TORTURE MOVES TO AFGHANISTAN

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GENERAL MCCHRYSTAL PACKS HIS DENTAL INSTRUMENTS & JUMPER-CABLES

CHENEY'S CHIEF ASSASSIN & TORTURER
GIVEN A FREE HAND IN PAKISTAN BY OBAMA

YOUTUBE: BBC
"Pakistan News & Analysis on SWAT 10 May 2009"
On the ground, at the end of the day, innocent civilians are at risk: Real people trying to lead normal lives.


To Hell With Winning Hearts & Minds; Or Morality, Or Ethics, Or Law

Welcome to the end of civilization, folks. It's official: Nazi-wannabees on the American Right like Dick Cheney are now in full agreement on the practice of State Terror with "Democrat Socialists" like Barack Obama. What a little power, and a complete lack of law, with no legislative or judicial oversight, can do.

Funny that it's the law & order crowd that are howling for this. They're the ones who usually wail at any expansion of government power. Yet here they are supporting the complete elimination of all civilized norms, all checks and balances, all rule of law. Torture, kill, hunt, assassinate, it's all one big sadistic, idiotic TV show now, like "24." The end justifies the means, even if there is no end. We have become the Enemy. We are the terrorists now.

Leading us right on over the edge of the abyss is our moralistic anti-war candidate of change in 2008. Well, that was then, this is now. Now he actually has power. He's been seduced by it. He is becoming its' creature. Soon, he will be indistinguishable from Cheney.

On the military front, Obama's new man is bringing his "new thinking" to the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It sounds just like the former Secretary of Defense, the much reviled failure, Donald Rumsfeld and his same old twaddle, which was proved so dramatically wrong: That we could send in a few of our "super-soldiers," and use our advantage in "hi-tek" to hunt down and destroy all enemy forces, without sending a whole army to keep the peace. It didn't work in Iraq, it's not working in Afghhanistan, and it damned sure won't work in the neolithic tribal areas of unstable, nuclear-missile-armed semi-Islamic State Pakistan. If anything, McChrystal's well-known tactics of torture, terror, assassination, and all the collateral damage, will alienate the Pakistani's even more than it did the Iraqi's. Then, if we try to leave, the Islamists will be there to fill the vacuum, in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, backed by popular support generated by our terror. No problem. We'll just never leave: The new commanding General says he wants to institutionalise the occupation, start a sort of Afghan Corps of soldiers deployed and redeployed there year in year out many times over many years. Eternal terror.

Of course, we can't do that without people, soldiers, fighters, assassins, torturers. But we can't take them from Iraq, or it will collapse. And we don't have enough now in Afghanistan, according to the General they just fired for saying so. So where are all these warm bodies going to come from for this new war in Pakistan? Does anybody feel a draft? Hey, if the economy doesn't recover soon, maybe we won't need a draft. We'll already have an economic draft. And then there's all those "illegal aliens." Military service is one path to citizenship. If you survive.

Survival could be dicey for an undersized army of torturers and assassins. The Afghans are getting pretty tired of us dropping munitions on their kids. The Pakistani people have never formally invited us into their country. We're just sort of sneaking over the borders, unofficially invading their territory. Not to worry. We're puting a guy in charge who's a master of the cover-up. Sorta. Kinda. But that was before he became the official face of America in the 'Stans. Might be a little harder to keep the press and the Red Cross and Amnesty International and the representatives of the local people blinded and bamboozled, just by hiding out, wearing a ski-mask and saying "that's classified." The Commanding General can't really hide. He has to be the front man. So, I guess we'll see what happens. Everything that happens. Good luck with that, General Spook.


More on McChrystal yesterday.

"MORE POSTS ON THE PASHTUN WAR"


"NEW AFGHAN COMMANDER SPECIALIZES IN LIES"

"THE SECRET WAR"

"THE SURGE, PART DEUX"

"POLLING THE VICTIMS OF GAZ WARFARE"



THE NATION
"New US General Vs. Taliban, Pashtuns"
McChrystal is a great recruiter for Islamism.

' Fuller is an expert on political Islam, and a recurrent thesis in his recent work is that moderate Islamists are the antidote to radical and extremist Islamist movements. He writes: The Taliban represent zealous and largely ignorant mountain Islamists. They are also all ethnic Pashtuns. Most Pashtuns see the Taliban -- like them or not -- as the primary vehicle for restoration of Pashtun power in Afghanistan, lost in 2001. Pashtuns are also among the most fiercely nationalist, tribalized and xenophobic peoples of the world, united only against the foreign invader. In the end, the Taliban are probably more Pashtun than they are Islamist. He writes: "US policies have now driven local nationalism, xenophobia and Islamism to combined fever pitch." His prescription is to reduce the pressures that are inflating Pashtun nationalism and xenophobia: Only the withdrawal of American and NATO boots on the ground will begin to allow the process of near-frantic emotions to subside within Pakistan, and for the region to start to cool down. ... Sadly, US forces and Islamist radicals are now approaching a state of co-dependency. '

TIME MAGAZINE
"Stan McChrystal: The New U.S. Commander in Afghanistan"
Making a career out of a campaign.

' • As commander of special-operations forces in Iraq, he sent troops returning to the theater back to their original neighborhoods — a system he has suggested for general infantry soldiers in Afghanistan as head of a recent task-force review. '

NY TIMES
"A General Steps From the Shadows "
Now the spooks are running the asylum 24/7/52. And on amphetamines, it sounds like. Good for the temperment.

