All Posts Tagged With: "War on Terror"
Will Obama Continue Bush’s Secret Spying Agenda?
Is it conceivable that Obama will continue the secret surveillance tactics of the Bush Administration? Despite claims from my colleagues on the blog that Obama’s views on all things from puppies to Iran are perfectly clear and thoroughly outlined in his position papers, it appears that Obama’s views on NSA operations are unknown.
An article in today’s New York Times recounts Obama’s contradictory and confusing history with NSA operation legislation:
As a presidential candidate, he condemned the N.S.A. operation as illegal, and threatened to filibuster a bill that would grant the government expanded surveillance powers and provide immunity to phone companies that helped in the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants. But Mr. Obama switched positions and ultimately supported the measure in the Senate, angering liberal supporters who accused him of bowing to pressure from the right.
Drinks with a Soldier
I had no sooner sat down than the sunburned man at the next table asked me about them. We talked, like only nerds can, about what they changed and what they left alone, about great games we had been in, and about how the hobby wasn’t what it used to be. He then said, “You ever play World of Warcraft? I played it all the time when I was in Iraq.” I nodded and let him talk for the rest of the meal.
I told him that I was a writer, but that didn’t scare him off. He had done two tours of duty in Iraq and had been all over—from Basra to Tikrit and from Baghdad to the Syrian border—all attached to his Infantry Division. He was counter-insurgency, which perked me right up. He was exactly the kind of person I wanted to talk to about the war. As we were finishing up our breakfast, he suggested that we get together in the afternoon; I begged off, since I was working on a new short-story, but countered with a proposal for drinks in the evening. Eight o’clock at the Esquire it was.
I couldn’t figure out his age, nor did his girlfriend help with that. If I was to guess, I’d say that he was forty, but the leathery look of his skin could have made my estimate high. His girlfriend, maybe better called his lady friend, was the kind of good-old-gal that makes going to stock car races and rodeos fun—smart, funny, and very protective of her man. She was in her early forties, with streaks of blonde in her dark brown, small-town salon hair. I was drinking Erdinger’s non-alcoholic brew and they were buying me round after round as the evening progressed.
He wanted to talk and talk a lot about the situation over there. His lady stopped him before he got too far and said to me, “You’re a reporter, right?”
I said, “Yeah, technically—for the internet. We need to get things straight, I think, before we start. Is this talk on the record, off the record, or in-between?”
He said, “On the record, but you cannot use our names—everything else, I want people to know.” I agreed. I want to mention, in passing, that he’s an enlisted man—I think that’s important for perspective on the viewpoints he expressed.
His job over there was to counteract IEDs (improvised explosive devices). The enemies of our soldiers use them to destroy vehicles moving along roads, often with devastating results. The creation of such traps is a long and intricate process, with different enemy teams for each of the steps in their construction:
First a survey team, often with the help of locals, finds a likely location for the bomb. Then, the necessary ordinance to construct it is moved there under the cover of darkness. The explosive materials are hidden within a few hundred meters of that location. Over the course of the next month, a digging crew digs the hole for the munitions—little by little, so observers don’t notice the displacement of soil. Finally, when the hole is large enough, the bomb is assembled inside of it by a new team of explosives experts. At long last, perhaps six weeks after they started, an assault team waits in a secure place for an American target and then blows the device up at the proper time to inflict the maximum number of casualties.
He was full of ideas on how to counteract these enemy soldiers. One suggestion that he made was a high-tech one (not surprising from a geek)—locate cameras on telephone poles along the roads with a wide-field of view. If the views are overlapping, then no one could either set up a bomb or remove a camera without someone knowing. Rapid response teams would be made available if suspicious activity was noticed and the danger to troops would be minimized.
This sounded great to me. I asked him if this was going to be implemented and if so, when. He sadly shook his head. “The problem is the mental state of the officer corps. They’re still fighting the last war and they’ve got this battle plan and they are going to follow it. I couldn’t get anyone to listen, to even take me seriously.” He ordered another round.
“So,” I said, “things aren’t going well?”
“Look,” he replied, “what people don’t understand is that they live there. See, you and I get an appliance and the cord is wrong for the plug, right? What do we do? We go out and get another plug. You know what they do? They cut the plug off and stick the wires directly into the socket. It sparks everywhere, but it’s not a problem because there’s nothing to burn there and they know it. See, this is the difference—instinct, base knowledge of the turf. Even after years of occupation, we’re still strangers there. They’re got a permanent advantage and, worst of all, they don’t have a timetable.”
