Renegade CIA
Bookworm on Mar 22 2007 at 2:45 pm | Filed under: Congress
Whatever else it is, the CIA is not a government office loyal to either truth or the White House. Read this from Robert Novak, and I think you’ll fully appreciate the dishonest political game the CIA is playing — a game entirely separate from its mandate to amass information to aid the US in making decisions in a changing world. Perhaps it’s playing this game because it can do it well, while history shows that, fairly consistently, its intelligence gather, analysis, and covert activities have all been deeply flawed. (The Bay of Pigs fiasco, and the failure to spot either the Fall of Communism or 9/11 are some of the big errors I’m thinking about when I say that.) Anyway, here’s Novak:
Republican Rep. Peter Hoekstra could hardly believe what he heard last Friday on television as he watched a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. Rep. Henry Waxman, the Democratic committee chairman, said his statement had been approved by the CIA director, Gen. Michael Hayden. That included the assertion that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative when her identity was revealed.
As House Intelligence Committee chairman when Republicans still controlled Congress, Hoekstra had tried repeatedly to learn Plame’s status from the CIA but got only double talk from Langley. Waxman, the 67-year-old, 17-term congressman from Beverly Hills, may be a bully and a partisan. But he is no fool who would misrepresent the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). Waxman was correctly quoting Hayden. But Hayden, in a conference with Hoekstra Wednesday, still did not answer whether Plame was covert under the terms of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
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The judge in the Libby “trial” wasn’t able to find out,e either.
But obviously all you have to do is be a democrat.
I would disagree with Novack’s assertion that Waxman’s not a fool, though. Anyone who watched him while Victoria Toensing was on the stand would have been hard-pressed to come up with another explanation.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Valerie Plame affair was a CIA concoction from top to bottom. No one at this point needs to be told that the CIA is corrupt. The question now becomes: How are we going to clean up this agency? Or, Should it be dissolved altogether with parts of it absorbed into other agencies like the NSA and DIA?
I see no reason to have the agency once it goes renegade… and treasonous. The willful undermining of an elected government by an intelligence agency, especially in time of war, CANNOT be tolerated.
Yes, and please explain to me why George “slam dunk” Tennant got a medal.
There’s a reason why pre-9/11 barriers between FBI, NSA, CIA, and Military Intel existed. And this is one of the reasons why. Nobody wanted to give info to another branch, and then have it leaked for somebody’s personal purposes. Keep it in the family, was the go. But the CIA’s been like this ever since they lost their purpose for being, which was always human intel. The military branch always could do SigInt better, given their attempts to break military codes in WWII. So the CIA had to be definitive source for recruiting foreign spies and turncoats. When that purpose got yanked from them… what could they do except decay?
Hearing Neo’s SS cast reminded me of that, and raised a question. If the intel barriers were dropped between the branches… did that mean that the leakers found more stuff to leak?
The funny thing was that one of the ostensible reasons Congress cut CIA”s legs off were that they feared its powers would be used against America. How that is different from today… is perhaps not so clear.
Well, Congress and the 9/11 commission really wanted to create an integrated Homeland Security department. I remember Bush and the Pentagon begging Congress not to do it since it erases checks and balances.
But the 9/11 commission wanted it, and their word was sacrosanct. To challenge it at the time was to dishonor all those people who died on 9/11…
Who knows what monster we’ve created from such precipitous action?
More and more we get these commissions that actually are the ones making the decisions. That’s neither a democracy or a republic. We’re back to mob rule, rule by oligarchy. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
I detest these so-called Bi-Partisan Commissions.
As for the CIA, I have some personal animosity toward that organization and would not trust any of them behind my back for a moment. I suspect the President learned that lesson the hard way. But, then again he should have learned the same thing about nearly every large Washington bureacracy. This bunch too often seem like the gang who can’t shoot straight; all the while behaving in an amazingly arrogant manner. But, maybe I confuse them with George Smiley’s group.
I do give them credit for this. To my surprise they very quickly organized a credible effort in Afghanistan. They seemed to put together a pretty effective para-military force and hooked them up with the Northern Alliance to get things going. Somebody must have had a pretty good data base of former Navy Seals, Marines, and Special Forces. About that time one of my young acquaintances, a former Seal (and enthusiastic trout fisherman), left his Russian studies at UVA very suddenly to take an unspecified contract job in an unspecified location. I wonder if he was on a retainer all along. Don’t know and never heard from him again. Hope he is ok.
One impressive operation isn’t very much considering the enormous cost we bear for this Organization–but it is something. I also suspect the Afghan operation earned Tenant more trust and respect from the President than was warranted.
If I recall, the CIA commander on the ground who did the organizing and chasing wanted a second Ranger unit to seal off the pass to Pakistan. Washington told him no.
