- On June 15, AP reported that "Gen. Stanley McChrystal,
a four-star American general with a long history in special operations,
took charge of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan (today), a change in command
the Pentagon hopes will turn the tide in an increasingly violent eight-year
war."
-
- McChrystal is a hired gun, an assassin, a man known for
committing war crime atrocities as head of the Pentagon's infamous Joint
Special Operations Command (JSOC) - established in 1980 and comprised of
the Army's Delta Force and Navy Seals, de facto death squads writer Seymour
Hersh described post-9/11 as an "executive assassination wing"
operating out of Dick Cheney's office.
-
- A 2006 Newsweek profile called JSOC "part of what
Vice President Dick Cheney was referring to when he said America would
have to 'work on the dark side' after 9/11." It called McChrystal
then "an affable but tough Army Ranger" with no elaboration of
his "dark side" mission.
-
- In his May 17 article titled "Obama's Animal Farm:
Bigger, Bloodier Wars Equal Peace and Justice," James Petras called
him a "notorious psychopath" in describing him this way:
-
- His rise through the ranks was "marked by his central
role in directing special operations teams engaged in extrajudicial assassinations,
systematic torture, bombing of civilian communities and search and destroy
missions. He is the very embodiment of the brutality and gore that accompanies
military-driven empire building."
-
- His resume shows contempt for human life and the rule
of law - a depravity Conrad described in his classic work, "Heart
of Darkness:" the notion of "exterminat(ing) all the brutes"
to civilize them, and removing lesser people to colonize and dominate them
by devising battle plans amounting to genocide.
-
- In June 2001, McChrystal became Chief of Staff, XVIII
Airborne Corp. After the Afghanistan invasion, he was appointed Chief of
Staff, Combined Joint Task Force 180, Operation Enduring Freedom. In September
2003, he was Commanding General, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).
In February 2006, he became Commander, Joint Special Operations - Command/Commander,
Joint Special Operations Command Forward, United States Special Operations,
then in August 2008 General Director, the Joint Staff until his current
appointment as US/NATO Afghanistan commander.
-
- Detailed information of his role in these capacities
is classified and unacknowledged, but Human Rights Watch (HRW) revealed
some of what he directed in its July 22, 2006 report titled "No Blood,
No Foul" - meaning short of drawing blood, all abuses were acceptable
and wouldn't result in investigations or prosecution.
-
- HRW reported soldiers' firsthand accounts of detainee
abuse by Task Force 20/121/6-26/145 at Baghdad's Camp Nama (an acronym
for Nasty-Ass Military Area) and elsewhere in Iraq.
-
- JSOC's assignment was (and still is) to capture or kill
"high-value" combatants, including Saddam Hussein, Abu Musab
Al-Zarqawi, and many hundreds of Iraqis targeted in sweeping capture and
extermination missions that include lots of collateral killings and destruction.
-
- Through most of 2003 and 2004, detainees were held at
interrogation facilities like Camp Nama at Baghdad International Airport
(BIAP). With good reason, it was off-limits to the ICRC and most US military
personnel. In summer 2004, it was moved to a new location near Balad and
also had facilities in Fallujah, Ramadi and Kirkuk.
-
- US personnel and former detainees reported torture and
abuse as common practice, including beatings, confinement in shipping
containers for 24 hours in extreme heat, exposure to extreme cold, death
threats, humiliation, psychological stress, and much more.
-
- Sergeant Jeff Perry (a pseudonym he requested to avoid
recrimination) was a Camp Nama special interrogator during the first half
of 2004. He said task force members were military special forces and CIA
personnel, none of whom revealed ranks or last names to maintain secrecy.
-
- Five interrogation rooms were used, the harshest called
the "black room" where everything was black with speakers in
the corners and on the ceiling. A table and chairs were in one corner for
a boom box and computer.
-
- Detainees were stripped naked and subjected to stress
standing, sleep deprivation, loud noise, strobe lights, beatings, dousing
with cold water, and other abuses.