' Most of what General McChrystal has done over a 33-year career remains classified, including service between 2003 and 2008 as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite unit so clandestine that the Pentagon for years refused to acknowledge its existence. But former C.I.A. officials say that General McChrystal was among those who, with the C.I.A., pushed hard for a secret joint operation in the tribal region of Pakistan in 2005 aimed at capturing or killing Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s deputy. When General McChrystal took over the Joint Special Operations Command in 2003, he inherited an insular, shadowy commando force with a reputation for spurning partnerships with other military and intelligence organizations. But over the next five years he worked hard, his colleagues say, to build close relationships with the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. He won praise from C.I.A. officers, many of whom had stormy relationships with commanders running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “He knows intelligence, he knows covert action and he knows the value of partnerships,” said Henry Crumpton, who ran the C.I.A.’s covert war in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. As head of the command, which oversees the elite Delta Force and units of the Navy Seals, General McChrystal was based at Fort Bragg, N.C. But he spent much of his time in Iraq commanding secret missions. Most of his operations were conducted at night, but General McChrystal, described nearly universally as a driven workaholic, was up for most of the day as well. His wife and grown son remained back in the United States. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, brought General McChrystal back to Washington to be his director last August, and the physical proximity served General McChrystal well, Defense officials said. In recent weeks, Admiral Mullen recommended General McChrystal to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates as a replacement for General McKiernan. One other thing to know about General McChrystal: when he was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2000, he ran a dozen miles each morning to the council’s offices from his quarters at Fort Hamilton on the southwestern tip of Brooklyn. “If you asked me the first thing that comes to mind about General McChrystal,” said Leslie H. Gelb, the president emeritus of the council, “I think of no body fat.” '

WASHINGTON POST
"Manhunter To Take On a Wider Mission"
Can a small-force-commanding micromanaging grunt run multiple large multi-national armies in the "graveyard of empires"? Oh, let's just flip a COIN!

' Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the former Special Operations chief who is President Obama's new choice to lead the war in Afghanistan, rose to military prominence because of his single-minded success in a narrow but critical mission: manhunting. To succeed in the more expansive and varied Afghanistan mission, military officials and analysts said, McChrystal will have to transcend the perception that he is, at his core, an Army Ranger, an elite practitioner of rapid-fire raids intended to "find, fix, finish" the enemy. Instead, he will have to embrace the more unwieldy work of building Afghan security forces from disparate tribes, extending governance and cultivating diplomatic skills -- as well as a thirst for endless cups of tea -- that goes along with leading a counterinsurgency campaign. "McChrystal kills people. Has he ever worked in the counterinsurgency environment? Not really," said Roger Carstens, a senior nonresident fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a former Special Forces officer. McChrystal, a 1976 West Point graduate who regularly runs to and from work, is known for tackling assignments with intensity and exhaustive energy, according to military peers who know him well. As a young commander in the 1980s, he "was big into road marching in the Rangers -- he expanded it exponentially," said one officer. McChrystal served as an operations officer for the JSOC in the Persian Gulf War and was chief of staff for an Army task force during operations to overthrow the Taliban government in Afghanistan. McChrystal shuns an armchair style of commanding, and even as a three-star general he often joins his men on operations, officers said. As the JSOC commander overseeing Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, McChrystal spent the vast majority of his time overseas, rather than at his Fort Bragg, N.C., headquarters. '

NEWSWEEK
"Fighting in the Shadows"
Failing upwards: If it didn't work in Somalia, why should the spooks' way work in Afghanistan?

' The U.S. warlord-support strategy is part of a series of clandestine operations around the world conducted with little accountability back home. The broad shadow war is conducted by the CIA, Special Operations commander Gen. Doug Brown, "black ops" commander Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal and the Pentagon's intelligence czar, Steve Cambone, along with his deputy, Lt. Gen. William Boykin. The U.S. strategy of quietly destroying jihadist cells outside Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11 has had its successes. Among them: the capture of Algerian terrorist Abderrazak al-Para in 2004, the assassination of a jihadist leader in Yemen by a Hellfire missile strike in 2004 and the routing of Abu Sayyaf from Basilan Island in the Philippines. Publicly, the administration will not admit to any policy of aiding warlords. But officials with the Red Cross and other aid groups in Mogadishu report seeing "many Americans with thick necks and short haircuts moving around, carrying big suitcases," says one aid official whose agency does not permit him to speak on the record. And in recent months a diplomat critical of U.S. policy in Somalia, Michael Zorick, apparently was removed from his post in Nairobi after writing cables complaining about the strategy. (Zorick, who was moved to the embassy in Chad, could not be reached for comment Friday.) A political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, Lisa Peterson, refused to comment on the reasons for Zorick's departure. But she said that U.S. policy is under review, with State Counterterrorism chief Hank Crumpton currently on a visit to the Horn. Asked whether Zorick's dissent, and the current debate, were mainly about whether Washington might be creating more Islamist radicals than it is killing or capturing, she said, "Those are certainly questions that have come up." At CIA stations in East Africa, some agency officials believe the United States is being "essentially defrauded," says a retired CIA station chief who recently visited there and wanted to remain anonymous because he was discussing sensitive issues. "They think we should take a deep breath and settle down. We're throwing money at anybody who will say they're fighting terrorism." Indeed, some suspects grabbed in recent years by friendly militia leaders have turned out to be mere drifters: in one case, a hapless Iraqi was snatched at a cybercafé in Mogadishu, only to be interrogated for a month and released. '

THE WASHINGTON POST
"Why Did Violence Plummet? It Wasn't Just the Surge."
Obama is about to do the same thing Bush did: try to get out on the cheap, putting in less forces than required and "leveraging" them with Special Ops. But in Iraq, it took more boots on the ground, ultimately. A tough sell, politically. Anyone feel a draft? No. I didn't think so. Not with unemployment this high.

