of current and retired soldiers.

Speaking to a gathering of current and retired soldiers, Mr. Gates sketched out a vision for making the Army better at conducting wars like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, which he said would “remain the mainstay of the contemporary battlefield for some time.”

His message was in many ways a blunt challenge to the Army not to treat the current conflicts as anomalies and to retreat into the more familiar task of preparing for conventional combat, as it did after the Vietnam War. Future conflicts, he said, “will be fundamentally political in nature and require the application of all elements of national power.”

“Success will be less a matter of imposing one’s will and more a function of shaping behavior of friends, adversaries, and most importantly, the people in between,” he said.

He noted that a vital capability that the military needed was “standing up and mentoring indigenous armies and police” — a task the Army has struggled to carry out in recent years in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But he offered no specific proposals for improving the Army’s abilities in this area.

He was speaking to the annual convention of the Association of the United States Army here.

Mr. Gates alluded to the desire among some officers to spend billions of dollars on re-equipping the Army and to return to training for what the service called “high intensity” conflict, a euphemism for conventional combat.

While supporting the idea of large outlays in coming years for new equipment and to expand the size of the Army, Mr. Gates said that the Army had to regain its edge in fighting conventional wars while retaining what it had learned about fighting unconventional wars.

The adaptations the Army has already made in Iraq and Afghanistan have been “impressive,” he said.

But in the future, he said: “Army soldiers can expect to be tasked with reviving public services, rebuilding infrastructure and promoting good governance. All these so-called nontraditional capabilities have moved into the mainstream of military thinking, planning and strategy, where they must stay.”

Also on Wednesday, Maj. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, commander of the Army Recruiting Command, said at a Pentagon news conference that in fiscal year 2007, 18 percent of the military’s recruits had prior criminal records and needed a waiver to join, up from 15 percent the previous year. He said 87 percent of those were for misdemeanors like joy riding or violating curfew.

David Chu, the Defense Department’s under secretary for personnel, defended the waiver policy, saying it took into consideration the whole person and his or her future abilities, not just mistakes the person might have made. Mr. Chu announced that the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines had all met their recruiting targets last year.

Knights get an apology from the Vatican 700 years too late

Oliver Burkeman
Thursday October 11, 2007
The Guardian

A couple of years ago, one wintry morning in Hertford, I met a mysterious man who claimed to belong to the Knights Templar. As readers of The Da Vinci Code will know, this secretive Catholic organisation had been officially disbanded in 1307 by Pope Clement V, who had accused them of being heretics and devil-worshippers; their leader, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake. This Saturday, October 13, marks the 700th anniversary of the day their persecution began: Friday October 13, 1307, which may be the origin of the idea that Friday 13 is unlucky.

But the Templars didn't go away. Instead, they went underground - taking with them, it was whispered, the Holy Grail itself, the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper. Then, in late 2004, they resurfaced. A letter arrived at the Vatican, purportedly from the Templars' grand master, insisting on the knights' innocence, and demanding an apology. The Vatican said it would give the matter "serious consideration" - but for Templar-hunters, the exciting aspect was that the letter bore a Hertford address.

A reporter at the Hertfordshire Mercury tracked down a local Templar, who explained that treasures of "immense importance" were hidden in a secret network of tunnels beneath the city, extending from the council offices, via Threshers, to Monsoon and Accessorize. Which was how I came to visit. Was the most fabled relic of Christ hidden underneath two boutiques on Market Place in Hertford?

I never found out, despite the best efforts of Gemma, the manager. But the other part of the tale has a happy ending: later this month, the Vatican will publish a book based on the Chinon parchment, a rediscovered fragment of the trial proceedings against the Templars. According to Professor Barbara Frale - who found it in the Vatican's secret archive, where it had been misfiled - it absolves the Knights Templar.

Just after the 700th anniversary of the day their troubles began, the Templars will get their apology. "We pray that, at the end of seven centuries, the soul of Jacques de Molay may now rest in peace for ever," says Ben Acheson, who describes himself as a Templar. "The Temple now considers the matter closed."

