Missing explosives a drop in the bucket

You may have heard this week about a cache of explosives in Iraq that has gone missing. According to the Washington Post, that cache is just the tip of the iceberg.

The 377 tons of Iraqi explosives whose reported disappearance has dominated the past few days of presidential campaigning represent only a tiny fraction of the vast quantities of other munitions unaccounted for since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government 18 months ago.

U.S. military commanders estimated last fall that Iraqi military sites contained 650,000 to 1 million tons of explosives, artillery shells, aviation bombs and other ammunition. The Bush administration cited official figures this week showing about 400,000 tons destroyed or in the process of being eliminated. That leaves the whereabouts of more than 250,000 tons unknown.

Feel safer?
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More evidence war on Iraq is a distraction from war on terrorism

Yesterday's Washington Post revealed that in March of 2002, only seven months after the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001, the CIA was ordered to scale back operations in Afghanistan in order to divert resources to Iraq.

As jihadist enemies reorganized, slipping back and forth from Pakistan and Iran, the CIA closed forward bases in the cities of Herat, Mazar-e Sharif and Kandahar. The agency put off an $80 million plan to train and equip a friendly intelligence service for the new U.S.-installed Afghan government. Replacements did not keep pace with departures as case officers finished six-week tours. And Task Force 5 -- a covert commando team that led the hunt for bin Laden and his lieutenants in the border region -- lost more than two-thirds of its fighting strength.

The commandos, their high-tech surveillance equipment and other assets would instead surge toward Iraq through 2002 and early 2003....

Twenty months after the invasion of Iraq, the question of whether Americans are safer from terrorism because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power hinges on subjective judgment about might-have-beens. What is not in dispute, among scores of career national security officials and political appointees interviewed periodically since 2002, is that Bush's choice had opportunity costs -- first in postwar Afghanistan, then elsewhere. Iraq, they said, became a voracious consumer of time, money, personnel and diplomatic capital -- as well as the scarce tools of covert force on which Bush prefers to rely -- that until then were engaged against al Qaeda and its sources of direct support.

At the peak of the hunt for bin Laden and his lieutenants, in early 2002, about 150 commandos operated along Afghanistan's borders with Pakistan and Iran in a top-secret team known as Task Force 5. The task force included a few CIA paramilitaries, but most of its personnel came from military "special mission units," or SMUs, whose existence is not officially acknowledged. One is the Army squadron once known as Delta Force. The other -- specializing in human and technical intelligence operations -- has not been described before in public. Its capabilities include close-in electronic surveillance and, uniquely in the U.S. military, the conduct of "low-level source operations" -- recruiting and managing spies.

These elite forces, along with the battlefield intelligence technology of Predator and Global Hawk drone aircraft, were the scarcest tools of the hunt for jihadists along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. With Bush's shift of focus to Iraq, the special mission units called most of their troops home to prepare for a new set of high-value targets in Baghdad.

Task Force 5 dropped in strength at times to as few as 30 men. Its counterpart in Iraq, by early 2003, burgeoned to more than 200 as an insurgency grew and Hussein proved difficult to find.

Much the same drawdown took place in the CIA.

In 2002, the CIA transferred its station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, to lead the new Iraq Issue Group. At least 30 case officers, a knowledgeable official said, joined the parallel Iraq Operations Task Force by mid-2002. By the time war came in Iraq nearly 150 case officers filled the task force and issue group on the "A Corridor" of Langley's top management. The Baghdad station became the largest since the Vietnam War, with more than 300.

Early this year, the CIA's then-station chief in Kabul reported a resurgence of Taliban and al Qaeda forces in three border provinces. He proposed a spring intelligence offensive in South Waziristan and in and around Kunar province farther north. The chief, whose first name is Peter, estimated he would need 25 case officers in the field and an additional five for the station. A national security official who tracked the proposal said CIA headquarters replied that it did not have the resources to make the surge. Peter finished his year as station chief in June.

The article goes on to detail what many experts see as a fundamental flaw in the Bush administration's approach to fighting terrorism: concentrating on individual terrorist leaders and sympathetic governments instead of on the issues that spawn willing terrorist recruits.

Bruce Hoffman of the government-funded Rand Corp., who consults with participants in the war in classified forums, said U.S. analysts see clearly that "you can only have an effective top-down strategy if you're also drying up recruitment and sources of support."

Marc Sageman, a psychologist and former CIA case officer who studies the formation of jihadist cells, said the inspirational power of the Sept. 11 attacks -- and rage in the Islamic world against U.S. steps taken since -- has created a new phenomenon. Groups of young men gather in common outrage, he said, and a violent plan takes form without the need for an outside leader to identify, persuade or train those who carry it out.

