Tag Archives: Centcom

The Pentagon creates the ultimate terror in Pakistan

Posted on by
1

Now that the US neocons have lost their favorite dictator stooge, Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf, they are left with a troupe of rotating circus clowns to work with. It’s like the Bush Administration looked around and asked itself, ‘How can we create more terrorists to fight?’ They came up with the thought that it would really work to destabilize Pakistan as much as possible, and this they are now on a quest to accomplish.

Pakistan has 170,000,000 people and is an unnatural political creation in the best of times. But add to the situation the Pentagon, and voilà! Now add to that nuclear weapons! Add to that some Muslim fundamentalism! Add to that Christian fundamentalism! BANG!!!!!!!!!

As a deeply religious person, I have to ask myself, What Would Jesus Do? And as a deeply political person, I have to ask myself, What Would President Sarah Palin Do? And last of all, What would the new commander of CENTCOM, General Petraeus Do? This is kind of a radioactive situation now brewing, is it not?

What is nice about all this, of course, is how the Man Bringing Change, Barack Obama, is also set out to throw some more bombs into this whole thick brew. Isn’t he inspiring? The guy and his good buddy Joe want to get US kids to fight in this area of their ‘great foreign expertise’! Never mind President Palin. So don’t you just pity the poor people of Pakistan? What a future they have ahead for themselves. And what a future our kids will have, too.

Admiral Fallon walks off the job

Posted on by
6

I don’t want to fail giving Admiral Fallon his due, as commander of Centcom, he probably has kept America from nuking Iran. Since before the Esquire article, speculation has been that Fallon would have to be removed before Bush and his weapons suppliers could expend their ordnance on Iran.

They’re lining up the UN Security Council proverbial three strikes and you’re out against Iran, Admiral Fallon may have been the last hurdle. Without begrudging the admiral, I question what the “military experts” are saying was the wisdom of Fallon’s stepping down. If you disagree with the Commander in Chief, you relinquish your post -or some such protocol.

Even a human rights activist might agree. Sooner than participate in an act which in good conscience you cannot condone, your responsibility would be not to do it. I have a concern that perhaps requires more than a criminal lawyer’s expertise: If you are being ordered to carry out a crime, in this case a WAR CRIME, is it enough to step aside in objection, leaving your subordinates to carry it through? Is it enough to voice your objection, however loud you are able to do it?

Might it not be your ethical duty, especially as when it had fallen under your authority, to prevent the crime being committed at all? And that would not mean simply impeding the action, or obstructing the personnel under your command, but also engaging the legal mechanisms of oversight at your disposal. To my mind it would mean initiating a review and the legal proceedings against whoever in the chain of command was trying to break the law.

Imagine at the firing lines in the Katyn Forest, or overlooking the ravine at Babi Yar, walking away because you refused to issue the orders. Is that anymore than saying you hadn’t the stomach for it?

Ann Frank of Mesopotamia

Posted on by
1

Ann Frank, like Abu Tariq, would not have belonged to al-Qaida-in-the-Land-of-Two-Rivers eitherThe DoD CENTCOM PR Department reports having recovered the diary of an al-Qaeda leader (now killed). In it, he despairs the surge is working. Gosh, they think they can embed the insurgent dead?

In addition to cursing the usual “scoundrels, sectarians and nonbelievers,” the journal keeper complains about CLCs, or Concerned Local Citizens, who are taking up arms against them. We are to believe, I suppose, the terrorists share our own DoD’s predilection for acronyms, last year’s Awakening Forces having fallen from favor.

Is there a Western equivalent to al-Qaeda? Several? Beside state sponsored terror. For terrorism outreach, would CIA black-ops qualify? What about Blackwater? You know, an unaffiliated privately funded force, tasked with wreaking havoc, maintaining security, but the offensive variety. Successful American commando operations are generally kept under wraps. Probably the most notorious western covert agency would be the Mossad, the long retaliatory arm of the Israeli secret service.

The closest al-Qaeda comes to being identified with a nationality would be Afghanistan. The US retaliated against Afghanistan for the assumed al-Qaeda connection to 9/11. Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda sprung from mujahideen, Afghan resistance groups which fought against the Soviet invaders for the Taliban Islamist extremists.

The American occupiers in Iraq claim they are up against al-Qaeda in Iraq (our translation for al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia). That must be an insulting prospect to Iraqis who have reason and drive enough to mount their own insurgency. When US military spokesmen assure us that al-Qaeda is unpopular with Iraqis, it cannot fail but to be proved true. Otherwise the elusive terror network is conveniently like Harvey the [invisible] pink elephant. If the veracity of those doing the telling is beyond question, Harvey is everything they say, and being invisible, you wouldn’t be expected to see him.

If America was invaded, and our valiant citizens mounted a desperate insurgency, wouldn’t we find it odd to have our occupiers keep claiming they were fighting the Mossad? Or the-Mossad in America, or the-Mossad in the Land Between Two Oceans.

CENTCOM is central command of what?

Posted on by
3

Mecca in our talonsAs the invasion of Iraq progressed, I remember constant references to CENTCOM. Journalists would receive their briefings from CentCom, a tent in Kuwait by all appearances. I thought CentCom represented central military communications there, a safe spot behind our lines where generals could command artillery, logistics, etc.

Learning about the newly formed AFRICOM and the established EUROCOM, each beachhead assertions of US superpower control over world regions, I have to revisit US CENTRAL COMMAND for what it is, and its terribly telling dominion. Central? By the emblem I see you don’t mean the time zone. You are not talking about defense of the American Midwest. Do you really mean to refer to the Middle East, including its extended oil producing nations, as the center of your realms to command? I’d sooner concede to American ethnocentrism than to Judeo-Christian pre-occupation with Jerusalem, sooner than hold Mecca in the center cross-hairs of our bomb sights.

I’m happy to report there are currently no eager takers for Bush’s announced AFRICOM, command central for our extraction-industry ambitions on that continent.

After Bin Laden’s loudly felt complaint about the US unholy presence in Saudi Arabia, CENTCOM facilities had to be moved further from Mecca, to the crony dictator states of Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and the UAE. The US Central Command assets include many military bases and undisclosed “weapon pre-positioning sites,” six of which have been revealed to be located in Israel.