' On one level, the surge was beginning to have its intended effect. Doubling the U.S. forces in and around Baghdad from 17,000 to nearly 40,000, coupled with Petraeus's counterinsurgency game plan, had helped quell some of the sectarian and other violence that had defined the previous year and a half. About 30 joint security stations had been established around Baghdad; security along the borders with Iran and Syria had improved; and the Iraqi army was performing better. In Washington, conventional wisdom translated these events into a simple view: The surge had worked. But the full story was more complicated. At least three other factors were as important as, or even more important than, the surge. These factors either have not been reported publicly or have received less attention than the influx of troops. Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) responsible for hunting al-Qaeda in Iraq, employed what he called "collaborative warfare," using every tool available simultaneously, from signal intercepts to human intelligence and other methods, that allowed lightning-quick and sometimes concurrent operations. [On Friday, Stephen J. Hadley, the president's national security adviser, issued a statement about the news report, asserting that the surge of troops was the most important because it "enabled" the other three. Hadley wrote, "It was the surge that provided more resources and a security context to support newly developed techniques and operations."] '

NEWSWEEK
"Death of a Terrorist"
It took our best people and all their gear three years to get one loudmouth *ssh*le. For that, McChrystal got promoted? Meanwhile, the war in Iraq grinds on. So, what can we expect in Afghanistan? More of the same, or worse?

' Last week's ambush of Zarqawi was a model of military efficiency, a triumph of patient intelligence gathering and high-tech snooping. But it seems fair to ask why it took three years to get him. Ever since Zarqawi emerged as a threat after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, an elite team--the best of the best, men from Delta Force, Navy SEAL Team Six, Army Rangers and other highly trained special operators--has been on the manhunt, backed by spy satellites and code-crunching computers. Their target, while vicious, seemed to be something of a blowhard and a buffoon. In a video released by the Pentagon in May, Zarqawi, oddly baby-faced despite his beard, could be seen strutting in a brand-new pair of New Balance white sneakers peeping out from his black commando garb. He appeared to be having trouble trying to fire an American automatic weapon. Still, Zarqawi hardly seemed to qualify as an Islamic Scarlet Pimpernel. His infamy was, at least to some degree, a creation of the U.S. government, whose spokesmen seized on him as the visible face of Al Qaeda in Iraq--and living proof that the war in Iraq was the main battlefield in the grander global war on terror (GWOT, in governmentese). Though a high-school dropout, Zarqawi was smart enough to spread his message of death-cult jihad by Internet all over the world. The making of Zarqawi is an ugly Pygmalion story; the catching and killing of him is a reminder that noxious weeds, once they take root, are not easily eradicated. '

NEWSWEEK
"Death of a Terrorist"
Who found Zarqawi? Jordan? CIA? Mossad? That's OK, McChrystal will be there to take the credit, and claim he won the war, too. A world-class self-promoting BS artist.

' In the end, Zarqawi may have been brought down by his own vanity and virulence. In an effort to stir sectarian violence, to pit Shiites against Sunnis in civil war, Zarqawi had staged several bombings against Shia holy places, including a February attack against a revered shrine in Samarra. The bloodbaths had their desired effect; Iraq seemed to be verging on all-out civil war. But they brought a reprimand from bin Laden's chief lieutenant, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who chided Zarqawi for turning public opinion against Al Qaeda by targeting fellow Muslims. By the time Zarqawi was making videos of himself in April, he was increasingly marginalized and in danger of betrayal. "He felt under pressure, and he felt he was losing power," says a senior Jordanian security official who declined to be identified discussing intelligence. Zarqawi had recently formed a mujahedin Shura Council to put more of an Iraqi face on the insurgency. The tape was an effort to assert his control, says the official, who adds, "It was a big mistake. The minute the tape was released was the beginning of his end." The Jordanians had been aggressively seeking Zarqawi ever since his forces bombed three hotels in Amman in November, killing 60 people and wiping out a wedding party. In December, King Abdullah, wearing the uniform of the Jordanian Special Forces, personally told his top intel officers, "I am not going to wait for Zarqawi to come and hit Jordan." In short order, an elite unit called the Group of the Knights of God was established to hunt the outlaw. It appears that the Jordanians were the first to penetrate Zarqawi's network, although even Jordanian officials concede that the final attack on Zarqawi was the work of American special operators. The details remain murky, but military and intelligence officials laid out a basic outline of the final hunt. At some point about two weeks before the attack, the Americans learned the identity of Zarqawi's latest spiritual adviser, Sheik Abdel-Rahman. American intelligence began to stalk him, following his movements by an aerial drone, hoping he would lead the Americans to Zarqawi. Some news organizations also reported that American spooks had an informer inside Zarqawi's inner circle. It is hard to know for sure: American intelligence has been known to plant disinformation about spies and traitors in order to sow distrust among terrorist cells. U.S. intelligence officials, asking to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the matter, would say only that the Americans were able to piece together a mosaic from human sources, aerial reconnaissance and electronic intercepts. '

NY TIMES
"TASK FORCE 6-26: Inside Camp Nama; In Secret Unit's 'Black Room,' A Grim Portrait of U.S. Abuse "
Even the DIA, the CIA and the FBI objected to McWonder-Boy's harsh treatment of prisoners of war. He got promoted. His subordinates got court-martialed. Leadership, much? He's a West-Pointer, all right: Advanced CYA training.