“And this means?”
“We can’t win. See, the British thought they had the solution in Basra—the enemy was all in the northern part of the city. The Brits moved a majority of their troops there and engaged the enemy. The thing is…the enemy…is not…stupid!” His fist hit the table. “They moved to the south side of town so that all the Brits disrupted were civilians and their lives. Now, the British have gone home and you know what? All of the enemies are still there. Nothing was accomplished.”
“So,” he said, “no matter what we do, no matter who we fight or where we go, when the day comes that we leave, the enemy will still be there. It’s their country.” He looked down at his drink. “In the meantime, things have gone to hell here.” He waved his arms from one side to the other.
We talked for a while about the gas prices, about rising food prices, and about speculators. “What is it going to take to wake people up about their government?” he asked.
I told him about boiling a frog alive—you put it in water and turn the heat on. If you make the rise in temperature slow enough, the frog never notices it until it’s too late. He smiled at me. “I’m not going back, you know, new policy about maximum time served there. She wants me to be a recruiter.” He pointed his thumb back at his lady friend.
We talked about other things for a while—he was going back to his stateside base in ten days. I hope he stays safe; bombs are a hell of a thing to have to deal with at work.
Each Dollar A Bullet
AEY, one of many defense contractors hired to supply US armed forces, is not a name that inspires confidence among those that know it. “They weren’t reliable, or if they did come through, they did after many excuses,” said one federal official. But then no one asks the troops to fill out comment cards. No one looks to see that contracts are being fulfilled responsibly. And on the rare occasions when some reporter actually bothers to tell us about it, the Bush administration sticks its fingers in its ears and shouts, “La-la-la-la-la! Can’t hear you! La-la-la!” And the beat goes on.
The Story So Far…
Defense contractor AEY has had its contracts with the government suspended as Congress begins investigating the company for fraud. The company was paid to supply a variety of different types of ammunition to Afghan forces combating the Taliban resurgence and Al-Qaeda remnants. Now I know what you’re thinking. But Diogenes, can’t we just pay one of the usual crony corporations ungodly amounts of money to do it? Well, yes, we could, but the thing is, they don’t do arms trading, just production. And the Afghans were armed with old Soviet weapons, as those things can be bought on any street corner for less than cab fare. None of the usual suppliers do, say, ammo for AK47’s, which means it has to be bought from them what has it. Enter a variety of unsavory types ala Nick Cage in Lord of War, though I imagine their performances were more convincing. The vetting form was apparently pretty straightforward. There were two questions: “How much?” and “How would you like your name spelled on the check?” AEY was the low bid. The company claimed that the ammo it was offering was from Hungary, but the rounds the company shipped to Afghanistan were in fact Chinese in origin, up to forty years old, corroded, decomposing, and unusable.
The gear wasn’t all bad. Some was from climate-controlled stockpiles in the old eastern block. Some was scrap off Soviet junk heaps. But AEY’s contact with the government did not distinguish between these different grades of ammunition. The only requirement, according to an official at Army Sustainment Command, was that the ammunition fit in the weapon for which it was intended. Because the Soviet-made arms used by the Afghan fighters are considered “nonstandard,” that is, not kept as part of the regular inventory for the US Army, it is mostly unregulated.
While providing useless ammo may not be enough to get AEY in trouble, shipping arms from China is illegal under US government contract. And it has been enough to set off an investigation in Washington of the company and its practices along with its 22-year-old operator.
That’s right! The company president is 22 years old. Efraim E. Diveroli took over the company from his father when he was 19, netting a $5.7 million dollar contract to supply rifles to the Iraqi military. Let me say that again. The DoD gave the contract for supplying guns to the people in charge of securing Iraq to a teenager!
Diveroli’s father had started AEY as a printing company. But according to his grandfather, Angelo Diveroli, Efraim was a genius when it came to guns. Angelo laid it out like this. “His passion is weapons, since he was a child,” the AP reports. “I used to take him to gun shows. He knew every weapon.” Somewhere along the way, Efraim got AEY listed as a defense contractor and began bidding on government contracts. Public documents state that the company has received more than $300 million worth of contracts from the government since 2004. Diveroli claims to have done somewhere in the neighborhood of $600 million.