Now all that remains is to find the Holy Grail. If you need me, I'll be underneath Accessorize.

Pres. Carter: US tortures prisoners, 'I know it'

David Edwards and Jason Rhyne
Raw Story
Wednesday October 10, 2007

Former president Jimmy Carter isn't just suspicious that the US is using torture to extract intelligence from detainees -- he's absolutely convinced.

Asked by CNN's Wolf Blitzer if, by Carter's definition of the word, the United States had used torture during the Bush administration, the Nobel Peace Prize winner was adamant:

"I don't think it, I know it," he said. "Certainly."

Pressed by Blitzer on whether that meant that President Bush was lying, Carter was equally clear.

"The president is self-defning what we have done and authorized in the torture of prisoners," said Carter."Yes."

Earlier in the interview, Carter said Bush's denial this week that the US did not in fact torture detainees was "not an accurate statement if you use the international norms of torture as has always been honored in the last 60 years, since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated."

"But you can make your own definition of human rights and say we don't violate them," he added, "and you can make your own defintion of torture and say we don't violate them."

Carter was equally outspoken in a Wednesday interview with the BBC, calling Vice President Dick Cheney a "disaster," according to Reuters.

"He's a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military," he said of Cheney, adding that the vice president "has been most forceful in the last 10 years or more in fulfilling some of his more ancient commitments that the United States has a right to inject its power through military means in other parts of the world."

"You know he's been a disaster for our country," Carter continued. "I think he's been overly persuasive on President George Bush and quite often he's prevailed."

The following video is from CNN's Situation Room, broadcast on October 10, 2007.

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Torture has been redefined by John Yoo and Gonzales. Go google search John Yoo torture memo. I know, I know.... Im taking poor John Yoo's comments about crushing a child's testicles out of context...

So tell me, in what context is it ok to crush children's testicles?

The "Hidden Day" Israel Deliberately Attacked American Ship, Killing 34

Ray McGovern
Consortium News
Wednesday October 10, 2007

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee brags that it is the most influential foreign policy lobbying organization on Capitol Hill, and it has demonstrated that time and again, and not only on Capitol Hill.

Nowhere is the lobby's power more clearly demonstrated than in its ability to suppress the awful truth that on June 8, 1967, during the Six Day War:

• Israel deliberately attacked the intelligence collection ship USS Liberty, in full awareness it was a U.S. Navy ship, and did its best to sink it and leave no survivors;
• The Israelis would have succeeded had they not broken off the attack upon learning, from an intercepted message, that the commander of the U.S. 6th Fleet had launched carrier fighters to the scene; and
• By that time, 34 of the Liberty's crew had been killed and over 170 wounded.

Scores of intelligence analysts and senior officials have known this for years. That virtually all of them have kept a 40-year frightened silence is testament to the widespread fear of touching this live wire.

Even more telling is the fact that the National Security Agency destroyed voice tapes seen by many intelligence analysts, showing beyond doubt that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing.

But the truth will come out -- eventually. All it took in this case is for a courageous journalist (of the endangered species kind) to listen to the surviving crew and do a little basic research, not shrinking from naming war crimes and not letting senior U.S. officials, from the president on down off the hook for suppressing -- even destroying -- unimpeachable evidence from intercepted Israeli communications.

The mainstream media have now published an exposé based largely on interviews with those most intimately involved.

A lengthy article by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter John Crewdson appeared in the Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun on Oct. 2 titled "New revelations in attack on American spy ship." (For the full story, click here.)

To the subtitle goes the prize for understatement of the year: "Veterans, documents suggest U.S., Israel didn't tell full story of deadly 1967 incident."

Better 40 years late than never, I suppose. Many of us have known of the incident and coverup for a very long time and have tried to expose and discuss it for the lessons it holds for today.

It has proved far easier, though, to get a very pedestrian dog-bites-nan article published than an article with the importance and explosiveness of this damning story.