' Most of the people interviewed for this article were midlevel civilian and military Defense Department personnel who worked with Task Force 6-26 and said they witnessed abuses, or who were briefed on its operations over the past three years. Many were initially reluctant to discuss Task Force 6-26 because its missions are classified. But when pressed repeatedly by reporters who contacted them, they agreed to speak about their experiences and observations out of what they said was anger and disgust over the unit's treatment of detainees and the failure of task force commanders to punish misconduct more aggressively. The critics said the harsh interrogations yielded little information to help capture insurgents or save American lives. ''We take all those allegations seriously,'' Gen. Bryan D. Brown, the commander of the Special Operations Command, said in a brief hallway exchange on Capitol Hill on March 8. ''Any kind of abuse is not consistent with the values of the Special Operations Command.'' General Brown's command declined requests for interviews with several former task force members and with Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who leads the Joint Special Operations Command, the headquarters at Fort Bragg, N.C., that supplies the unit's most elite troops. Cases of detainee abuse attributed to Task Force 6-26 demonstrate both confusion over and, in some cases, disregard for approved interrogation practices and standards for detainee treatment, according to Defense Department specialists who have worked with the unit. Some complaints were ignored or played down in a unit where a conspiracy of silence contributed to the overall secretiveness. ''It's under control,'' one unit commander told a Defense Department official who complained about mistreatment at Camp Nama in the spring of 2004. Just beyond the screening rooms, where Saddam Hussein was given a medical exam after his capture, detainees were kept in as many as 85 cells spread over two buildings. Some detainees were kept in what was known as Motel 6, a group of crudely built plywood shacks that reeked of urine and excrement. The shacks were cramped, forcing many prisoners to squat or crouch. Other detainees were housed inside a separate building in 6-by-8-foot cubicles in a cellblock called Hotel California. Task Force 6-26 was a creation of the Pentagon's post-Sept. 11 campaign against terrorism, and it quickly became the model for how the military would gain intelligence and battle insurgents in the future. Originally known as Task Force 121, it was formed in the summer of 2003, when the military merged two existing Special Operations units, one hunting Osama bin Laden in and around Afghanistan, and the other tracking Mr. Hussein in Iraq. (Its current name is Task Force 145.) The task force was a melting pot of military and civilian units. It drew on elite troops from the Joint Special Operations Command, whose elements include the Army unit Delta Force, Navy's Seal Team 6 and the 75th Ranger Regiment. Military reservists and Defense Intelligence Agency personnel with special skills, like interrogators, were temporarily assigned to the unit. C.I.A. officers, F.B.I. agents and special operations forces from other countries also worked closely with the task force. In January 2004, the task force captured the son of one of Mr. Hussein's bodyguards in Tikrit. The man told Army investigators that he was forced to strip and that he was punched in the spine until he fainted, put in front of an air-conditioner while cold water was poured on him and kicked in the stomach until he vomited. Army investigators were forced to close their inquiry in June 2005 after they said task force members used battlefield pseudonyms that made it impossible to identify and locate the soldiers involved. The unit also asserted that 70 percent of its computer files had been lost. Despite the task force's access to a wide range of intelligence, its raids were often dry holes, yielding little if any intelligence and alienating ordinary Iraqis, Defense Department personnel said. Prisoners deemed no threat to American troops were often driven deep into the Iraqi desert at night and released, sometimes given $100 or more in American money for their trouble. Accusations of abuse by Task Force 6-26 came as no surprise to many other officials in Iraq. By early 2004, both the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. had expressed alarm about the military's harsh interrogation techniques. The C.I.A.'s Baghdad station sent a cable to headquarters on Aug. 3, 2003, raising concern that Special Operations troops who served with agency officers had used techniques that had become too aggressive. Five days later, the C.I.A. issued a classified directive that prohibited its officers from participating in harsh interrogations. Separately, the C.I.A. barred its officers from working at Camp Nama but allowed them to keep providing target information and other intelligence to the task force. The warnings still echoed nearly a year later. On June 25, 2004, nearly two months after the disclosure of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, an F.B.I. agent in Iraq sent an e-mail message to his superiors in Washington, warning that a detainee captured by Task Force 6-26 had suspicious burn marks on his body. The detainee said he had been tortured. A month earlier, another F.B.I. agent asked top bureau officials for guidance on how to deal with military interrogators across Iraq who used techniques like loud music and yelling that exceeded ''the bounds of standard F.B.I. practice.'' American generals were also alerted to the problem. In December 2003, Col. Stuart A. Herrington, a retired Army intelligence officer, warned in a confidential memo that medical personnel reported that prisoners seized by the unit, then known as Task Force 121, had injuries consistent with beatings. ''It seems clear that TF 121 needs to be reined in with respect to its treatment of detainees,'' Colonel Herrington concluded. By May 2004, just as the scandal at Abu Ghraib was breaking, tensions increased at Camp Nama between the Special Operations troops and civilian interrogators and case officers from the D.I.A.'s Defense Human Intelligence Service, who were there to support the unit in its fight against the Zarqawi network. The discord, according to documents, centered on the harsh treatment of detainees as well as restrictions the Special Operations troops placed on their civilian colleagues, like monitoring their e-mail messages and phone calls. The tensions laid bare a clash of military cultures. Combat-hardened commandos seeking a steady flow of intelligence to pinpoint insurgents grew exasperated with civilian interrogators sent from Washington, many of whom were novices at interrogating hostile prisoners fresh off the battlefield. ''These guys wanted results, and our debriefers were used to a civil environment,'' said one Defense Department official who was briefed on the task force operations. Within days after Admiral Jacoby sent his memo, the D.I.A. took the extraordinary step of temporarily withdrawing its personnel from Camp Nama. Military and legal experts say the full breadth of abuses committed by Task Force 6-26 may never be known because of the secrecy surrounding the unit, and the likelihood that some allegations went unreported. In the summer of 2004, Camp Nama closed and the unit moved to a new headquarters in Balad, 45 miles north of Baghdad. The unit's operations are now shrouded in even tighter secrecy. General McChrystal, the leader of the Joint Special Operations Command, received his third star in a promotion ceremony at Fort Bragg on March 13. On Dec. 8, 2004, the Pentagon's spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, said that four Special Operations soldiers from the task force were punished for ''excessive use of force'' and administering electric shocks to detainees with stun guns. Two of the soldiers were removed from the unit. To that point, Mr. Di Rita said, 10 task force members had been disciplined. Since then, according to the new figures provided to The Times, the number of those disciplined for detainee abuse has more than tripled. Nine of the 34 troops disciplined received written or oral counseling. Others were reprimanded for slapping detainees and other offenses. The five Army Rangers who were court-martialed in December received punishments including jail time of 30 days to six months and reduction in rank. Two of them will receive bad-conduct discharges upon completion of their sentences. Human rights advocates and leading members of Congress say the Pentagon must still do more to hold senior-level commanders and civilian officials accountable for the misconduct. '