That CIA commander is now retired, but I can’t remember his name. He wrote a book. This is how real spy and clandestine folks operate. It is very hard to remember their names, even after they’ve been in the public spotlight. A lot of the successes in Afghanistan can be attributed tothe fact that there was already a competent CIA presence there, in touch with local forces. So there weren’t probably a lot of “bureacrats” on the ground there to mess things up. That combined with SOCOM in charge of the military side of things, means good things.
Oldflyer, I guess the military intelligence fellas had it right. They said they watched the CIA more that they watched the Ruskies during the Cold War. They said those fellas over at the CIA were downright scary.
ymarsakar, one of the things the 9/11 commission nailed down, and I quite agree with them is that virtually cancelling HUMIT during the 90’s was an unmitigated disaster. I understand that since 9/11 we’ve been ramping it our HUMIT again. Does anyone happen to know if we’ve reconstituted them back in the CIA?
Oldflyer,
To be fair though, there hasn’t been a president facing the kinds of issue this president is facing. We faced the Dot.com bust, 9/11 (where we lost about 2-3 trillion dollars a day), manufacturing jobs turning robotic, war in Afghanistan, Iraq, perhaps hundreds of foiled attacks on our home soil since 9/11, tidal waves of illegal immigration, massive debts accrued,…
Gosh, I can go on for the next hour with this, and I’m not even getting to our domestic political troubles!
Our president is walking a very, very fine line. One hiccup can literally cause a great economic depression that would make the previous one look like a Sunday picnic. I actually wonder if that’s the reason he’s so incommunicative. One mistep can bring on calamity.
And he’s doing it all on a bluff, since, if you just look at all the public facts, events appear inexorable. The… ahem… excrement is going to hit the fan at some point. Bush is just trying to buy us time. Hopefully, he succeeds and we’ll still have a Republic through the other side of the storm.
Because when the balloon finally goes up we’re just going to have to make due with what we’ve got. It seems as though Bush is trying to make sure it’ll be enough. Perhaps decades from now we’ll know the full extent of what he’s done for us, even as we revile him and call him a buffoon.
I know the military branches, Army, Marines, Civilian Affairs, probably have more networks of Iraqi spies and informants in aggregate, as a population density, than the CIA in any other country.
Given the rather badly leaked “extraordinary rendition” program run by the CIA (I see leaks as me knowing about it from the media), I tend to think they have ramped things up on the human side, but as to their reliability…. uncertain, and doubtful.
For example. It wasn’t until military intel snatched Iranian agents that there was “proof”, proof enough to kick the Prez into high gear with seizing agents from an Iranian consulate. What was the CIA doing in the years before this? People in America and the blogosphere have known that Iran was messing around in Iraq for awhile now. Why did it take the military to grab some proof before the President could be convinced? Could it be the CIA was feeding the President bad info like they did in 2002 with WMDs?
[...] [Discuss This Topic With Bookworm] [...]
If you were a hummint source in a country hostile to the U.S., why on earth would you agree to work for the CIA, knowing that, in time, the Democrat/Left would expose your involvement? According to British historian Paul Johnson, one of the reasons that Ellsberg’s disclosure of the The Pentagon Papers was fought so avidly by the Nixon Administration was that it revealed the identities of many foreign intelligence sources. People forget that the Democrat/Left has a long history of openly opposing our own intelligence community and exposing its international agents to retribution. Seems that they have done a very successful job of penetrating the CIA. Given the CIA’s recent track record, wouldn’t the U.S. be better off to shut it down and start over?
Thomas, I would never call President Bush a buffoon. I really do understand the fine line that he has been required to walk. I appreciate what he has done despite the vitriol and hate spewed at him by his political enemies. I also understand the enormous power his enemies have through their cozy relationhip with the MSM. I am often amazed that he has held it all together as well as he has.
I am an unabashed George W. Bush supporter. Nonetheless, I do get exasperaed with him; primarily due to his apparent passivity in the face of outrageous actions by his political enemies. He seems to have a natural tendency to accomodate rather than confront. I would prefer to see him break a few political knee-caps–figuratively speaking of course.
My point was that in the early days of his Presidency the CIA did come through in Afghanistan and probably earned more respect for the DCI and the Organization than either warranted–given previous and subsequent performance. Remember also that given that his father had been DCI he may have been more favorably disposed to the organization than he would have been otherwise.
