True America: When the "A-Team" Breaks Bad

More: Afghan President Hamid Karzai is backpedaling furiously on the security deal the US claims it reached with the impoverished state. He told Susan Rice, the national security advisor, in Kabul on Monday that besides putting an end to raids on private homes, the US must send back Afghan prisoners detained at the Guantanamo gulag. Karzai claims that the Loya Jirga imposed this condition when it approved the security pact last week. He also blamed the US for meddling in the 2009 presidential election. Karzai has proved to be an exasperating collaborator and his latest reneging is true to form. DoD officials want the agreement signed by the end of the year, but Karzai appears to be in no mood to sign anytime soon. He is supposed to step down from the presidency after elections in April.

Update: {27.11.13}The Obamatron's national security advisor is in Kabul to twist Hamid Karzai's arm to sign the recently negotiated bilateral security pack that gives legal immunity to stay-behind US troops. Karzai has publicly said he does not trust the Americans "and they don't trust me." He has attempted to enlist the support of Afghanistan's tribal elders who are gathering in their traditional grand council or loya jirga. But the five day council surprised many by supporting the agreement. Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, spokesman for the council told Karzai to quickly sign the security pack. The agreement provides billions of dollars in further aid to one of the poorest nations in the world. Naturally the Taliban condemned the loya jirga's endorsement. A Taliban spokesman said Afghanistan will "truly become the graveyard of international arrogance."

Karzai has already said signing a security deal should only take place after elections in April. He must leave the presidency after two terms. The issue of legal jurisdiction over remaining US troops, said to be around 8,000 up to 15,000 could be a stumbling block. Immunity for foreign soldiers is widely considered to be an infringement of Afghanistan's sovereignty. Karzai again took issue with American forces raiding private homes as part of their operations despite reassurances from the Obamatron that such raids would be "only under extraordinary circumstances". The Iraqis took the same position against legal immunity when the US demanded it for troops in their country. Iraq refused, so the US withdrew all of its forces.

The security situation in Afghanistan is dire and the presence of US forces is considered necessary to prevent the Kabul government from collapsing. The Taliban remain in control of much of the countryside and are making inroads in urban areas. Drug corruption and use is rampant. This year's opium crop is set to be a record breaker. Afghanistan's economy is on foreign aid life support and it will shrink by 10% as foreigners leave the country. To add to the country's problems is its hostile relationship with Pakistan. Border skirmishes have intensified in the past two years, and recently a "baroque" intrigue hatched by Afghan's intelligence service to support terrorists in Pakistan came to light in the New York Times. Considering the chaos that is brewing just below the surface, is not easy to understand how 8,000 American troops can do what 47,000 could not. Putting even fewer boots on the ground to control a hostile populace and kill hardened enemy fighters will almost certainly lead to violent excesses by demoralized American soldiers. It is simply mission impossible. Packing up the old kit bag and smiling as you board the plane out is the best thing Americans can expect to accomplish from their longest war on the edge of empire.

{21.11.13}Wars of insurrection are dirty business. America's involvement in these wars is no exception beginning with the Indian uprisings on the original thirteen colonies' frontier, the genocidal war against western tribes, the Philippine Insurrection, the Vietnam War to the present dismal experience in Afghanistan. The United States is insisting that troops remain in the central Asia desert on the edge of empire. Afghanistan's weak central government is attempting to resist imperial demands especially since it would have no jurisdiction over US troops if they commit crimes or attrocities. This issue has been a sticking point in a status of forces agreement under negotiation with quisling Hamid Karzai, but a security pack must be approved by Afghanistan's national assembly That atrocities have been committed is highly probable, but the US is refusing to aid investigation of allegations against US Special Forces made by former collaborators. This report by RT is eye-opening:

'Toontime: Thanks in A Time Of Materialism

[credit: John Coles, Times Tribune]

Retailers have finally hijacked the last semblance of a holiday set aside for reflection and gratitude. Corporate masters are demanding their chain stores and franchises stay open on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day. So-called "Black Friday" has become the "30 Days of Shopping" before the end of the year sales. Corporate flacks pound out the message on all channels: BUY, BUY, BUY! People are camping out for almost a week to be first in line at the store door, while violence is an option to get yours. Thanksgiving shopping is America's newest competitive sport in the wasteland of the corporate state.

[credit: Jeff Darcy, Cleveland Plain Dealer]

Cat Blogging Thanksgiving

And here for your holidaze enjoyment is "Tardar Sauce" a British kitty full of disdain for people he finds annoying:

Is kittums disgruntled or just suffering from indigestion? US Person thinks he looks somewhat like Winston Churchill. Enjoy and give thanks!

Seahorses Get No Respect

These fragile creatures (Hippocampus. s) get no respect.  Yes, they are admired for their surreal beauty, and the males make great mothers, but when it comes to "street cred" seahorses are not on the A list. Even crabs seem more dangerous than a seahorse. A new study may change the human perception of seahorses as slow, awkward swimmers frozen stiff in an upright position. But as predators they are ferocious and ingenious. The elongated snouts make few ripples in the water to alert their tiny copepod prey. If a copepod detects water disturbances from a preditor it can jet away at speeds equivalent to a six foot human swimming 2,000 mph. Yet seahorses which are the slowest fish in the sea can regularly overcome the copepods speed advantage.