WIKIPEDIA
"Camp Nama"
The U.S. military's version of Hell.

' Camp Nama is a military base in Baghdad, Iraq, originally built by the government of Saddam Hussein, from which its name derives, and now used by U.S. military forces. Purportedly, the original Iraqi name has been repurposed by U.S. personnel involved with the facility as an acronym standing for "Nasty Ass Military Area". After the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the camp was taken over by elite American Special Operations forces. The main purpose of the camp was to interrogate prisoners for information about Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The New York Times reported on 19 March 2006, the three-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion, that the elite unit, known as Task Force 6-26, used the facility to torture and abuse prisoners both before and after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. Some of the torture took place in "The Black Room," which used to be a torture chamber when Saddam's government ran the facility. The camp was the target of repeated warnings and investigations from U.S. officials since August 2003. There were placards around the camp that read "No Blood No Foul," a reference to the notion, described by a Pentagon official, that "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it." The report included an extensive interview with one Sergeant, using the pseudonym "Jeff Perry", who worked as an interrogator with the task force running the detention center. Sergeant "Perry" indicated that written authorizations were required for most abusive techniques, indicating that the use of these tactics was approved up the chain of command: Techniques involving outright assault—hitting, slapping, and beating—were apparently not on the list, but were regularly used at Nama, indicating that the harsh methods that were approved often degenerated into even harsher treatment in practice. '

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
""No Blood, No Foul""
Here's the rest of McNasty's record.

' Soldiers' Accounts of Detainee Abuse in Iraq: July 22, 2006: Torture and other abuses against detainees in U.S. custody in Iraq were authorized and routine, even after the 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal, according to accounts from soldiers in this 53-page report. Soldiers describe how detainees were routinely subjected to severe beatings, painful stress positions, severe sleep deprivation, and exposure to extreme cold and hot temperatures. The accounts come from interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch, supplemented by memoranda and sworn statements contained in declassified documents.
"I was very annoyed with them because they were saying things like we didn't have to abide by the Geneva Conventions, because these people weren't POWs. . . . [T]hey're enemy combatants, they're not POWs, and so we can do all this stuff to them and so forth. . . . It just went against everything we learned at Huachuca." - Military Intelligence Interrogator attached to a secretive task force stationed at CampNama, at Baghdad airport in Iraq, describing a briefing by military lawyers in early 2004 after soldiers raised concerns about abusive interrogation methods.
Human Rights Watch asked whether Jeff knew whether the colonel was receiving orders or pressure to use the abusive tactics. Jeff said that his understanding was that there was some form of pressure to use aggressive techniques coming from higher up the chain of command; however neither he nor other interrogators were briefed on the particular source. "We really didn't know too much about it. We knew that we were only like a few steps away in the chain of command from the Pentagon, but it was a little unclear, especially to the interrogators who weren't really part of that task force." Jeff said that he did see Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. Joint Special Operations forces in Iraq, visiting the Nama facility on several occasions. "I saw him a couple of times. I know what he looks like." '

More on McChrystal yesterday.
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NEW AFGHAN COMMANDER SPECIALIZES IN LIES

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ALSO COVER-UPS, ASSASSINATIONS, TORTURE & BACK-STABBING

YOUTUBE: CSPAN
"Mary Tillman - No More Smokescreen"
McChrystal's Biggest Lie. That we know of. So far.



DISLOYAL GENERAL MCCHRYSTAL RECOMMENDED
HIMSELF FOR THE JOB

More Of A Spook Than A Soldier, McChrystal Goes Along To Get Along

Rambo? Jack Bauer? Miles Gloriosus? Haven't we heard this all someplace before? Oh, yeah, Iraq: Commanding General gets sh*t-canned for being honest and saying right up front that the job will take a lot more manpower. That's what US Army four-star General Eric Shinseki told Dumbya about Iraq way back in 2003. Dumbya dumped him. Turned out Shinseki was right. Dumbya then took credit for finally following Shinseki's advice four years later by staging a "surge" of tens of thousands of additional troops in Iraq. Of course, this was not until years of brutal fighting had taken many lives, many more than it would have, if only Dumbya had listened to an honest commander in the field.

Curiously, the new guy in Afghanistan claims he won the war in Iraq all by himself, and not by surging, but by counter-insurgency: Special Ops, not massive manpower: Assassinations, torture and psychological warfare against friend and foe alike. So, which was it that "won" the war in Iraq? The surge, or the spooks? Can we trust this guy McChrystal to tell us anything honestly?