Ymasarker, I would be dubious about information contained in a book by an ex-CIA Commander. I would presume that whatever was said was self-serving. In the first place moving a “second ranger battalion” into place to block the passes to Pakistan sounds like a pipe dream. Depending on the time-frame, and if the CIA guy was requesting it, it must have been early-on; it would have probably been impossible to stage a significant force into any of those passes–and SUSTAIN them there. For starters the vital and very delicate relationship with Pakistan had to be finessed. Of course, many people seem to think that we can just bully Pakistan around and still successfully pursue our aims in that region. Couldn’t be further from the truth. There were very good reasons why the Afghan campaign unfolded as it did.
I didn’t read the book, I mentioned it only for reference in case others may have heard of him.
The info was derived from an interview, and judging from the events, not the people’s testimonies, he pulled off a coordinated op far away from washington DC.
“Good reasons” are no excuse for giving the enemy an escape route or giving the domestic insurgency a propaganda tool. Bush has good reasons to be accomodating and attempting to bring back bipartisanship, but that is no excuse for his passivity and actions.
As for second guessing decisions, Bush doesn’t even tell people what those decisions were or who made them, it kind of makes it hard for anyone to second guess things the President seemingly thinks no longer matter. But just because he thinks it doesn’t matter, doesn’t mean it is true for Americans.
How did the battle change Karzai’s stature? People react to him differently now that he’d sort of won this battle.
From what I could see, Karzai was always taken seriously. Before the battle, he was speaking to the Northern Alliance. He was talking to them specifically about, “Make sure you treat the prisoners well,” and things like that. There was a great deal of dialogue going on. So politically, he had a great deal of clout.
His fight in this campaign could do one of two things for him: If he had lost, he had been driven out of Afghanistan, out of Tarin Kowt, then that would have marred him, because he would have lost a great deal of credibility. In order to be a well-respected leader in that area, you need to be a good leader, have them respect your character and your affiliations to your tribes. They respect how you deal with people.
You also need to have some teeth to back that up. That fight in Tarin Kowt showed that we had teeth, because we didn’t do it with many guys. So it was a huge victory with 30 Pashtuns. It really was a very big victory for Hamid, both militarily, and also in terms of just establishing his credibility with all the other leaders in the area that had been fighting, for decades, in some cases. You know, Hamid Karzai was a leader to be reckoned with.
The reason why I bring this up is I think reasonably simple. Competency is measured by success, and how the case/op officers in Afghanistan worked to produce success, was important. Important enough to render it as a basis to judge the abilities of the commanders on the ground. Including Amerine. Therefore logically, if something goes wrong, then that either meant they were incompetent to start with (now disproven) or something else got into the works. They had tribes covering the pass to Pakistan, but those were unreliable tribes that could be bribed. If the Ops people in Afghanistan knew of the pass, enough to fortify it with tribes, why didn’t they assign a higher priority to it? Unless people back in Washington, Generals or bureacrats, or pressuring them.
There’s always been a big difference between field agents and the bureacrats at home that give them orders. It is true for politics, true for the war in Iraq for the soldiers on the ground, and true for spies as well. For the CIA, that has been perhaps, more true on average than not, compared to their competitor orgs.
One of the reasons of the Plame Gate fiasco is that people trust and rely upon field agents more than they do folks in DC, or Langley, or any other “headquarters” brigade. That’s why they seek to paint Plame as a field agent, someone in the field, doing the dirty work… It’s cosmetics but people believe in it. Real field agents are competent, or they become dead. And the chosen field of a spy has a pretty strict rule. Which is… keep your mouth shut for a specific number of years.
Now I’m going to do some research on Gary Berntsen (after I found his name googling), and I’ll post the links and some important quotes after.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/campaign/interviews/amerine.html
That is the link to the portion I quoted about Karzai and Afghanistan. People should read it, if they have not already, simply in order to get a sense and understanding of what guerrila and clandestine operations are. The military version is different from the CIA version though, just keep that in mind. But the objective is the same. Get local support, use local support to defeat enemies. Simple, but not easy.
I’ve finished my research, more or less. And I’ll state a few conclusions off the top of my head.
One thing, it appeared that Bush in 2001 had a bunch of bureacratic advisers that he listened to. Wrongly, as the case may be. Because of that environment, I tend to think he Bush never really tried to circumvent the leaders of his department, JUstice, Executive, or MIlitary.
This means that Bush was not listening to the commanders on the ground. And it could also be a probable motivation for why he has become so adamant about “listening to the commanders” on the ground in 2004.
Bush wanted Bin Laden. He had a personal picture chart of all the terrorist leaders of Al Qaeda and he was just crossing them off each day whenever one got killed or captured. Bush wanted Bin Laden, that was plain, for anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear free of political prejudices.
I am reasonably certain Bush did conduct his own little personal investigation into what Gary said. And perhaps based upon that, Bush listened more to CIA (Tenet) and more to the military people favoring conventional warfare (non-SOCOM regular Army). It is hard to piece together what actually happened in Bush’s inner circles, because I have no spies on there, but I do have a pretty good take on Bush’s psychological profile and his motivations. That is more than half the battle. If you know what someone’s goals and motivations are, you can predict his actions based upon the scarcests data.