A Marine stands up

On the evening of Sept. 26, 2006, I gave a talk on Iraq to an overflow crowd of 400 at National Avenue Church in Springfield, Mo.

A questioner asked what I thought of the study by John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard titled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy."

The study had originally been commissioned by the Atlantic Monthly. When the draft arrived, however, shouts of "leper!" were heard at the Atlantic. The magazine wasted no time in saying "thanks, but no thanks," and the leper study then wandered in search of a home, finding none among American publishers.

Eventually the London Review of Books published it in March 2006.

I had read that piece carefully and found it an unusual act of courage as well as scholarship. That's what I told the questioner, adding that I did have two problems with the study:

First, it seemed to me the authors erred in attributing virtually all the motivation for the U.S. attack on Iraq to the Israel Lobby and the so-called "neoconservatives" running our policy and armed forces. Was Israel an important factor? Indeed. But of equal importance, in my view, was the oil factor and what the Pentagon now calls the "enduring" military bases in Iraq, which the White House and Pentagon decided were needed for the United States to dominate that part of the Middle East.

Second, I was intrigued by the fact that Mearsheimer and Walt made no mention of what I believe to be, if not the most telling, then perhaps the most sensational proof of the power the lobby knows it can exert over our government and Congress. In sum, in June 1967, after deliberately using fighter bombers and torpedo boats to attack the USS Liberty for over two hours in an attempt to sink it and kill its crew, and then getting the U.S. government, the Navy and the Congress to cover up what happened, the Israeli government learned that it could -- literally -- get away with murder.

I found myself looking out at 400 blank stares. The USS Liberty? And so I asked how many in the audience had heard of the attack on the Liberty on June 8, 1967. Three hands went up; I called on the gentleman nearest me.

Ramrod straight he stood:

"Sir, Sgt. Bryce Lockwood, United States Marine Corps, retired. I am a member of the USS Liberty crew, Sir."

Catching my breath, I asked him if he would be willing to tell us what happened.

"Sir, I have not been able to do that. It is hard. But it has been almost 40 years, and I would like to try this evening, sir."

You could hear a pin drop for the next 15 minutes, as Lockwood gave us his personal account of what happened to him, his colleagues and his ship on the afternoon of June 8, 1967.

He was a linguist assigned to collect communications intelligence from the USS Liberty, which was among the ugliest -- and most easily identifiable -- ships in the fleet with antennae springing out in all directions.

Lockwood told of the events of that fateful day, beginning with the six-hour naval and air surveillance of the Liberty by the Israeli navy and air force on the morning of June 8.

After the air attacks, including thousand-pound bombs and napalm, three 60-ton torpedo boats lined up like a firing squad, pointing their torpedo tubes at the Liberty's starboard hull.

Lockwood had been ordered to throw the extremely sensitive cryptological equipment overboard and had just walked beyond the bulwark separating the NSA intelligence unit from the rest of the ship when, he recalled, he sensed a large black object, a tremendous explosion, and sheet of flame.

The torpedo had struck dead center in the NSA space.

The cold, oily water brought Lockwood back to consciousness. Around him were 25 dead colleagues, but he heard moaning.

Three were still alive; one of Lockwood's shipmates dragged one up the hatch. Lockwood was able to lift the two others, one by one, onto his shoulder and carry them up through the hatch.

This meant alternatively banging on the hatch for someone to open it and swimming back to fish his shipmate out of the water lest he float out to sea through the 39-foot hole made by the torpedo.

At that, Lockwood stopped speaking. It was enough. Hard, very hard -- even after almost 40 years.

What else we know

John Crewdson's meticulously documented article, together with the 57 pages that James Bamford devotes to the incident in Body of Secrets and recent confessions by those who played a role in the coverup, paint a picture that the surviving crew of the USS Liberty can only find infuriating.

The evidence, from intercepted communications as well as testimony, of Israeli deliberate intent is unimpeachable, even though the Israelis continue to portray it as just a terrible mistake.