[recent terrorist] attacks do not rely on leaders as the Bush administration strategy has conceived them. New jihadists can acquire much of the know-how they need, Sageman and his counterparts still in government said, in al Qaeda's Saudi-published magazines, Al Baatar and the Voice of Jihad, available online.

The formal White House strategy for combating terrorism says that the United States will "use every instrument of national power -- diplomatic, economic, law enforcement, financial, information, intelligence, and military" to triumph. A central criticism in the Sept. 11 commission's report is that the efforts at nonmilitary suasion overseas lack funding, energy from top leaders and what the commission's executive director, Philip D. Zelikow, called "gravitas."

Most officials interviewed said Bush has not devised an answer to a problem then-CIA Director George J. Tenet identified publicly on Feb. 11, 2003 -- "the numbers of societies and peoples excluded from the benefits of an expanding global economy, where the daily lot is hunger, disease, and displacement -- and that produce large populations of disaffected youth who are prime recruits for our extremist foes."

The president and his most influential advisers, many officials said, do not see those factors -- or U.S. policy overseas -- as primary contributors to the terrorism threat. Bush's explanation, in private and public, is that terrorists hate America for its freedom.

James Baker's conflict of interest

This article speaks for itself. Bush family consiglieri James Bakers is being paid by the American taxpayer to help his company cash in on Iraq's debts.

President Bush's special envoy, James Baker, who has been trying to persuade the world to forgive Iraq's crushing debts, is simultaneously working for a commercial concern that is trying to recover money from Iraq, according to confidential documents.

Mr Baker's Carlyle Group is in a consortium secretly proposing to try to collect $27bn (£15bn) on behalf of Kuwait, one of Iraq's biggest creditors, by using high-level political influence. It claims Mr Baker will not benefit personally, but the consortium could make millions in fees, retainers and commission as a result.

Other countries, including Britain, have been urged by Mr Baker to relieve the new Iraq regime of its $200bn debt burden. Iraq owes Britain approximately $1bn.

One international lawyer described the consortium's scheme as "influence peddling of the crassest kind".

Homeland security - or lack thereof

It's been over three years since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 (and 11 years since the first Al Qaeda terror attack on US soil in 1993). George Bush claims he and his administration are doing what it takes to reform the agencies responsible for national, I mean vaterland, I mean homeland security. Has he really? Has anything changed at all?

This week's Minneapolis City Pages (a Village Voice property) ran a group of articles about FBI whistleblowers that reveal how little has changed in the FBI, the main law enforcement agency responsible for investigating terrorist activity on US soil.

Special Agent Jane Turner vs. The FBI
Fred Whitehurst, Whistleblower #1
Senate FBI Watchdog Chuck Grassley on Jane Turner and the Bureau
FBI Whistleblowers: A Short List
More from Sibel Edmonds

But we're supposed to feel safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power in Iraq. Yeah, sure.

Final report: no WMDs in Iraq

1,625 UN and US inspectors spent two years searching 1,700 sites at a cost of more than $1bn. Yesterday they delivered their verdict.

Saddam Hussein destroyed his last weapons of mass destruction more than a decade ago and his capacity to build new ones had been dwindling for years by the time of the Iraq invasion, according to a comprehensive US report released yesterday.

Saddam appears to have lost interest altogether in biological weapons. "ISG found no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW [biological warfare] programme or was conducting BW-specific work for military purposes," the report concluded, adding that "there appears to be a complete absence of discussion or even interest in BW at the presidential level".

As far as making a nuclear bomb was concerned, Mr Duelfer said Saddam "was further away in 2003 than he was in 1991. So the nuclear programme was decaying steadily".

And that's not all:

A separate CIA report, leaked to the US press this week, severely weakened the Bush claim of a link between Baghdad and al-Qaida. It found no clear evidence of Iraq harbouring Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist believed to be behind many of the attacks and now holding the British hostage, Kenneth Bigley.

Hate to say we told you so.
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Rock Against Bush

A little change of pace today: I'm going to talk about music instead of politics. And also politics.

Last night I went to a concert on the Vote for Change tour, a musical event organized by MoveOnPAC consisting of various American popular musicians who want to get George W. Bush the hell out of the White House this November. Different groups of artists are on several tours performing in "swing" states. Minnesota was lucky enough to get Bruce Springsteen and R.E.M. I was tipped off early by an email from MoveOn and bought my tickets as soon as they went on sale.

The concert was at the Xcel Energy Center, a hockey arena in downtown Saint Paul that our previous Republican mayor had built with our tax money (so much for small government). Event parking ranged from $10 to $15, but a hockey fan buddy of mine tipped me off to a hidden on-street parking location so we parked my political bumper-sticker festooned Subaru Forester for free and only had to walk four blocks. At the last minute my date's scatter-brained friend could not ride with us and, since I still had his ticket, arranged to meet us outside. Naturally he was late, so we had time to people-watch. Across the street were a handful of pro-Bush protestors holding very professional-looking signs extolling the virtues of killing Muslims and other core Republican values. One sign made fun of John Edwards for being a lawyer. Hm, millionaire trial lawyer (Edwards) vs. billionaire defense contractor (Cheney). Quite a contrast.

