Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Edit: Good article, Alex, am only tying a couple more to it .. understand, before and after most always apply ..

Steph: Judge Kollar-Kotelly's devastating conclusions

Judge Kollar-Kotelly added, pointedly, "These abusive techniques did not result in any additional confessions from al-Rabiah, although he continued to parrot his previous confessions with varying degrees of consistency," and then reached her devastating conclusion:

..........[ The Court agrees with the assessment of al-Rabiah's interrogators, as well as al-Rabiah's counsel in this case, that al-Rabiah's confessions are not credible. .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=42122140&txt2find=militaryindustrial|complex,

F6: Accusing an American president of "appeasing" Russia and of "betraying" the Poles and the Czechs, the way critics have been reacting to the Obama Administration's announcement that it was scrapping a planned missile defense shield in Eastern Europe, had the effect of enveloping Washington in a Cold War time-warp.

Remember the good-old days when the perceived Soviet threat had served as an opportunity for politicians, bureaucrats and interest groups, encompassing what President Dwight Eisenhower called the Military-Industrial Complex, to stimulate new arms races in the name of protecting U.S. interests and defending its allies? [...]

Expect the sounding of the alarm by the same critics in the coming days: Beware. The Spirit of Yalta is haunting Eastern Europe and could bring about the "Finlandization" of Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, the Baltic states. [...]

It was not surprising, therefore, that the Russians -- who lest we forget had already dissolved the Warsaw Pact and the entire Soviet Union and withdrawn their military forces from Eastern Europe -- have regarded the planned defense system in Eastern Europe, coming after the continuing extension of NATO to their borders, as part of an aggressive American posture. After all, Russia has no plans to deploy a similar system in Cuba
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Steph: What Obama Is Up Against

The first anniversary of Barack Obama's historic election finds many of his supporters already grousing. Fair enough: Obama has been more vigorous in some areas than others. But one essential question goes unasked: How much can any president accomplish against the wishes of recalcitrant power centers within his own government?

We Americans harbor a quaint belief that a new president takes charge of a government that eagerly awaits his next command. [...]

Compound that with the Bush-Cheney administration's aggressive seeding of its staunch loyalists throughout the bureaucracy, and you have a pretty tough situation. Obama, then, has to contend not only with the big donors and corporate lobbies. His biggest problem resides right inside his "team."

***

The internal battles between American presidents and their national security establishments are not much reported. But if it is an invisible game; it is also a devious and even deadly one. Our civilian leaders end up mirroring the chronically nervous chiefs of state of the fragile democracies to our south.

Those who do not kowtow to the spies and generals have had a bumpy ride. FDR and Truman both faced insubordination. Dwight Eisenhower, who had served as chief of staff of the US Army, left the White House warning darkly about the "military industrial complex." (He of all presidents had reasons to know.) John Kennedy was repeatedly countermanded and double-crossed by his own supposed subordinates. The Joint Chiefs baited him; Allen Dulles despised him (more so after JFK fired him over the Bay of Pigs fiasco), and Henry Cabot Lodge, his ambassador to South Vietnam, deliberately undermined Kennedy's agenda. Kennedy called the trigger-happy generals "mad" and spoke angrily to aides of "scattering the CIA to the wind." The evidence is growing that he suffered the consequences.

In the 1950s, the late Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, a high-ranking Pentagon official, was assigned by CIA Director Allen Dulles to help place Dulles's officers under military cover throughout the federal government. [...]

In December 1971, Nixon learned of a military spy ring, the so-called Moorer-Radford operation, that was piping White House documents back to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Chiefs were wary of secret negotiations the president and Henry Kissinger were conducting with America's enemies, including North Vietnam, China and the USSR, and decided to keep tabs on this intrusion upon their domain. Jimmy Carter came into office as revelations of CIA abuses made headlines. He tried to dismantle the agency's dirty tricks office, but wound up instead a victim of it - and a one-term president.

Those who avoided problems - Johnson, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Jr. - were chief executives that made no problems for the Pentagon and intelligence chiefs. [...]

The old boys' network is very much in place, and it is hard at work to force Obama's hand, a la Vietnam. Witness the leaking of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's supposedly "confidential report" calling for escalation in Afghanistan. The leak was, not surprisingly, to the reliable Bob Woodward. [...] The White House was furious at the McChrystal release. But what could it do? Presidents come and go, and the security folks have ways to hasten the latter.

Covert alliances and payments to corrupt foreign allies continue, making creative diplomacy more difficult. [...] Throughout its six-decade history, the CIA has resisted accountability, [...] .. So Barack Obama is boxed in. [...]

For all the reasons laid out here, Obama will need help. He may, in the rote formulation, hold "the most powerful office in the world." However, the extent to which he controls the government he heads, is another matter.
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fuagf: For the first time that I know of in recent American history, the uniformed military have created what amounts to a pressure group of their own. Generals Petraeus and McChrystal are the leaders but, by influencing or controlling promotions panels, they have fostered the advancement of middle grade and junior officers who agree with them. Some have been brought into a group called “the Colonels’ Council.” They have participated in what Andrew Bacevich has called a “quasi-coup. A small group of individuals, none of them elected or holding appointed office, had joined forces with military dissidents to engineer a change in policy. Those with statutory responsibility for providing military advice to the president were sidelined. It was an impressive achievement, but its implications are troubling. If [retired General Jack] Keane’s manoeuvre proves a precedent, the chain of command will cease to exist.” 18 And numbers of retired senior officers have joined not only in what President Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex” but have become the opinion-makers on foreign policy in the media. Private soldiers and non-commissioned officers have, at the same time, become a major component of the private armies of such groups as Blackwater and form an active part of the constituency of the right wing of the Republican Party.

In the dangerous months and years ahead, if this road is taken, we are apt to hear echoes – particularly in the next presidential election --of the post Vietnam rhetoric that the civilians sold out the military. In short, while this option sounds moderate and “business-like” I believe that it is the worst option for President Obama and, more importantly, for the nation.

Or, fourth, we could Get out.
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