Crewdson refers to U.S. Navy Capt. Ward Boston, who was the Navy lawyer appointed as senior counsel to Adm. Isaac C. Kidd, named by Adm. John S. McCain to "inquire into all the facts and circumstances." (Yes, the father of presidential hopeful, Sen. John McCain.)

The fact that they were given only one week to gather evidence and were forbidden to contact the Israelis screams out "coverup."

Capt. Boston, now 84, signed a formal declaration on Jan. 8, 2004, in which he described himself as "outraged at the efforts of the apologists for Israel in this country to claim that this attack was a case of 'mistaken identity.'" Boston continued:

"The evidence was clear. Both Adm. Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack ... was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew ... Not only did the Israelis attack the ship with napalm, gunfire and missiles, Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned three lifeboats that had been launched in an attempt by the crew to save the most seriously wounded -- a war crime ... I know from personal conversations I had with Adm. Kidd that President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of 'mistaken identity' despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary."

Why the Israelis decided to take the draconian measure to sink a ship of the U.S. Navy is a subject of speculation.

One view is that the Israelis did not want the United States to find out they were massing troops to seize the Golan Heights from Syria and wanted to deprive the United States of the opportunity to argue against such a move.

James Bamford, in Body of Secrets, adduces evidence, including reporting from an Israeli journalist eyewitness and an Israeli military historian, of wholesale killing of Egyptian prisoners of war at the coastal town of El Arish in the Sinai.

The Liberty was patrolling directly opposite El Arish in international waters but within easy range to pick up intelligence on what was going on there. And the Israelis were well aware.

As for the why, well, someone could at least approach the Israelis involved and ask, no?

The important thing here is not to confuse what is known (the deliberate nature of the Israeli attack) with the purpose behind it, which remains a matter of speculation.

Other indignities

Bowing to intense pressure from the Navy, the White House agreed to award the Liberty's skipper, Capt. William McGonagle, the Medal of Honor, but not at the White House and not by the president (as is the custom).

Rather, the secretary of the Navy gave the award at the Washington Navy Yard on the banks of the acrid Anacostia River.

A naval officer involved in the awards ceremony told one of the Liberty crew, "The government is pretty jumpy about Israel ... the State Department even asked the Israeli ambassador if his government had any objections to McGonagle getting the medal."

Adding insult to injury, those of the Liberty crew who survived well enough to call for an independent investigation have been hit with charges of, you guessed it, anti-Semitism.

Now that some of the truth has emerged more and more, others are showing more courage in speaking out. In a recent email, a former CIA analyst-colleague shared:

"The chief of the analysts studying the Arab/Israeli region at the time told me about the intercepted messages and said very flatly and firmly that the pilots reported seeing the American flag and repeated their requests for confirmation of the attack order. Whole platoons of Americans saw those intercepts. If NSA now says they do not exist, then someone ordered them destroyed."

Leaving the destruction of evidence without investigation is an open invitation to repetition in the future.

As for the larger picture, visiting Israel this past summer I was constantly told that Egypt forced Israel into war in June 1967. This does not square with the unguarded words of Menachem Begin in 1982, when he was Israel's prime minister. Rather he admitted publicly:

"In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that [Egyptian President] Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him."

Israel had, in fact, prepared well militarily and mounted provocations against its neighbors, in order to provoke a response that could be used to justify an expansion of its borders.

Israel's illegal 40-year control over and confiscation of land in the occupied territories and U.S. enabling support (particularly the one-sided support by the current U.S. administration) go a long way toward explaining why it is that 1.3 billion Muslims "hate us."

Head of Russian secret service accuses MI6 of plotting against Putin

HELEN WOMACK
UK Daily Mail
Wednesday October 10, 2007

MI6 is stirring up dissent in Russia to influence upcoming elections and stop President Putin holding on to power, the Kremlin's security chief claimed yesterday.

The head of Russia's Federal Security Service - the successor of the KGB - said British spies were intent on weakening Russia and breaking up the country.

British secret agents had been doing the same since the reign of Elizabeth I, claimed Nikolai Patrushev, a close ally of Mr Putin.