Several people were selling t-shirts and giving away buttons and stickers. There was the classic slogan "Buck Fush", a t-shirt with a photo of Bush wearing lipstick labeled "girly-man", and a photo of Bush and his national security team with the caption "war criminals belong in Abu Ghraib". I also saw a guy wearing a shirt with a picture of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld labeled "War Pigs" with the line "Evil minds that plot destruction" from the Black Sabbath song of the same name. My date doesn't listen to Black Sabbath so she didn't get it. Nobody's perfect.

Eventually our friend showed up and we headed inside. I had only been to the Xcel Center once before, for a hockey game, and I had forgotten about the totally abysmal beer selection. If you see the Twins or the Vikings at the Metrodome you can buy all different kinds of beer from many conveniently located vendors. At Xcel each of the vendors only has Bud Light. Even the lounge only has three kinds, all domestic macrobrews, and none brewed in Minnesota. To get a decent beer you have to go to the one booth per level called "Imported Beer" where, ironically, I bought a Summit which is brewed right down the street. They spend Minnesota taxpayer money to build an arena and they don't even make the effort to stock Minnesota brewed beer. But I'll rant about that another time.

Stationed inside were members of America Coming Together, the organization for whom this concert was a benefit. Their goal is to get people to vote who have never voted before, and the volunteers were there to help register people to vote. But voter registration in Minnesota is automatic when you renew your drivers license so they weren't doing much business.

The first act was Bright Eyes, which I think is the name of the singer, not the whole band, although he does have a backing band. Bright Eyes is a 24-year-old singer songwriter with the deep earnestness you only see in songwriters in their early twenties. He didn't do much for me, but I was glad they included a member of generation Y in the lineup. More on that later.

Bright Eyes played for about 30 minutes. Then there was a short break to set up the stage and R.E.M. came on. I had seen them once before, in 1989, and while they were tight they did not seem energetic enough for me. I felt the same way about this show. I don't know if it was the mix or where we were sitting, but the guitar and bass were not quite loud enough and hard to distinguish. One thing I really like about R.E.M. is the interplay between the sparse, tasteful bass and guitar parts, and that was hard to hear in this setting. I also think they might rock a little more without a second guitarist playing on every song. I should qualify this, however, by saying I don't know many of their songs from the 90s and much prefer their older stuff, so I didn't recognize much of what they played. They opened the set with "The One I Love" followed by "Begin the Begin", but from then on it was all newer material. The only other songs I recognized were "Losing my Religion", which I really like, and "Man in the Moon", which I loathe with every fiber of my being. Fans of their later material probably enjoyed it more than I did; it certainly seemed that way from the crowd reaction. It would have been nice for old-timers like me if they had thrown in one more older song - "Driver 8", "Can't Get There from Here", or even "Orange Crush", but when a band has twenty-four years worth of material they can only cram so much into a sixty minute set. And many of the songs came from their new album and speak, implicitly or explicitly, of the significant events of the last four years.

In the middle of the set Stipe surprised us by saying "Please welcome to the stage Neil Young." Neil Young? He wasn't on the bill! Sure enough, Neil Young came out in faded jeans, a t-shirt with a photo of Geronimo and two Apaches titled "Homeland Security: Fighting Terrorism since 1492", and a "Canadians for Kerry" button. He only played one song with R.E.M., something called "Country Feedback". Springsteen joined the band for "Man on the Moon".

Michael Stipe is always entertaining to watch on stage, and he also made a few comments about politics and urged everyone to vote, even if not for the candidate he was supporting. He mentioned that he was born on an Army base and his father was a career army man - and he was also voting for John Kerry.

Then there was another break. Many in the audience went out into the halls to watch the Twins-Yankees playoff game. I got another Summit.

Finally Bruce Springsteen took the stage. He started alone, playing the Star Spangled Banner on an acoustic twelve-string guitar, which segued into the band playing "Born in the USA", bringing the crowd to its feet. I had never seen Bruce Springsteen before, but I knew that when he played with the E Street Band he had a reputation for tireless crowd-pleasing rock and roll. The reputation is earned. What would be rock-and-roll clichés coming from another band, especially one composed of musicians in their 50s, still seemed genuine from these guys. They mostly played songs from the E Street Band era, rather than Bruce's slower, moodier (but excellent in my opinion) solo work.