-
- Harshness levels were less severe in other rooms, the
"soft room" being least extreme and used for cooperating detainees.
However, throughout interrogations, they were shifted from one room to
another, but those put in the "black room" were considered the
most high-value.
-
- Treatment authorization in writing or by computer came
from the camp's command structure - signed by "whoever was in charge
at the time" reporting to McChrystal or one of his subordinates.
-
- Sergeant Perry saw him visit Camp Nama several times,
and said its commanding officer told interrogators that the White House
or Donald Rumsfeld were briefed on the information they obtained. He also
learned that the facility was "completely closed off" and secret,
and that ICRC, other investigators, and the Army's Criminal Investigation
Command (CID) were forbidden access to it.
-
- In March 2006, The New York Times published a feature
article based on interviews with over a dozen US personnel who served at
Camp Nama or were familiar with its operations. Their accounts corroborated
Perry's and included details of other abuses. Much of the same information
came out about torture at Guantanamo and other overseas US prisons, including
Camp Cropper, Iraq (near Baghdad Airport) now expanded to hold up to 2000
detainees.
-
- HRW reviewed hundreds of "credible allegations of
serious mistreatment and torture (as) standard operation procedure"
at locations throughout Iraq involving special forces, CIA, and others.
Its report is based on firsthand accounts from three locations between
2003 - 2005 when McChrystal was in charge of Special Ops.
-
- On March 31, 2009 on Democracy Now, Seymour Hersh said
US forces conducted assassinations in a dozen or more countries, including
in Latin and Central America. "And it's been going on and on and on,"
he said. George Bush "authorized these kinds of actions in the Middle
East" and elsewhere...." Now Obama's doing the same thing.
-
- "And the idea that the American president would
think he has the constitutional power or the legal right to tell soldiers....to
go out and find people based on lists and execute them is just amazing
to me...."
-
- During his tenure, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld gave the
Special Operations Command (SOCOM) authority to carry out killings anywhere
on the globe. Hersh said "it operates out of Florida, and it involves
a lot of wings." One is "the Joint Special Op - JSOC. It's a
special (Navy Seals and Delta Force) unit....black units, the commando
units....And they promote from within. It's a unit that has its own promotion
structure. And one of the elements....about getting ahead....is the number
of kills you have," especially high-value targets. Cheney was deeply
involved. Robert Gates likely is now.
-
- Targeting goes on in a lot of countries besides Iraq
and Afghanistan, including Colombia, Eritrea, Madagascar, Kenya, or anywhere
to "kill people who are believed....to be Al Qaeda....Al Qaeda-linked
or anti-American" - fictitious outside enemies without which Obama's
wars can't continue nor could they under George Bush..
-
- In his book "America's War on Terrorism," Michel
Chossudovsky uncovered evidence that Al Qaeda was a CIA creation from the
Soviet-Afghan 1980s war, and in the 1990s Washington "consciously
supported Osama bin Laden, while at the same time placing him on the FBI's
'most wanted list' as the World's foremost terrorist."
-
- He remains so today, even though David Ray Griffin's
new book ("Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive?") provides convincing
evidence that he died in late 2001, a conclusion many US counterterrorism
experts support and believe his conveniently timed video messages are fakes.
-
- Capturing or Killing Bin Laden
-
- In a January 2009 CBS television interview, Obama suggested
that he's dead by saying "whether he is technically alive or not,
he is so pinned down that he cannot function. My preference (is) to capture
of kill him. But if we have so tightened the noose that he's in a cave
somewhere and can't even communicate with his operatives, then we will
meet our goal of protecting America."
-
- Nonetheless, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs responded
to the latest purported bin Laden statement that it's "consistent
with messages we've seen in the past from al Qaeda threatening the US and
other countries that are involved in counterterrorism efforts."
-
- So it's no surprise that top administration orders reach
field commanders like McChrystal to capture or kill the usual suspects.
From known reports about him, he carries them out with relish.