The New York Times broke the story on Thursday. It states that the Army will continue to accept ammo it has already ordered from the company, which, as of March 21, totaled $155 million worth. American munitions inspectors are examining all rounds for small arms provided by AEY.
Same As It Ever Was
AEY (no one seems to know what, if anything, this stands for) is by no means the first shady contractor to do something questionable in the name of profit. Endless stories over the last few years detail how Halliburton and its subsidiaries lost 363 tons of cash, supplied contaminated water to troops in Iraq, and billed the government for countless services never provided. What has happened is the take-over of the American government by politicians who do not believe in oversight, but rather put their faith in the magic of privatization. The prevailing dogma is that government is inherently inefficient and ineffective whereas corporations will invariably find the most efficient way of getting the job done in order to maximize profit. It is a philosophy advocated by those who seek to break government and then declare with glee, “See? It’s broken! Told ya!”
What is even more startling than the complete lack of any accountability is the apparent belief that government has no role in the market even when it is the sole customer. Even the most rabid Thomas Friedmanite would tell you that part of the whole free market deal is that you, as a consumer, may stop doing business with a company should you be dissatisfied with the product you’re given. However, when government is the customer, the implication that it may have a legitimate role within the free market paradigm seems to cause a short circuit in the mental wiring of the neo-cons. The result is a complete paralysis of any and all mechanisms that might kick the greedy little piggies to the curb.
This case is exemplary of the utter disaster that the privatization of war has been for both the federal budget and the troops on the ground who must now deal with the complete and total lack of accountability that is being brought to bear against those who cut every corner to enrich themselves at the expense of those serving. This is what the Bush administration calls, “supporting the troops.” When it comes to stomping around and waving the flag, there is no equal. If Congress attaches one string to one dollar, even something as simple as, say, demanding a receipt, the Bushies are out in front of the cameras saying that Congress doesn’t support the troops. By not shoveling more money down the gullets of these contractors, they argue, Congress is denying the troops the equipment and supplies they need to “win.” But at the end of the day, they just don’t care what’s happening. As long as the check clears and no one asks any serious questions, there’s nothing to worry about. It’s someone else’s problem.
The argument invariably comes back that the case of AEY proves the system works. Any company supplying a substandard product will lose its contracts. But AEY isn’t in trouble for supplying substandard products. It has been doing so for years and no action has been taken. What landed Diveroli in hot water was shipping arms from China. The quality of the arms has nothing to do with the pending fraud charges against the company.
By law, the first loyalty of a corporation is to profit. When oversight is non-existent, when Congress is infested by an entire political party dedicated to obstructing any investigation of its contributors, the idea that any contractor that fails to perform up to a certain standard will face repercussions for their actions is either naïve or deluded. Taped conversations make it clear that when it came to where the munitions were coming from, Diveroli took the Sergeant Schultz line. “I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing!” It seems that he and his employers have something in common.
General Patton’s Views on the Modern World
Have you ever seen Patton? George C. Scott’s portrayal of General George S. Patton, Jr. is one of my all time favorite performances. One of the most memorable parts of the movie is a curt, obscene and inspiring speech by the General to his men.
This speech led my buddy Gordon the Gnome at America Versus the World to write a fictional speech by President Bush inspired by the Patton speech.
This evening I was forwarded the YouTube clip below in which a voice actor does a modern version of the Patton speech discussing the War on Terror, Iraq, and the Modern World. While I certainly don’t agree with the creator of this video’s message, I admit that his interpretation might not be that far off, and I absolutely loved his creation.
General Patton’s Views on the Modern World
Have you ever seen Patton? George C. Scott’s portrayal of General George S. Patton, Jr. is one of my all time favorite performances. One of the most memorable parts of the movie is a curt, obscene and inspiring speech by the General to his men.
This speech led my buddy Gordon the Gnome at America Versus the World to write a fictional speech by President Bush inspired by the Patton speech.
This evening I was forwarded the YouTube clip below in which a voice actor does a modern version of the Patton speech discussing the War on Terror, Iraq, and the Modern World. While I certainly don’t agree with the creator of this video’s message, I admit that his interpretation might not be that far off, and I absolutely loved his creation.