After all, he's the lying fool that tried to cover up the friendly-fire death of NFL star Pat Tillman by awarding him a posthumous silver star, which he plainly knew the man did not deserve, dishonoring all those who had died heroically to win that medal, the third-highest honor in the US military. What kinda guy is this new guy?

Dishonest? Dishonorable? Overweeningly ambitious? Treacherous and self-serving? Unscrupulous and barbaric? Or just an buddy-f**ker? He recently got tasked to evaluate the job another General was doing in Afghanistan. Somehow, his recommendations included replacing that guy with himself. Back-stabber? Power-hungry careeerist? Not the right man for any job?

Well, Gates & Obama think he's OK, so we know he's really good at ass-kissing and bull-sh*tting, two important skills for a politician, if not a General. And now he's in charge of our brand spanking new war in Pakistan, as well as our tired old war on Afghanistan. This is the guy that got Iraq's most wanted, Al Zarqawi, of Al Qaeda. (Or maybe it was the CIA that tracked him down. Or Jordan. Or Israel. Anyway, McSpook took the credit. Shows intitiative!) Is he the man to get Osama Bin Laden? By any means necessary, as in Iraq? And would that include trampling on the locals like he did in Iraq, further destabilizing Pakistan, and turning it into the first nuclear-missile-armed fundamentalist State, already in jihad with its' Hindu neighbor, nuclear-missile armed India? And then there's those oppressed Uigur Muslim brothers just across the border in nuclear-missile armed anti-Muslim communist China. Russia's in range, too.

Sure you wanna do this, Barack? Seems like lighting up a cigarette by the gas pumps. Are you 100% SURE this is the right man for this rather delicate job? Can you really trust him not to screw up like he did in Somalia? Think about it. Ooops. Too late. It's a done deal. And Barack is already covering up for McTorture, reversing his own decision to release torture fotos. Wouldn't look good before a Senate hearing confirming the new guy in Afghanistan, now, would it?


More on McChrystal tomorrow.

"MORE POSTS ON THE PASHTUN WAR"

"TORTURE MOVES TO AFGHANISTAN"

"THE SECRET WAR"

"THE SURGE, PART DEUX"

"POLLING THE VICTIMS OF GAZ WARFARE"


STARS & STRIPES
"McKiernan out of Afghanistan command "
We can't win a war in Afghanistan, so let's just do a TV show there. 24? The Rumsfeld Comedy Hour? "Back To The Future"?

' Gen. David McKiernan was forced out as head of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, a move Defense Secretary Robert Gates said was needed to find new ways to end conflict there. "From a military perspective, we can and must do better," Gates said at a news conference Monday. "Our mission there requires new thinking and new approaches from our military leaders." Time Magazine recently highlighted McKiernan in their annual "World’s 100 most influential people" issue. In February he predicted a "tough year" of fighting for U.S. forces in the country, and warned the deployment of 30,000 new troops into Afghanistan might not be enough to continue progress past the end of this year. Daniel Markey, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, called the move shocking. "I was under the impression that McKiernan’s role was pretty firm here." "His strategy has been consistent with what they want to do in Afghanistan," he said. "He’s been one of the main proponents of moving away from targeted counter-terror activities to a broader approach. There were no tensions that I knew of. So this really is a surprise." Both Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen highlighted the new nominees’ experience in Afghanistan as a key reason for their appointments. "Gen. McChrystal and Gen. Rodriguez bring a unique skill set in counterinsurgency to these issues," Gates said. "They will provide the kind of leadership we’ve been talking about." McChrystal lead Joint Special Operations Command for nearly five years prior to assuming his current post. He will receive a fourth star upon taking over the Afghanistan role. For the last month, he headed a task force focused on improving the effectiveness of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. In 2007, McChrystal was the highest-ranking officer chastised by Army Criminal Investigative Command in their investigation of Pat Tillman’s death, calling him "accountable for the inaccurate and misleading assertions" in the documentation for his Silver Star. However, investigators said they did not see evidence of a cover-up in that friendly fire incident. '

YAHOO NEWS
"Reboot in Afghanistan: Gates replaces top general"
"Resources or no" Freudian slip, or statement of policy?

' Despite seven years of effort by the U.S. and allies, Afghanistan remains a battleground with an unstable government, a flourishing opium trade and suicide attacks by supporters of al-Qaida. Obama approved 17,000 additional combat forces for Afghanistan this year, plus 4,000 trainers and other noncombat troops. By year's end, the United States will have more than 68,000 troops in the sprawling country — about double the total at the end of George W. Bush's presidency but still far fewer than the 130,000 still in Iraq. McKiernan and other U.S. commanders have said resources they need in Afghanistan are tied up in Iraq. On Tuesday, Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for Afghanistan's defense ministry, praised McKiernan's role in improving relations between international and Afghan forces while also "doing his best to conduct the military operations in a better way." Azimi listed three priorities that McChrystal should focus on when taking over the command: "Prevent civilian casualties, strengthen the quality and quantity of Afghan forces, and focus more on coordinating the military operations with Afghan forces." Monday's announcement came a week after Afghan civilians were killed during a battle between militants and U.S. forces. Gates visited Afghanistan last week to see firsthand what preparations and plans were under way to set the president's counterinsurgency strategy in motion. "As I have said many times before, very few of these problems can be solved by military means alone," Gates said Monday. "And yet, from the military perspective, we can and must do better." He indicated that the Afghan campaign had long lacked the people and money needed due to the Bush administration's focus since 2003 on the Iraq war. "But I believe, resources or no, that our mission there requires new thinking and new approaches from our military leaders," Gates said. '

TIME MAGAZINE
"Why the Pentagon Axed Its Afghan Warlord"
"New thinking" in Afghanistan ordered by same old guys in charge all along at the Pentagon. It sounds more like OLD thinking: No more troops for the Afghan War.