-
- The Obama administration gave him carte blanche authority
to choose his staff for their assigned mission - expand the Af-Pak war
with more troops, funding, stepped up counterinsurgency, targeted killings,
and secret drone and other attacks against any targets he chooses in either
country. He'll also have more political control, possibly with a Washington-appointed
civilian authority to run the Afghanistan government day to day, making
Hamid Karzai more of a figurehead than currently.
-
- Obama's war aims to pacify the country and Afghan/Pakistan
border areas through scorched earth terror, targeted assassinations, and
as much mass killing as it takes to prevail. McChrystal has the job, a
man one observer said "comes from a world where killing by any means
is the norm and a blanket of government secrecy provides the necessary
protection." All the greater with Obama's endorsement.
-
- Former 82nd Airborne Division commander General David
Rodriquez, Defense Secretary Gates' top military aide, will be his deputy.
Gates praised McChrystal for his "unique skill set in counterinsurgency"
and said the mission of both men and their team "requires new thinking
and new approaches by our military leaders." Clearly implied are the
Special Ops skills they possess in what an unnamed Defense Department official
called "unconventional warfare....to track and kill insurgents."
-
- These tactics kill many hundreds, displace hundreds of
thousands, and enrage civilians on both sides of the Af-Pak border. Yet
pursuing them is Obama's top war strategy priority that may include Iraq
as violence there heats up.
-
- Operation Phoenix
-
- From 1968 - 1973, the CIA ran or was involved in the
Phoenix Program with US Special Forces and its own Military Assistance
Command Vietnam-Special Operations Group (MACV-SOG) involving covert missions
to crush the National Liberation Front (NLF resistance called the Viet
Cong or VC). One person involved called the operation a "depersonalized
murder program" to remove opposition and terrorize the population
into submission.
-
- In 1975, Counterspy magazine said it was "the most
indiscriminate and massive program of political murder since the Nazi death
camps of world war two." It even targeted certain US military personnel
considered security risks and members of the South Vietnamese government.
-
- In simple terms, the program conducted mass killings
and seizures of suspected NLF members and collaborators with special emphasis
on high-value targets - by some estimates around 80,000 or more before
it ended.
-
- Wayne Cooper was a Foreign Service officer at the time.
He spent 18 months in Vietnam, most of it as a Phoenix advisor at Cantho
in the Mekong Delta. He called the operation a "disreputable, CIA-inspired
effort, often deplored as a bloody-handed assassination program (and) a
failure."
-
- In the mid-1960s, it began as a CIA "Counter Terror
(CT) program "never recognized by the South Vietnamese government."
It "recruited, organized, supplied and directly paid CT teams whose
function was to use Vietcong techniques, kidnappings and intimidation -
against the Vietcong leadership."
-
- By 1968, the program was expanded and called Intelligence
Coordination and Exploitation (ICEX), then Phoenix. From General William
Westmoreland and "Ambassador-for-pacification Robert Komer" on
down, "neutralizing" the VC was top priority.
-
- Westmoreland took charge. A Civil Operations and Rural
Development Support (CORDS) organization was established, under which Phoenix
was run. Cooper cited numerous problems for its failure and criticized
experts sifting through them to get it right next time. He called the program
a "gimmick" unable to "compensate for South Vietnam's"
popular opposition to the war and concluded that no counterinsurgency can
succeed under those circumstances.
-
- Certainly not in Afghanistan and Iraq, two countries
historically opposed to foreign occupations with a record of brave resistance
to end them. They represent what the CIA called Vietnam during that earlier
era - "the grand illusion of the American cause;" the latest
Washington misadventures no matter how long they go on, whatever amounts
are spent on them, or how much mass killing and destruction persist under
any command. America hasn't won a war (or fought a legal one) since WW
II, something Obama might consider as he plans his next move.
-
- Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre
for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at
<mailto:lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net>lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
-
- Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and
listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday
- Friday at 10:00AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished
guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy
listening.
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