In an interview with the weekly Argumenty I Fakti, Patrushev alleged that MI6 agents were "not only gathering intelligence in all areas but also trying to influence the development of the domestic political situation in our country."

"Right at the moment foreign intelligence services are making considerable efforts to get information about the forthcoming elections to the State Duma (lower house of parliament) and presidency," he said.

Last week, Mr. Putin announced he would lead the dominant United Russia party, which would give him a strong chance of becoming Prime Minister next year when the constitution requires that he step down as President after two consecutive terms.

Analysts expect him to engineer the choice of a crony as new President and retain most of the power in Russia himself.

Foreign Office sources said this week that election observers are not being given normal access to Russia ahead of the parliamentary vote in December and the presidential election in March.

Britain's ambassador to Russia, Tony Brenton, suffered months of harassment from the pro-Kremlin youth organisation, Nashi, after attending an opposition conference in 2006.

The Foreign Office sources said British-Russia relations remained at a low and were not likely to improve in the near future because of Russia's refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, the businessman wanted in connection with the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London last November.

Perhaps speaking for internal consumption, Patrushev painted a paranoid picture of Russia beset on all sides by foreign spies, eager to dig up the country's secrets and destabilise it ahead of the elections.

British agents were the worst offenders, he said, although he offered no new evidence.

"Since the time of Elizabeth 1 the British principle has been 'the end justifies the means," he said.

"Money, corruption, blackmail, offering immunity from prosecution, these are their main methods of recruitment."

In Cold War language, Patrushev attacked not only MI6 but also spies from Poland, the Baltic States, Georgia, Turkey and Pakistan as stooges of the CIA.

Spies were poking their noses into everything from the state of Russia's armed forces to conditions in the Caucasus, Siberia and the Far East, he said.

"Regarding the collapse of the Soviet Union as their achievement, they are now nurturing plans to carve up Russia," he said.

But he reserved special scorn for London, now the base of Russian exiles such as Boris Berezovsky.

"Lately, to achieve their political goals, the British have been relying on individuals accused of crimes and hiding abroad from Russian justice," Patrushev said.

He reiterated accusations that Berezovksy and Litvinenko had tried to recruit Russian citizens to work for MI6.

He also dredged up old allegations, dating back to 2005, that British agents had placed fake rocks in Moscow parks to hide their transmitters.

And he claimed that the use of non-governmental organisations was "in the arsenal" of foreign intelligence services trying to provoke a revolution in Russia similar to the 2004 Orange Revolution in the Ukraine.

Marines Press to Remove Their Forces From Iraq

THOM SHANKER
NY Times
Thursday October 11, 2007

The Marine Corps is pressing to remove its forces from Iraq and to send marines instead to Afghanistan, to take over the leading role in combat there, according to senior military and Pentagon officials.

The idea by the Marine Corps commandant would effectively leave the Iraq war in the hands of the Army while giving the Marines a prominent new role in Afghanistan, under overall NATO command.

The suggestion was raised in a session last week convened by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and regional war-fighting commanders. While still under review, its supporters, including some in the Army, argue that a realignment could allow the Army and Marines each to operate more efficiently in sustaining troop levels for two wars that have put a strain on their forces.

As described by officials who had been briefed on the closed-door discussion, the idea represents the first tangible new thinking to emerge since the White House last month endorsed a plan to begin gradual troop withdrawals from Iraq, but also signals that American forces likely will be in Iraq for years to come.

At the moment, there are no major Marine units among the 26,000 or so American forces in Afghanistan. In Iraq there are about 25,000 marines among the 160,000 American troops there.

It is not clear exactly how many of the marines in Iraq would be moved over. But the plan would require a major reshuffling, and it would make marines the dominant American force in Afghanistan, in a war that has broader public support than the one in Iraq.

Mr. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have not spoken publicly about the Marine concept, and aides to both officials said no formal proposal had been presented by the Marines. But the idea has been the focus of intense discussions between senior Marine Corps officers and other officials within the Defense Department.

