U.S. support for Jundullah in the news

The Washington Post reports (via Scott Horton):

TEHRAN, June 20 -- An armed Sunni group said Friday that it had executed two Iranian policemen, and it threatened to kill 14 others abducted a week ago in an area near the border with Pakistan.

Iranian authorities did not immediately react to a videotape purporting to show the killings, part of which was aired Friday by the al-Arabiya satellite channel, based in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Iran has accused the United States of assisting the group, known as Jundallah, or God's Brigade.

In 2007, ABC News quoted U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials as saying that Jundallah members have been "encouraged and advised" by American officials since 2005. A CIA spokesman told ABC that the United States provides no funding to Jundallah.

Alleged U.S. support for Jundullah is something that I noted in April 2007, when the story from ABC News supporting charges that the Bush administration was backing anti-Iranian terrorist groups was met with a collective yawn by the rest of the mainstream media. As I wrote at the time:

Outside of ABC News, it’s a struggle to find any discussion of U.S. support for anti-Iranian extremist groups in the major media outlets. While the New York Times was quick to speak about the Imus affair in an April 11th editorial, there has been not so much as a mention of the Jundullah story in their paper, much less a critical look at how the story undermines the White House’s moral authority to criticize Iran for its supposed "meddling" in Iraq. The same goes for the Washington Post, where a search for "Jundullah" reveals only two wire articles on the subject. One finds no editorials questioning the policy, no reaction from lawmakers, no introspective takes on the morality of such a policy – one finds next to nothing.

I was led to write an article on alleged U.S. support for Jundullah after engaging in a revealing interview with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) that Jonathan Schwarz described as "an amazing statement of congressional impotence". Here's an excerpt of the interview, which took place as Rockefeller was walking out of the Senate chamber (click here to listen to an mp3 of the exchange):

DAVIS: I wonder if you've heard some of these news reports that the Bush administration is backing extremist groups in Pakistan to launch attacks against Iran? Are you familiar with those news reports?

ROCKEFELLER: I've seen no intelligence that would verify that.

DAVIS: Reports quote administration officials as saying this is going on and it's being done in a way to avoid oversight of the Intelligence Committee. Is there any way—

ROCKEFELLER: They'll go to any lengths to do that, as we've seen in the last two days [during hearings on FISA].

DAVIS: Is there anything you could do in your position as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee to find answers about this, if it is in fact going on?

ROCKEFELLER: Don't you understand the way Intelligence works? Do you think that because I'm Chairman of the Intelligence Committee that I just say I want it, and they give it to me? They control it. All of it. All of it. All the time. I only get, and my committee only gets, what they want to give me.

DAVIS: Is there any way someone, maybe not you, they can somehow press the administration to find something—if they're doing something that may be illegal—

ROCKEFELLER: I don't know that. I don't know that. I deal with Intelligence. That's it. They tend to avoid us.

DAVIS: Well, what do you think about these allegations?

ROCKEFELLER: I'm not—I don't comment on allegations. I can't. I can't afford to.

If anyone believes that Democrats in Congress are going to investigate credible allegations that the U.S. is supporting terrorism, think again. If one of the most powerful -- and one of the richest -- senators is too timid to so much as issue a subpoena on the topic, then it's probably best to rely on the likes of Seymour Hersh for evidence of what's really going on.

We're always fighting World War II

Speaking yesterday at the Air Force Academy graduation in Colorado Springs, CO, President Bush yet again compared the U.S. occupation of Iraq to the post-WWII rebuilding period in Germany and Japan. Though the White House has repeatedly compared the war in Iraq to the last "Good War" (and usually avoided the obvious comparison to Vietnam), President Bush did acknowledge at least one key difference in his speech.

From the AP:

The president acknowledged one of the many differences between the global conflict six decades ago and the ones that began under his watch: today's wars are not over.

``In Germany and Japan, the work of rebuilding took place in relative quiet,'' Bush said. ``Today we're helping emerging democracies rebuild under fire from terrorist networks and state sponsors of terror. This is a difficult and unprecedented task, and we're learning as we go.''

Now rewind to the summer of 2003, when the Iraqi insurgency first began taking off. At that time, both then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly compared the Iraq occupation to the post-WWII rebuilding period. But unlike Bush yesterday, both Rice and Rumsfeld made the comparison to explicitly argue that the Allied occupation of Germany was violent and tumultuous -- just like Iraq.

Consider these quotes compiled in an article from Slate at the time:

"There is an understandable tendency to look back on America's experience in postwar Germany and see only the successes," [Rice] told the Veterans of Foreign Wars in San Antonio, Texas, on Aug. 25. "But as some of you here today surely remember, the road we traveled was very difficult. 1945 through 1947 was an especially challenging period. Germany was not immediately stable or prosperous. SS officers—called 'werewolves'—engaged in sabotage and attacked both coalition forces and those locals cooperating with them—much like today's Baathist and Fedayeen remnants."