' The move was yet another dose of accountability from Gates, who has previously cashiered officers for failing to tend to hospitalized troops or to secure nuclear weapons. But Monday's action was more momentous: It marked the first time a civilian has fired a wartime commander since President Harry Truman ousted General Douglas MacArthur in 1951 for questioning Truman's Korean War strategy. (See pictures of U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan.) The Obama Administration has made Afghanistan the central front in the war on terror over the past month, it had concluded that McKiernan's tenure there had involved too much wheel-spinning even as the Taliban extended its reach. There was not enough of the "new thinking" demanded by Gates. "It's time for new leadership and fresh eyes," Gates said, refusing to elaborate. He noted that Joints Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, and General David Petraeus, who as chief of U.S. Central Command oversees the Afghan war, had endorsed the move. Officers have typically served about 24 months in the slot, meaning McKiernan had served less than half his expected tour. Military experts anticipate that U.S. policy in Afghanistan more militarily pointed as well as politically deft, once McChrystal and Rodrigues, his 1976 West Point classmate and fellow Afghan vet, are confirmed by the Senate. "McKiernan did his best - he was just the wrong guy," says retired Army officer and military analyst Ralph Peters. "McChrystal will ask for more authority, not more troops." By the end of this year, the U.S. expects to have close to 70,000 troops in Afghanistan, including 21,000 ordered there by Obama. While that's just half the 130,000 troops the U.S. maintains in Iraq, Gates has been leery of sending further reinforcements. Not everyone welcomed the change, however. Some viewed McKiernan's firing as unfair, noting that he had inherited command of an under-resourced Afghan theater that had been a secondary priority to Iraq. "In Afghanistan, we do what we can," Mullen himself had said in December 2007. "In Iraq, we do what we must." And while McKiernan was given his Afghan command during the Bush Administration, it had been Gates who had appointed him - at Mullen's recommendation. '

BBC
"Profile: Gen Stanley McChrystal "
The Rumsfeld Doctrine redux?

' Gen McChrystal, with his background in special forces, represents the future of warfare as envisaged by Mr Gates and President Barack Obama - away from conventional military planning, towards modern, asymmetric war fighting. The man he is replacing - Gen David McKiernan - rose to prominence in 2003 as the leader of all coalition and US conventional ground forces during the invasion of Iraq. Following the invasion, he clashed with Washington over the troop levels needed in the country - he wanted more troops than civilian commanders were prepared to provide. Time magazine's Joe Klein described Gen McKiernan as "one of our finest generals, especially when it comes to conventional warfare." "If you need to get a force from the Kuwait border to Baghdad in three weeks, he's the guy to do it." But his removal from command in Afghanistan suggests President Obama does not believe Gen McKiernan is "the guy" to turn around the coalition's deteriorating military position in central Asia. He clearly believes that Gen McChrystal's special ops tactics are more likely to get the job done. '

NOVOSTI
"New commander for same Afghan force"
Even the Russians seem to have a better handle on the Afghan War than the Pentagon does.

' General McKiernan succeeded in increasing the number of U.S. troops almost twofold - from 25,000 to 40,000, but failed to achieve a breakthrough in the war against Taliban. The General requested additional 10,000 troops, but the request was refused by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who simultaneously had to deal with rebels in Iraq. Secretary Gates did not share the General's approach to securing a victory in Afghanistan through significantly increasing the U.S. troops in the country. According to Secretary Gates, other means are necessary. '

THE WASHINGTON POST
"Sympathy for McKiernan Among Officers"
The knives were out, the man is gone, his fellows honor him too late.

' News of the abrupt removal yesterday of Gen. David D. McKiernan from his command in Afghanistan generated some dismay in Army circles, although U.S. military officers and analysts voiced strong support for his likely replacement. Sympathy ran high for McKiernan among Army officers because, they said, the relative shortage of U.S. troops in Afghanistan had tied his hands in combating a deepening insurgency. McKiernan "was running a very under-resourced theater and doing as well as anyone could expect," said one senior officer. This officer and others would discuss their views only on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the record. Moreover, officers said, McKiernan, who was admired as a solid commander and one with integrity, did not deserve to have his career ended by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates requesting his resignation. "I am disappointed for General McKiernan to go out this way," the officer said. "I don't think that this sort of an ending to his career is fair." '

SLATE
"It's Obama's War Now"
Obama becoming Dubya? Gates becoming Rummy? Afghanistan 2009 becoming Iraq 2003?

' McKiernan's ouster signals a dramatic shift in U.S. strategy for the war in Afghanistan. And it means that the war is now, unequivocally, "Obama's war." The president has decided to set a new course, not merely to muddle through the next six months or so. First, let's clarify a few things. When a Cabinet officer asks for a subordinate's resignation, it means that he's firing the guy. This doesn't happen very often in the U.S. military. McKiernan had another year to go as commander. (When Gen. George Casey's strategy clearly wasn't working in Iraq, President George W. Bush let him serve out his term, then promoted him to Army chief of staff.) Gates also made it clear he wasn't acting on a personal whim. He said that he took the step after consulting with Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command; Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and President Barack Obama. According to one senior official, Gates went over to Afghanistan last week for the sole purpose of giving McKiernan the news face-to-face. '

GUARDIAN ONLINE
"Obama's rosy Afghanistan plan"
Still sacrificing Afghanistan to Iraq.