Then there was a pause, and Bruce welcomed John Fogerty onto the stage, calling him one of the most influential songwriters of his time and "the Hank Williams of our generation". Fogerty came out with his baseball-bat shaped guitar and made an announcement. "I have the final score. Minnesota Twins: 2. New York Yankees: nothing." The crowd roared in triumph and Fogerty jumped into "Centerfield" (his hit song about baseball for those of you who live in caves). He followed with a song from his new album, followed by "Fortunate Son". "Fortunate Son" was what this evening, this cause, were all about: greedy rich people who don't pay taxes; flag-waving "patriots" who push for wars they know other people will fight; a political class who sells out the people they claim to represent. The moment was marred only a little by Fogerty forgetting some of the lyrics. "I've been singing this song for 35 years. You'd think I'd know the words by now!"

Bruce talked about politics too. He said the idea that America is always right is "a fairy tale". He said that by telling the truth about our country, good and bad, we can discover a deeper patriotism. He urged people to vote in November.

Then Neil Young came back to play "All Along the Watchtower" with Bruce. I'm a fan of Young's work and always enjoyed his sloppy but passionate guitar playing. Well he's been practicing or something because his guitar playing last night was out of this world, manipulating distortion and feedback almost as well as Jimi Hendrix.

Then Bruce brought Mike Mills and Peter Buck out to play along on "Born to Run". Then Fogerty returned to play "Proud Mary"; then Young returned to crank out "Rockin' in the Free World", a song he wrote while Bush's father was president that remains all two relevant (Springsteen sang one of the verses). He changed the last verse slightly:

"We got a kinder, gentler machine gun hand.

They're dying everyday because we didn't have a plan."

Finally everyone on the bill was on stage for the final two songs.

Ever one to find flaws, I wished that Fogerty had played more CCR songs and R.E.M. had played more old stuff, and I would have loved to hear Michael Stipe sing a verse of "All Along the Watchtower" or "Rockin' in the Free World". But musically this concert was incredible. Seeing those four icons on stage together would have been worth $75 even if the money weren't going to a good cause. As the man says, I know it's only rock and roll but I like it.

I was also struck by a feeling of unity. Here were Bruce Springsteen, John Fogerty, and Neil Young, all baby-boomer rock icons in their own way. Then there was R.E.M., a band whose members are on the leading edge of Generation X and whose music was in many ways a reaction against what 1960s rock and roll had become by 1980. While Springsteen was at the height of his popularity with "Born in the USA", playing big outdoor arenas with a large band with a horn section, R.E.M. was four scruffily dressed young men with the rock and roll core of singer, guitar, bass, and drums. In 1969 rock and roll was the free-spirited voice of the counterculture. By 1980 it was a carefully managed revenue generator for greedy men in suits. What had sprung from the working class as artistic expression was now marketed back at them as product.

By the mid 1990s bands like R.E.M. had gone through the transformation from outsider to establishment themselves, leaving it to the next generation to reinvent rock and roll again. But while many artists sold out, others evolved. Seeing them perfom on stage together showed me that these artists, from very different musical and social backgrounds, share many values in common, even if they express them in different ways.

In a similar way, the political and social idealism of the 1960s had degenerated by the 1980s. Stephen King says "We tried for world peace and settled for the Home Shopping Network". Much of that youthful idealism had turned out to be naive in the face of reality. The counterculture of R.E.M.'s generation (which is also my generation) reacted with apathy, cynicism, and nihilism. Like the farm animals in Orwell's Animal Farm we had met the new boss, and found him the same as the old boss. While in a general sense many of us want the same things as our baby-boomer predecessors, we were convinced we couldn't get them by dancing around with flowers in our hair.

Naturally it backfired on us. Having decided that politics corrupts anyone who touches it, many of us stopped voting or at least lost touch with the political process. We took for granted things a previous generation had fought for - more rights and opportunities for women; government assistance for the needy; and end to official sanction of racial prejudice - and felt helpless to stop the conservative backlash that was rolling them back. It has taken the blatant excesses of the Bush administration to wake many of us up, and some among us are still sleeping.

And what of Generation Y? Frankly I don't know. It is the curse of the old not to understand the young. Many younger people I talk to have never been interested in politics. "It doesn't effect my life" is a refrain I hear often. Unlike my generation, many of them have never known a time when one person working 40 hours a week earned enough money to support a family. On the other hand, they have never known a major war, let alone a draft. The cold war is a distant memory; they may well not know what the US was doing to the people of Latin America in the 70s and 80s. They know few details of the Vietnam War, that crucial event in our history, because the generation that writes the history books still hasn't decided how they feel about it.

But last night gave me hope that, despite our different points of view and experiences with the political process, people who love America enough to want to change it and love freedom enough to want to protect and expand it can find common ground and work together.

In November we'll know if I'm right.

Originally posted as an article on Freethought Forum.
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