It is not clear whether the Army would support the idea. But some officials sympathetic to the Army said that such a realignment would help ease some pressure on the Army, by allowing it to shift forces from Afghanistan into Iraq, and by simplifying planning for future troop rotations.

The Marine proposal could also face resistance from the Air Force, whose current role in providing combat aircraft for Afghanistan could be squeezed if the overall mission was handed to the Marines. Unlike the Army, the Marines would bring a significant force of combat aircraft to that conflict.

Whether the Marine proposal takes hold, the most delicate counterterrorism missions in Afghanistan, including the hunt for forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, would remain the job of a military task force that draws on Army, Navy and Air Force Special Operations units.

Military officials say the Marine proposal is also an early indication of jockeying among the four armed services for a place in combat missions in years to come. “At the end of the day, this could be decided by parochialism, and making sure each service does not lose equity, as much as on how best to manage the risk of force levels for Iraq and Afghanistan,” said one Pentagon planner.

Tensions over how to divide future budgets have begun to resurface across the military because of apprehension that Congressional support for large increases in defense spending seen since the Sept. 11 attacks will diminish, leaving the services to compete for money.

Those traditional turf battles have subsided somewhat given the overwhelming demands of waging two simultaneous wars — and because Pentagon budgets reached new heights.

Last week, the Senate approved a $459 billion Pentagon spending bill, an increase of $43 billion, or more than 10 percent over the last budget. That bill did not include, as part of a separate bill, President Bush’s request for almost $190 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Senior officials briefed on the Marine Corps concept said the new idea went beyond simply drawing clearer lines about who was in charge of providing combat personnel, war-fighting equipment and supplies to the two war zones.

They said it would allow the Marines to carry out the Afghan mission in a way the Army cannot, by deploying as an integrated Marine Corps task force that included combat aircraft as well as infantry and armored vehicles, while the Army must rely on the Air Force.

The Marine Corps concept was raised last week during a Defense Senior Leadership Conference convened by Mr. Gates just hours after Admiral Mullen was sworn in as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

During that session, the idea of assigning the Afghan mission to the Marines was described by Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine Corps commandant. Details of the discussion were provided by military officers and Pentagon civilian officials briefed on the session and who requested anonymity to summarize portions of the private talks.

The Marine Corps has recently played the leading combat role in Anbar Province, the restive Sunni area west of Baghdad.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior Army officer in Iraq, and his No. 2 commander, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, also of the Army, have described Anbar Province as a significant success story, with local tribal leaders joining the fight against terrorists.

Both generals strongly hint that if the security situation in Anbar holds steady, then reductions of American forces can be expected in the province, which could free up Marine units to move elsewhere.

In recent years, the emphasis by the Pentagon has been on joint operations that blur the lines between the military services, but there is also considerable precedent for geographic divisions in their duties. For much of the Vietnam War, responsibility was divided region by region between the Army and the Marines. As described by military planners, the Marine proposal would allow Marine units moved to Afghanistan to take over the tasks now performed by an Army headquarters unit and two brigade combat teams operating in eastern Afghanistan.

That would ease the strain on the Army and allow it to focus on managing overall troop numbers for Iraq, as well as movements of forces inside the country as required by commanders to meet emerging threats.

The American military prides itself on the ability to go to war as a “joint force,” with all of the armed services intermixed on the battlefield — vastly different from past wars when more primitive communications required separate ground units to fight within narrowly defined lanes to make sure they did not cross into the fire of friendly forces.

The Marine Corps is designed to fight with other services — it is based overseas aboard Navy ships and is intertwined with the Army in Iraq. At the same time, the Marines also are designed to be an agile, “expeditionary” force on call for quick deployment, and thus can go to war with everything needed to carry out the mission — troops, armor, attack jets and supplies.

General Petraeus is due to report back to Congress by March on his troop requirements beyond the summer. His request for forces will be analyzed by the military’s Central Command, which oversees combat missions across the Middle East and Southwest Asia, and by the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. All troop deployment orders must be approved by Mr. Gates, with the separate armed services then assigned to supply specific numbers of troops and equipment.