Speaking to the same group on the same day, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld noted,

One group of those dead-enders was known as "werewolves." They and other Nazi regime remnants targeted Allied soldiers, and they targeted Germans who cooperated with the Allied forces. Mayors were assassinated including the American-appointed mayor of Aachen, the first major German city to be liberated. Children as young as 10 were used as snipers, radio broadcasts, and leaflets warned Germans not to collaborate with the Allies. They plotted sabotage of factories, power plants, rail lines. They blew up police stations and government buildings, and they destroyed stocks of art and antiques that were stored by the Berlin Museum. Does this sound familiar?

Of course, both Rice and Rumsfeld were basing their comparisons on phony history that suited them at the times.

As the Slate article notes, "the total number of post-conflict American combat casualties in Germany — and Japan, Haiti, and the two Balkan cases — was zero."

The fact that the Bush administration is no longer drawing attention to the supposed violent similarities between the German and Iraq occupations is merely an admission that the argument is untenable and that the comparison was based on fictional history (i.e. lies).

Condoleezza Rice: "George Bush is a coward"

According to the AP, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called out President George W. Bush as a coward yesterday for his refusal to personally fight in Iraq, especially in light of his glib response in 2003 to increased attacks on U.S. forces by Iraqi insurgents: "bring 'em on."

Just kidding.

But in a move that can't possibly backfire, Secretary Rice did call someone else a coward: perhaps the most popular man in Iraq, cleric and head of the Mahdi army, Moqtada al-Sadr.

As the AP reports:

"I know he's sitting in Iran," Miss Rice said dismissively, when asked about Sheik al-Sadr's latest threat to lift a self-imposed cease-fire with government and U.S. forces. "I guess it's all-out war for anybody but him," Miss Rice said. "I guess that's the message; his followers can go to their deaths and he's in Iran."

The exact same comments, of course, could be applied more justly to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and, well, Rice herself. All used lies to sell a war they had no intension of ever fighting. In fact, both Bush and Cheney spent the majority of their college years actively avoiding fighting in another foreign war of aggression that they both supported in Vietnam.

But don't expect the committed torturers and warmongers that fill the upper echelon of the American state to ever once look in the mirror. Al-Sadr is a despicable coward because he will send others into battle but doesn't fight himself -- despite the fact that al-Sadr, at least, is taking a real risk with his life by opposing U.S. imperial ambitions in the region, and by even being involved in Iraqi politics in general.

In contrast, U.S. politicians are brave Churchillian leaders for having the courage and conviction to send poor, young American men and women off to die in a foreign land. So it goes being the most powerful country on the face of the Earth.

For now.

"But honey, I was only protecting national security... honest!"

In my previous post, I noted how to some of the most ardent war supporters -- those ones so brave that when called to fight themselves, instead chose to defend Houston from the Vietcong -- military action was nothing more than a distant, romanticized fantasy -- a wet dream, if you will. Consider President Bush's recent comments to soldiers serving in Afghanistan that he was "a little envious" of their situation:

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

Clearly one who had witnessed the realities of war -- mothers wailing over the loss of a son or daughter, children traumatized by continual violence and sounds of bombs dropping -- would not be able to so easily view it as "romantic". But for U.S. political leaders, war is usually more than just another policy option, albeit a bit sexier and exciting. Unfortunately, these same leaders never seem able to get in on the action themselves. Odd, right?

However, as ABC News has revealed, the courageous defenders of freedom in the White House were not content in letting these exciting times pass them by. But since they couldn't secure the streets of Baghdad themselves (they always seem to have other commitments), they decided to bring a little bit of that good war-fighting-feeling back home -- by micromanaging torture:

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic. [emphasis mine]

The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

As the national security adviser, Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies.

That's some pretty hot stuff there. Can you imagine the conversation as these very serious, Churchillian leaders of ours discussed in minute detail just how individual prisoners -- excuse me, terrorists -- would be "handled"?

"Dick, why don't we slap them three times on the side of the face first, stick needles under their fingernails, drown them until they almost die and -- oh god, yes! -- stack them naked when we're 'through', if ya know what I mean?"

Commenting on the story, author and professional chronicler of presidential crimes, James Bovard, notes the psycho-sexual issues at play in all of this and asks the most important question of them all:

Sitting around a table and deciding how many times each Muslim detainee can be whacked up side the head sounds like the ultimate NeoCon masturbatory fantasy.

Even prize-Constitution stomper John Ashcroft had qualms about the meetings, reportedly warning, “History will not judge this kindly.”

What does it take to get someone indicted for war crimes in this country any more?