BERNTSEN: We brought in Spectre gunships which can put a bullet on every inch of a football field.
AMANPOUR: Gary Berntsen was the leader of a secret CIA paramilitary unit that had pursued bin Laden since he had fled Kabul. And now, the CIA was sure it knew where he was, thanks in large part to a radio taken off a dead Al Qaeda fighter.
BERNTSEN: We listened to bin Laden for several days using that radio, listened to his communications among him and his men. We listened to him apologize to them for having led them into this trap and having led them into a location where they would be having airstrikes called on them just relentlessly.
…
PETER BERGEN (terrorism analyst): The policy of using very limited number of U.S. Special Forces on the ground calling in airstrikes and a large number of Afghan ground troops worked brilliantly overthrowing the Taliban. But at the battle of Tora Bora, it was a total disaster.
BERNTSEN: In the first two or three days of December, I would write a message back to Washington, recommending the insertion of U.S. forces on the ground. I was looking for 600 to 800 Rangers, roughly a battalion. They never came.
Bergen is being rather myopic with victory disease. Because if you read the interview with Karzai’s A-Team like I recommended, you would understand easily that the difference between “brilliant success” and “total disaster” wasn’t as far as people think it was. The overthrow of the Taliban was not a brilliant success, it just a victory, one battle out of a war we are still fighting in Afghanistan. And the loss of Bin Laden was not a total disaster, a total disaster would be losing 90% of the attacking forces to a trap. That’s total disaster.
I will be posting another comment because I don’t want to put two html links into one post. But first comes the doubt. Get the doubt out of your system first, think about what Gary’s motivations are, or Amanpour, or whatever. Try to remember the past and relive it. It is important for what is coming up next.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200608240013?offset=40&show=1
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/interviews/berntsen.html
Quote fest coming up.
He’s not much of a reader, this President, and never has been, despite White House efforts to trumpet which serious books he is reading at various times. … But he’s a very good listener and an extremely visual listener. He sizes people up swiftly and aptly, watches them carefully, and trusts his eyes.
[...]
The trap, of course, is that while these tactile, visceral markers can be crucial — especially in terms of handling the posturing of top officials — they sometimes are not. The thing to focus on, at certain moments, is what someone says, not who is saying it, or how they’re saying it.
I think that’s just and accurate. Bush on Putin, for example.
And it backs up what I’m saying concerning Bush just not being connected to Gary. Bush never talked to Gary. Gary just sent a message… which probably gets ignored in the DC politics arena. The power comes from the capital, and you have to be in the capital to exert influence on the decision makers. If you are out in the field, that means you are too busy doing your job to play politics. That’s good… to a certain extent, up until leaders like Bush make decisions that obstruct your ability to perform in the field.
So Bush’s ability to analyze the truth then depends wholly upon the people he was meeting. Two guesses who those would be at this time and age. I did say after all that Bush had a bad tendency to listen to his idiotic advisers, and I think this is as good a reason as any why he does so. Bush isn’t weak, he isn’t a puppet, but it also doesn’t mean he is getting the right info for his decisions.
I recommend reading the two links in order, first the one then the second up above. But after you read some of the more relevant quotes here.
*There was a meeting in Kabul … where you were asking for the troops [to come in at Tora Bora]. What happened?*
… I had meetings with the military on the ground there. First we drafted a document which indicated what sort of offensive operations we were taking, where we were going to conduct in Tora Bora. I presented those to the senior officer in the country, who had no interest in looking at it, which sort of surprised me. Finally another very, very senior officer from the CIA … said to me: “Gary, he didn’t look at it because he doesn’t want his fingerprints on it. Things go badly, it’s all on you.” I said, “Well, that’s fine; it’s on me.”And then, of course, I specifically requested to him that we needed to put [in] ground forces. More than once I stated that, and I wrote it, and I documented my requests back to my organization. History will vindicate me if anyone says I’m not telling the truth. Eventually these things will be declassified. They can see the nature of my requests and the dates on those requests, so I’m confident.
*[But couldn't the president have ordered the troops in?]*
… Of course. During the 2004 campaign, when you had the Kerry/Bush discussion on this, and John Kerry says, “The president contracted this all out to the Afghans to do this,” well, that’s not exactly true. … It was mostly us. We had our teams out there calling in air strikes. We did use Afghans as blocking forces, and Delta Force would go in. … The Afghans didn’t want to fight. … We had to pay them, had to yell at them, had to threaten them, had to do all sorts of things to get them to get into combat.