Marines train to fight in what is called a Marine Air-Ground Task Force. That term refers to a Marine deployment that arrives in a combat zone complete with its own headquarters, infantry combat troops, armored and transport vehicles and attack jets for close-air support, as well as logistics and support personnel.

“This is not about trading one ground war for another,” said one Pentagon official briefed on the Marine concept. “It is about the nature of the fight in Afghanistan, and figuring out whether the Afghan mission lends itself more readily to the integrated MAGTF deployment than even Iraq.”

Pain Compliance. Coming Soon to an Antiwar Demo Near You?

Kurt Nimmo TruthNews October 11, 2007

Last September, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne indicated the military would use “nonlethal weapons” against “fellow citizens” before they use them in “a wartime situation.” In other words, the American people are considered little more than guinea pigs, especially dissenting Americans in need of “crowd control.”

Before zapping antiwar demonstrators with an ADS beam—that’s short for “Active Denial System”—the military or police may request they remove glasses, contact lenses, and take coins and keys out of their pockets. “Precautions used to test U.S. military’s microwave weapon ADS for crowd control have raised questions about its safety, says a report,” explains United Press International. “These precautions raise concerns about the ADS in real crowd-control situations, the New Scientist reported… The ADS fires a 95-gigahertz microwave beam, which is supposed to heat skin and to cause pain but no physical damage, the report said. Until now little information about its effects had been released.”

In fact, it took a Freedom of Information Act request filed by a group that campaigns against the use of biological and non-lethal weapons to discover how dangerous the ADS weapon is. It was learned that military “experimenters” conducting tests at the Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque “banned glasses and contact lenses to prevent eye damage to the subjects and in the second and third tests removed any metallic objects such as coins and keys to stop hot spots being created on the skin.”

“How do you ensure that the dose doesn’t cross the threshold for permanent damage?” asked Neil Davison, co-ordinator of the non-lethal weapons research project at the University of Bradford in the UK. “What happens if someone in a crowd is unable, for whatever reason, to move away from the beam? Does the weapon cut out to prevent overexposure?” Or will they get cooked like a Thanksgiving turkey? Considering the track record of the military—tasked, after all, with killing people and wrecking things—we can assume the latter.

During the experiments at Kirtland, reports the New Scientist, “people playing rioters put up their hands when hit and were given a 15-second cooling-down period before being targeted again. One person suffered a burn in a previous test when the beam was accidentally used on the wrong power setting.”

Oops. Don’t you hate it when that happens? Mistake or no, imagine the results if this “nonlethal” weapon is distributed to police departments, staffed with garden variety sadists of the sort now legendary for tasering students for not showing ID or asking the wrong question to globalists.

“Over the past 20 years Congress has encouraged the U.S. military to supply intelligence, equipment, and training to civilian police. That encouragement has spawned a culture of paramilitarism in American law enforcement,” notes the Cato Institute.

“According to a recent academic survey, nearly 90 percent of the police departments surveyed in cities with populations over 50,000 had paramilitary units, as did 70 percent of the departments surveyed in communities with populations under 50,000. The Pentagon has been equipping those units with M-16s, armored personnel carriers, and grenade launchers. The police paramilitary units also conduct training exercises with active duty Army Rangers and Navy SEALs…. State and local police departments are increasingly accepting the military as a model for their behavior and outlook. The sharing of training and technology is producing a shared mindset. The problem is that the mindset of the soldier is simply not appropriate for the civilian police officer. Police officers confront not an ‘enemy’ but individuals who are protected by the Bill of Rights. Confusing the police function with the military function can lead to dangerous and unintended consequences—such as unnecessary shootings and killings.”

But then, of course, the commander-decider guy considers the Constitution and the Bill of Rights little more than a “g.d. piece of paper.”

In order to understand what the average activist may face come the next war—for instance, the coming attack against Iran—consider the following video produced by the DoD:

Joe Scarborough Disses “Iraqi Losers” Outraged Over Blackwater

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