Seahorses catch their intended prey 90% of the time in calm water, an incredible success rate for a predator.  Dr. Brad Gemmell, of the University of Texas, Austin who authored the study, wanted to know how they did it. Syngnathid fish which include seahorses use a stealth technique termed pivot feeding that involves rapid movements at short range. A seahorse's arched neck acts as a spring allowing it to move its snout rapidly. The snout is shaped to minimize hydrodynamic disturbances so the strike [video] can be made over a distance of about 1mm without alerting the prey. This fact was discovered using 3D holography. Get close and don't hesitate works well for seahorses too.

Berlusconi Finally Booted

He put up a tenacious fight, but finally Italian law enforcement caught up with former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. The Italian Senate expelled Berlusconi with immediate effect, thus depriving him of legislative immunity. He was convicted of tax fraud after a lengthy court battle which ended in August when the appeals court upheld the trial verdict. Berlusconi has also been convicted of paying an under age prostitute for "bunga-bunga"--sex. The way could now be politically clear for other criminal prosecutions against a powerful public figure who dominated his country's politics for twenty years. He vowed to remain the head of the Forza Italia Party on what he called a "day of mourning" for democracy. Because of his age he is unlikely to serve his one year sentence in jail but under house arrest. The Senate debate was heated with two rival Senators nearly coming to blows in time-honored Italian tradition. There was no formal vote to expel, but all challenges to the process were defeated.

COTW: US Miltary Fuel Consumption

The Obamatron sent B-52s over the disputed, uninhabitated specks of land off China's coast in a demonstration of the US military global reach. It costs a lot of money to operate those flying behemoths because they consume about 3300 gallons per hour of flight. To put that obscene figure into perspective, the Humvee gets as low as 4 mpg or six times less than a T Model Ford. What Obamatron will not tell you, but US Person will, is that our military consumes an enormous amount of energy every day. In FY2006 DoD consumed 844 trillion Btu which on a per capita basis is ten times more than China and 30 times more than Africa. Oil accounts for more than three-fourths of military consumption. Most of the fuel costs are incurred by the United States Air Force as jet fuel, JP-8. To be fair modern tanks also burn jet fuel kerosene in their  turbines. An Abrams main battle tank achieves an unimpressive 0.5mpg):

USAF is the largest consumer of fuel in the federal government. It spent $9.7 billion in FY2011 for energy and $8.3 billion of that was for fuel, and is experiencing massive budget shortfalls due to escalating fuel costs. The US military is man's most energy intensive operation in history, period. So ask yourself do we really need these expensive joy-rides?

Dead Kennedys II Reprise

Dr. Milton Halpern, formerly Chief Medical Examiner of New York City and whom the New York Times said "knows more about violent death than any one in the world", and who conducted over 2,000 autopsies on gunshot victims expressed his opinion about the "magic bullet": "The original pristine weight of this bullet before it was fired was approximately 160-161 grains. [1grain = .0648g] The weight of the bullet recovered at Parkland was reported by the Commission at 158.6...I cannot accept the premise that this bullet thrashed around in all that boney tissue [fracturing rib and wrist bones] and lost only 1.4 to 2.4 grains of its normal weight. I cannot believe either that this bullet is going to emerge miraculously unscathed, without any deformity, and with lands and groves intact..." Twenty-one people stated to the Commission that shooting came from the grassy knoll in Dealy Plaza. Acoustics experts testifying to the House Assassinations investigation concluded, the grassy knoll shot "was fired from a point along the east-west line of the wooden stockade fence, about eight feet from the corner of the fence." At that point an assassin equipped with frangible, high velocity ammunition was thirty-five unobstructed yards from the President of the United States. First posted November 26, 2006. Links are original, but may have expired:

After the 1961 Bay of Pigs disaster, President Kennedy handed Attorney General Robert Kennedy the covert ops portfolio. RFK, a committed cold warrior like his brother, bluntly told the CIA he wanted Fidel Castro to "disappear". Nothing was put in writing, but the Agency had its marching orders. RFK denied ever directly ordering assassination. Between 1960 and 1965 there were eight attempts on the revolutionary leader's life according to former Secretary of State, Al Haig. What is not widely known is that besides Operation Mongoose and Operation 40, the government was involved in planning a Cuban coup d'etat and US military invasion of Cuba that included the participation of a famous and respected Cuban comrade from the Sierra Maestra days. A feature of the plan was the formation and equipping of assassination teams that were to infiltrate the island during the invasion chaos and kill Castro. Castro would be replaced by the collaborator who would use his considerable influence to end resistance and reestablish civil order. The plan was known by its CIA code name AMWORLD.