There was truly a fog over what occurred, and it doesn’t surprise me, because there is often lots of bureaucracy between that man in the field, whether he’s a CIA officer or a military commander, and the commander in chief back there. … And the president, of course, relied on the people around him. I don’t think the president was served well. … I know the president would have done anything possible to kill bin Laden at that point, but I’m certain my requests never got to him.
….
*That was your first time in Afghanistan?*
That was my first time in Afghanistan, and it was fabulous. I was thrilled to be there. … Unfortunately, there were some reports that came out of left field … that said, “Bin Laden is aware that there are Americans in the country.” He had put a bounty on the life of any CIA officer that could be captured in Afghanistan and brought to him for $3 million. Our headquarters panicked, and they said, “You have to come out.” …
*Tell me what the mission was.*
Well, we were in there to collect intelligence and, working with the Northern Alliance, to identify one of those key lieutenants near bin Laden … and to snatch him, to kidnap him.
*Did you know who you were after?*
We had two or three choices. … We knew several of the ones that we were looking at.
… Now we come back after being withdrawn. First they tell us, “You have to leave.” … We said, “We can’t, because it’s cloudy.” Well, we were lying. It wasn’t cloudy; it was blue sky, but we were trying to do anything possible to extend our mission on the ground. Finally, [there was an] intervention on the seventh floor [of CIA headquarters]: “No, you have to come out, or we’ll discipline you, because we know you’re not telling us the truth. We’re looking at weather maps.” This is what we were told. So we had to fly, and the Afghans were horrified. They were horrified that we would tell them that we wanted to come … and then [at] the slightest threat we would abandon them. It was disgraceful.
*Who was it?*
It was the CIA’s leadership. I would put that on [Director George] Tenet and [Deputy Director of Operations Jim] Pavitt, put that right on them. It was heartbreaking. When I came back, of those six men, two of those men would resign — … good men — because they were just disgusted. They said, “We’ll go do something else with our lives.”
*And you? Why did you stay?*
I still believed I could do things; I still believed I could make a difference. I was more senior. I had the chance to be a chief of station. When you’re a chief of station, you can make decisions in the field; you can get things done. …
*[Tenet's] reputation among the real working guys?*
Well, he spoke very, very well. I remember seeing George Tenet one time get up in front and give a speech on the agency, and it was wonderful. He talked about how proud he was of his service there and of the workforce. When it came down to making the tough decisions, like on that mission, he did not stand with those of us that wanted to fight. That was terribly disappointing. I think he’s probably a fine man. I think he’s an honest fellow. He wasn’t strong enough to lead under those circumstances, unfortunately. It’s heartbreaking.
*Early part of 2001, a new administration comes to town. Director Tenet is getting face time with the president of the United States. … Does it feel like things are … going in the right direction?*
…
When Bush comes in, you can feel the difference in CIA: that now we have someone who’s concerned and cares about the agency. It’s clear he cares about the CIA. His decision to keep Tenet is based on factors that I don’t fully understand. … But you can feel an optimism. His father had been DCI [director of central intelligence]. … George Bush, the father, understood CIA like no other president. …
When you say “understood,” [he] understood what?
Understood what we did as operations officers. Understood what the product was. Understood how to use the intelligence product. He was masterful in handling the collapse of the Soviet Union, masterful. … I know chiefs of station that would be called back from overseas with the ambassador to be in front of the president and have a discussion with him. … I don’t know any other president that’s done that. That’s using intelligence.
Not everybody can be recruited. It’s just an investment in human efforts. … It’s not always a difficult thing, because I personally believe that America is a force for good in the world, and that’s what you’re selling. You’re selling America, and we’ve done a lot of great things. …
I didn’t know much about Gary, just the remembered recollections of more than a year ago concerning one flimsy segment on Fox News. But I was willing to tentatively support his conclusions. Why? Because it was about comptency, it was about relying upon my logical axioms. If I believe that field officers are one thing and that CIA headquarters are another, more decaying org, then would I not have to place faith unto CIA field offcers? Real field officers.
This is deduction. Basing your analysis and conclusions based upon what you know or assume to be true, and then seeing how the chips fall. How the dice roll, how the cards play out.
Ymasarker, I would be dubious about information contained in a book by an ex-CIA Commander.
Just call me Ymar, shorter and faster.
I’m sure you would be dubious, but the methods by which I analyze events and people require me to not be dubious. Cautious, yes, but not dubious. Because of the events on the ground in Afghanistan, because of the success there in 2001.
I believe actual field agents are different and superior, and I think with the interview with Gary, that my position is strenghtened.
In a sense, my method of determining people’s motivations and whether they are telling the truth or not is the opposite of Bush’s. Bush relies upon personal meetings, like any politician, he rewards personal loyalty and conduct… and he therefore entrusts people based upon these traits. But people have to realize, just because a person is loyal or well meaning, does not mean they are correct… My method uses deduction in order to pierce the veil of illusion, in order to determine if I have a blindspot and where it is. It was a simply a case of either or for me. Either Gary was telling the truth and he was responsible for competent victory, or he was lying and responsible for incompetent disaster. Since I don’t believe Afghanistan or Bin Laden Hunt was a total disaster, even though the results were disappointing, I did not really believe that Gary was trying to grind an axe or attempt to cover up his own problems like Kerry did.
That was based a lot on the interview with Karzai’s A-Team. And on Tenet and Bush and all the others at DC and the media corps.
Deduction in order to determine if I am correct, intuition to determine if someone else is correct.
Mike Scheuer and others have said to us: “It’s not that we lost Afghanistan, but we haven’t yet won Afghanistan. We won the cities, but bin Laden lives in the mountains in Pakistan, and much of the country is still very much in play.” … From where you were sitting, did it feel very much that way? And did you wish that the war on terror had not moved in the direction of Iraq and had finished the job in Afghanistan? Could it have?
I looked at the construction of democracy there. [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai is a figure that is trying to transform the country, … and the initial steps were very positive. It’s a country that’s remote; it’s poor; it’s backward. It’s got several thousand years of producing heroin. Nobody thought this was going to be easy, and no one has invested the amount of money that would be necessary to fix that place. … But they’re making progress. We’ve made a certain amount of investment. We have to recognize that that is going to take a long, long time. …
The second part of your question, as far as going on to Iraq and the war on terror, I looked at Saddam Hussein as a weapon of mass destruction. I was never all that concerned about the fact that whether he did or didn’t — he always possessed the desire to have that. He had a modern industrial state beneath him and oil; he would eventually get them at some point. He had rejected a dozen U.N. calls to open up his programs. … He caused that war. People want to say, “It’s President Bush’s fault.” He caused that war in my eyes.
The problem that we made there was after the invasion: the failure to seize the magic moment; … to maintain order; to not allow rioting; to recognize when the insurgency began and to suppress it quickly. Tactical errors were made in those first six months that have made it almost impossible to catch up … and have cost us dearly the lives of more than 2,000 of our citizens out there. Terrible. But I don’t doubt that we needed to go and to deal with Iraq, because I believe they presented a threat. I’d read the intelligence over the year. I had worked on Iraqi issues when I first began in NE Division, and Saddam was doing horrific things, horrific things. … So he had the desire, he had the intention, to eventually acquire those things to defend his regime. The fact that they weren’t found, quite frankly, to me it didn’t make much of a difference. … The problem is the administration based its argument to the American people on the fact that he had that. …
And there’s your conclusion. I try to make my judgements of a person’s actions and motivations based upon unclouded and unprejudicial outlooks. I wrote this comment without having read the last portion of the interview, which I just pasted in italics.
If my deductive method had been incorrect, if it had branched off on a wrong either-or path, then the conclusion would have more or less demonstrated it, by saying he had an axe to grind given Saddam, or he was against Bush senior and Bush junior…. but he wasn’t, was he. This is no absolute truth, it is just simple confirmation. Each branch of the deductive either-or path builds upon its previous ancestry. The more links there are, the stronger the conclusion becomes. But it doesn’t become more right, since one wrong link will disprove the conclusion. No, it just makes the foundation stronger and harder to make the building fall over. Either the building stands, and it is right. Or if it falls, it is wrong.
As for the logistics requirement of airlifting a battalion, 600-800 of combat light infantry… that is not a pipe dream. How do I know? Because, if I recall, most (if not all) Rangers are Airborne qualified. And with the transport planes mobilized, you could airlift in humvees and equipment for a 600 force. The same way that the 101st was Airlifted into Kurdistan. If the LZ is safe and secure, they go find a landing stripe and land regularly. If the LZ is hot, then they do the parachutes, and drop the equipment with parachutes as well, after suppressing enemy fire of course.
In the first place moving a “second ranger battalion” into place to block the passes to Pakistan sounds like a pipe dream.
OldF, if the President orders it done, it will be done. If the President orders a surge, there will be a surge. If the President orders everyone at GitMo executed right now, that would be done. Pipe dreams are for the powerless, those with the bong, marching to DC and the Vietnam memorial.
[...] ymarsakar @ 2:09 pm This was a couple of comments I wrote at Bookworm’s thread about the CIA. I’d like to save it, both for future reference and I think because it makes a good argument [...]
Sorry Ymar, but I cannot wade through all that. A couple of the names you cited hit me between the eyes, and they make me VERY DUBIOUS.