A 1963 CIA memo previously classified top secret was not discovered in the National Archives by researcher Stuart Wexler until 2004. The document and related material had been declassified in 1999 by the JFK Assassination Records Review Board. The five page memo from the Chief, Western Hemisphere Division outlined the CIA role in the planning and preparation of the Cuban coup for station chiefs who might come across "manifestations" of the operation. Its title is "AMWORLD--Background of Program, Operation Support requirements and Procedural Rules." The memorandum was published by authors Waldron and Hartmann as part of their authoritative study of the Kennedy Assassination, Ultimate Sacrifice and a copy of it can be seen at theirwebsite. There is no doubt that Robert Kennedy controlled the large scale, very secret effort to violently depose Castro. Secret planning took place at the top level of the administration and RFK ran the three groups involved, the "Interdepartmental Coordinating Committee on Cuban Affairs", the "Special Group" for covert matters and the "Standing Group" for contingency plans and policy assessment. This dispersal of functions into small groups was intended to make them easier to control, preserve tight secrecy, as well as provide the President with plausible deniability.
Cyrus Vance, Secretary of the Army and trusted Kennedy advisor, headed the Pentagon's participation. He wrote a memo dated September 26, 1963 titled "Plan for a Coup in Cuba" to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in which the coup plan was presented to them as an option, but in reality it was the only plan being considered. Operation Mongoose was not having the intended effect of destabilising Cuba and promoting the overthrow of Castro. Vance told Chief of Staff Maxwell Taylor that the CIA and the State Department concurred with the coup plan. The invading exile groups would need to establish a provisional government (under the leadership of the still secret paid collaborator) and "hold a significant piece of territory long enough for the US to extend support." The document says that US support can only begin after "Fidel Castro...has been neutralized." Thus, killing Fidel was the key component of the entire operation eventhough the Kennedys may have viewed it as providing direct military assistance to invading Cuban exile groups. Both of Vance's aides, Joseph Califano and Al Haig, confirm Bobby Kennedy was the boss of the operation. Haig told an interviewer, "Bobby was the President," as far Cuban operations were concerned. Former CIA Deputy Director for Plans, Richard Helms (later CIA Director under Nixon) told interviewers on different occasions the same thing, "There are two things you have to understand: Kennedy wanted to get rid of Castro, and the Agency was not about to undertake anything like that on its own." He was equally adamant that Bobby Kennedy was in charge, telling a biographer that, "Robert Kennedy ran with it, ran those operations, and I dealt with him almost every day."

An AMWORLD memo sent by CIA director McCone on the morning of JFK's murder, confirms that the coup was scheduled for December 1, 1963. There were circumstances in Cuba that put pressure on plan participants to stick to the December 1 deadline. Another AMWORLD communication on November 22nd from a Cuban inflitrator said that Castro was concerned about possible insurrection by some of his men and was undertaking a massive propaganda campaign to bolster loyalty. He had reason to worry. Some old comrades still in Cuba felt Fidel had betrayed the revolution by embracing the Soviets. The Commandante had also laid plans to begin a military draft in early December which exiled coup leaders believed would "tremendously" impact clandestine activities in Cuba. Domestic political considerations too played a role in setting an early December deadline. Polls showed the public giving the President low ratings on his handling of Cuba. But US troops fighting in Cuba with US air support during the Christmas holidays was not desirable. If the plan failed, time was needed before the 1964 campaign got underway to deal with the repercussions. AMWORLD was more than just convoluted contingency planning by November 22, 1963. It was a high risk military operation with vital clandestine components set to go off in ten days. Bobby was set to fall on his own sword if it did not succeed.

What RFK apparently did not know about until May 7, 1962, when the CIA general counsel briefed him on the subject, was the involvement of the Mafia in previous CIA efforts to assassinate Castro going back to 1959. These operations had been approved by Director Allen Dulles and had used Jimmy Hoffa as a 'cut-out'. The teamster boss had access to Castro since he had participated in gun running to the Cuban leader with the CIA's blessing. Of course the Mafia had extensive contacts in Cuba as a result of their lucrative casino businesses sponsored by Batista. After the revolution came to power and dispossessed the gangsters, bosses like Santo Trafficante and Johnny Rosselli, who represented the Chicago don Sam Giancana, were willing to use their considerable resources to aid the CIA in its efforts to "neutralize" Fidel. There was even historical precedent for such cooperation since the mob had aided the WWII effort by enforcing labor peace and detecting sabotage on the docks. Nevertheless, the CIA revelation must have concerned Bobby Kennedy greatly. CIA told him the operations had ceased, but this was false. (Operation AMLASH and the CIA executive action program code named ZRRIFLE exposed by the Church Committee for example). 

Bobby and his brother had made powerful mob enemies during the 1957-61 McClellan corrupt unions hearings. Sam Giancana and New Orleans boss Carlos Marcello were forced to appear and were subjected to embarrassing public examination by the younger brother as the Committee's chief counsel. Trafficante was beyond subpoena power in Cuba, but other witnesses implicated him as the mob boss of Tampa. After the hearings, then Attorney General Kennedy deported Carlos Marcello, a Tunisian national, to Guatemala. Traffacante's Orlando gambling business was shut down by the IRS. Rosselli was audited and his financial transactions examined by the FBI. The dons had suffered insult and prosecution at the hands of Jack and Bobby. They were men unlikely to forgive. How the Mafia used the AMWORLD operation to its own ends is the subject of another post.