As for jumping a battalion of Rangers into those passes. I hope you haven’t been watching too much “24″, “The Unit” or some other fantasy. I cannot imagine Paratroopers just jumping into mountainous terrain in large numbers. If you are familiar with any of the significant Airborne Operations throughout history you know that they tend to occur in locations such as Normandy or Holland. Even so, most large airborne operations can classified as disasters. Only the willingness to accept huge casualties for fairly mariginal benefit justified their employment. Yes, they have some utility during huge military operations as a distraction and disruption. That was true at Normandy, but the cost was gruesome. Yes, I know the 173rd jumped into Northern Iraq. This was into reasonable terrain and into an area that was not under immediate threat. The objective of the jump was limited to securing a landing field which they used to get their heavy equipment and logistic support on the ground. So, even if you could have inserted the Rangers in numbers large enough to be significant, this would have just been the beginning of the serious problems. You would have to sustain them without the benefit of an air-bridge or secure road network. I just don’t believe you could have done it by helicopter in the prevailing environment (high terrain, etc.), and certainly not with the number of assets available. Someone conveniently forgets that we had to work very hard to get basing rights in Uzbekistan just to support the operations we had in progress. So-called Experts at the time were screaming because they thought there was too much delay in moving out of the Northern Alliance area. But, the logisitics weren’t there. History is littered with ruined armies who neglected the logisitical details.
I think some of your sources are very good at second guessing and fantasizing.
As regards to declaring lack of victory in Afghanistan, I would say “be patient”. This is a country that was closer to the 17th century in terms of attitude and infrastructure than the 21st. What is a reasonable time-frame for bridging centuries?
I think you’re going to have to read the sources before you get to the real arguments.
When the commanders on the ground say they need such and such resources to complete the mission, there are no excuses, you either get it to them or you don’t. It’s one thing to say that the mission is hard, it is another thing to use that as an excuse to say it shouldn’t be tried.
They were designed to make you dubious btw.
As for Normandy airdrops, they couldn’t synchronize it and the pilots would drop over the wrong zones. So unit cohesion went out. Technology and C3 takes care of those things, with UAV and GPS and global communications. They’re not going to get separated, they will have air support, and they will have logistical support. The Taliban were being burned by Afghani local forces with US SoCom and US AF strikes, you can’t seriously be saying that they can stop air drops.
Airpower was there. Why did a lot of armies die on the vine because their logistics were cut? Cause they couldn’t get resupplied. The Taliban couldn’t cut off our logistics, they were on the defensive, and our logistics aren’t restricted to land. So the historical connections don’t connect, because the technologies are different. They couldn’t even cut our logistics when it was conventional armored warfare in Iraq, the march to Baghdad, armored. These aren’t armored divisions or Apaches we’re talking about. Ammo, food, medical supplies, air dropped humvees and fuel. If the area wasn’t connected to a road but high mountains, they wouldn’t even need the vehicles. But in the end, it’ll depend upon the people, so I’ll ask someone about it.
I got a reply, which concerns the logistical situation, from Matt of Blackfive. Paratrooper of… well just paratrooper I guess.
So my question is, can Rangers or just Airborne be air dropped into such
a terrain, or in some other way mobilized to that location if the order
was cut in 2001 December, and be combat effective?
Yes, you could airdrop. actually, I believe SF forces built helipads in certain key areas to keep the Taliban from returning via those routes. However, probably the most important factor, is that there are thousands of ways through the mountains and probably not possible to put people and keep them supplied on all of them. In December, a lot of them would get frostbite or die from exposure in December.
Just a quick google check showed that Tora Bora occured in April, so weather would be a lot softer. Probably one of the reasons Osama holed up in caves, he would have frozen otherwise. The weather situation wasn’t something I considered, but it does give the situation more dynamics.
So it comes down to the real argument, OldF. Which is, was Gary B competent or not in his leading of the CIA group in Afghanistan? Would he have made good use of 600 Rangers? I say yes to both. There is no automatic guarantee that with 600, Bin Laden would have been caught. But on the basis that Gary knew what he was doing, not having his required force numbers, did raise problems.
Oh wait time skip, Tora Bora was still in December of 2001, quick google check was too quick.
Also I didn’t ask for clarification on whether Matt was refering to the Taliban or the US soldiers concerning frostbite. There were large cases of frostbite in Korea’s winter in the Korean war, but the US mountain training programs have really improved since then, concerning itself with low temperature climates and how to fight in them.
Your Paratrooper contact also made a key point that I thought of addressing but did not. How are you going to close all of the options?
Despite the foolishness put out by Pelosi (even today) and other experts of that calibre, there is a strategy at work. Just from reading the open-sources it is easy to learn that we have watcher teams in the passes. Lord what heroes they are. If they count the gomers coming in and observe where they assemble, then we can zap them with stand-off weapons, and we do.
The biggest problem inside Afghanistan seems to be our NATO allies. As you no doubt know only a hand full of them will even let their troops go into areas where they may have to engage a real enemy fighter. There is wasted man-power, and they have to be fed, clothed and housed. Guess who provides the logistic support for them?
Still, although we keep hearing dire predictions of Taliban resurgence, you probalbly noticed that what is actually happening in Afghanistan is they are going to suicide bombers. That is not a winning strategy.
In my humble opinion the key to Afghanistan is keeping Mushareff (sp?) healthy and Pakistan engaged with us. Too bad the Democrats and the press keep throwing rocks at them. Sure there are problems in Pakistan; but no one seems to notice how many Taliban and Al Qaeda they have taken down over the years. No one acknowledges that we would be up the creek if we did not have base support and over-flight permission. I cannot emphasize the over-flight privilges strongly enough. And no one gives the Bush Administration credit for outstanding diplomacy in getting them involved and keeping them in the fight.
How are you going to close all of the options?
But that’s not really the goal. The goal is to catch Bin Laden. He’s not going to be everywhere, so you need intel. But the CIA group leader already has the intel, or else he was incompetent and would fail. But if he does have the intel on Laden’s location and direction, and by all events he did, then he simply lacks the force to send there to seal off the escape route. We know Laden is trying to escape, and he won’t do it like on a drug lord movie, via helicopter and plane. He’s going to hike it, which is slow.
But in a sense, it is the argument about, do you believe Laden was there or do you believe he wasn’t there. And if you believe he wasn’t there, why would you help Gary the CIA commander out?
You’re just helping my argument out. If you want “spotters” then you need manpower, and not just local manpower, but United States manpower, armed with modern US com systems. Are the local Afghani tribes going to signal via flares when they see Bin laden? If you want lookouts, you must support more manpower, but you don’t, as far as I see it, on a lookback mode.
I don’t disagree with what you are saying about Afghanistan right now or the opposition. But I do disagree with you, if you think the lack of support of the CIA commander wasn’t a mistake. This is Bush’s own philosophy, isn’t it. To listen to the commanders on the ground. If he doesn’t listen to the people commanding the forces, what has he been doing the last few years? I’m not talking about the Left pinching off quotes from Abizaid that say whatever they want him to say, I’m refering to real positions, real support, and work. Minus the politics as much as possible.
And no one gives the Bush Administration credit for outstanding diplomacy in getting them involved and keeping them in the fight.
It is a good thing for Musharref that the media doesn’t shine a spotlight more on his alliance with Bush. It probably really hits his popular image to be seen working with outsiders as if he is a puppet.
Back to the original topic on Plame.
I don’t work for Fox News or right winged Hate Radio. Let’s simply post the key area of the Intelligence Indentities Protection Act. I can post this, because it’s READILY ONLINE FOR ALL TO VIEW, without the filter of the media spinmasters.
>>>”(4) The term “covert agent” means—
(A) a present or retired officer or employee of an intelligence agency or a present or retired member of the Armed Forces assigned to duty with an intelligence agency—
(i) whose identity as such an officer, employee, or member is classified information, and
(ii) who is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States; or
(B) a United States citizen whose intelligence relationship to the United States is classified information, and—
(i) who resides and acts outside the United States as an agent of, or informant or source of operational assistance to, an intelligence agency, or
(ii) who is at the time of the disclosure acting as an agent of, or informant to, the foreign counterintelligence or foreign counterterrorism components of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; or
(C) an individual, other than a United States citizen, whose past or present intelligence relationship to the United States is classified information and who is a present or former agent of, or a present or former informant or source of operational assistance to, an intelligence agency.”
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/ In…26._Definitions
CLEARLY Valerie Plame Wilson falls within the definition of “covert”, under Section 4A, according to CIA Director General Hayden, and her own sworn testimony. Victoria Toensing tried to define Plame under Section 4B, except she neglected to point out the conjunction “or” which separates Sections A & B. For one to CHALLENGE whether Wilson could be defined as “covert”, one has to has access to either classified information, or security clearances high enough to be briefed on the issue by the CIA.
Victoria Toensing has neither. I suspect that most of the people posting here don’t, either.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not carrying water for anybody, but it’s hilarious when I see pundits claiming information as fact that would be illegal for them to have access to in the first place.
–Cobra
I guess this also makes sandy berger a covert agent if you live in Cobra’s world.
The law no longer matters in Washington.
And I think a primary cause of that is that people have allowed the law to do their critical thinking for them. They no longer use reason, they just rely upon the law as a crutch. That’s not how things should work.