' Time and again, General David Petraeus, the architect of the surge and the current US central command (Centcom) chief, has warned that the recent gains in Iraq are "fragile and reversible". Should those warnings materialise as the US loosens its grip on Iraq, they could dramatically impede Obama's promise to build up in Afghanistan, which he has called the "central front" in fighting terror. With an all-voluntary US military force stretched across two major conflicts in recent years, any troop increase in Afghanistan necessarily requires an accompanying drawdown in Iraq. Obama's plan calls for up to 50,000 troops remaining in Iraq through 2011 after all combat troops return home next August. Those "transitional forces" have prompted criticism even from Obama's allies on the left, but it remains unclear whether they or the US civilian presence in the country can solve challenges that have become almost endemic to Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003. '

VANCOUVER FREE PRESS
"Changing wartime generals in Afghanistan"
Changing commanders is much, much, much easier than changing Afghanistan.

' What's need is "fresh thinking, fresh eyes on the problem," said Secretary Gates, explaining why he was appointing General Stanley McChrystal to the job instead. So what should General McChrystal's fresh eyes see? He could start by understanding that the United States is not fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is fighting the entire Pashtun nation, some 30 million people, two-thirds of whom live across the border in Pakistan. That border has never really existed for the Pashtuns, who move freely across it in peace and in war. The Taliban are entirely Pashtun in membership, and always were. When they ruled southern and central Afghanistan in 1996-2001, they were hated by the other ethnic groups (who never lost control of the north), and even by many Pashtuns. But the U.S. invasion effectively drove not just the Taliban but the Pashtuns in general from power, in a country that Pashtuns have dominated for several centuries. To minimize U.S. casualties, the United States made an alliance with all the non-Pashtun ethnic groups of Afganistan (the "Northern Alliance") in 2001. There really was no American land invasion; it was the Northern Alliance that defeated the Taliban, with considerable assistance from American B-52 bombers. It was a clever strategy, but it perpetuated what was effectively an Afghan civil war between the Pashtuns (40 percent of the population) and all the other ethnic groups, Tajik, Hazara, and Uzbek. It is warlords from those other groups who have controlled the Afghan government ever since. "The political, religious and economic mafia are all Northern Alliance people," says Daoud Sultanzoy, a member of parliament from Ghazni province, exaggerating only slightly. "Nobody outside the Northern Alliance is in the government." Except, of course, President Hamid Karzai, the token Pashtun, who is mockingly known as "the mayor of Kabul". This is not a war about ideology, even if all the American and Taliban commanders insist that it is. The Pashtuns are fighting to regain at least a major share of power in Afghanistan, while the U.S. and other foreign troops are for all practical purposes allied to the other ethnic groups. That is why ALL the fighting is in the Pashtun-majority provinces. There is no point in trying to win over Pashtun "hearts and minds". The war will only end when the Pashtuns regain a big share of the power at the centre (and the loot that comes with it). And no matter how fresh General McChrystal's eyes are, it's unlikely that he can deliver that. '

THE WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT
"Did McChrystal’s Command Recommendations Herald His New Afghanistan Job?"
The back-stabbing little ass-kisser recommended himself for the job.

' One more thing really quickly about Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s ascension to commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. On Friday, I blogged about changes in the command structure in Afghanistan emanating from, among other places, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s review of Afghanistan strategy. What I should have noted, in retrospect, is that McChrystal chaired that review. I don’t know this for certain by any stretch, but chances are that was an audition for the job. '

NAVY TIMES
"Tillmans: Senate should scrutinize McChrystal"
The dead come back to haunt the General who dishonored them.

' The parents of slain Army Ranger and NFL star Pat Tillman voiced concerns Tuesday that the general who played a role in mischaracterizing his death could be put in charge of military operations in Afghanistan. In a brief interview with The Associated Press, Pat Tillman Sr. accused Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal of covering up the circumstances of the 2004 slaying. "I do believe that guy participated in a falsified homicide investigation," Pat Tillman Sr. said. In April 2004, McChrystal approved paperwork awarding Tillman a Silver Star after he was killed by enemy fire — even though he suspected the Ranger had died by fratricide, according to Pentagon testimony later obtained by the AP. The testimony showed that McChrystal sent a memo to top generals imploring "our nation's leaders," specifically the president, to avoid cribbing the "devastating enemy fire" explanation from the award citation for their speeches. In 2007, the Army overruled a Pentagon recommendation that McChrystal be held accountable for his "misleading" actions. In a book published last year, Mary Tillman accused McChrystal of helping create the false story line that she said "diminished Pat's true actions." Her one-sentence e-mail to the AP on Tuesday said: "It is imperative that Lt. General McChrystal be scrutinized carefully during the Senate hearings." '

REGISTAN.COM
"A Double-Edged Sword"
Torturing, lying, covering up required skills in Afghanistan?

' General McChrsytal carries with him a dark side as well. One unit under his command, the now-notorious Task Force 6-26, which was assigned to find HVTs, or High Value Targets in Iraq, is credited with the ultimate death of Zarqawi. The problem is, along the way they faced accusations of running a secret camp that tortured prisoners, and they were implicated in at least two detainee deaths during torture sessions. Their camp, called Camp Nama, became something of a lightning rod after a “computer malfunction” destroyed upwards of 70% of their records and an investigation into their conduct stalled out. More relevant to Afghanistan is GEN McChrystal’s involvement in the shameful coverup of Pat Tillman’s friendly-fire death. While he was named among the list of high-ranking military personnel believed to have covered up the circumstances of Tillman’s death, GEN McChrystal was “spared because he had apparently drafted a memo urging other officials to stop spreading the lie that Tillman died fighting the Taliban. He drafted that memo, however, after signing the award for Tillman’s posthumously-awarded Silver Star, the commendation for which claims, in part, that he was leading the charge against a Taliban assault. GEN McChrystal has never clarified why he signed an award for Tillman dying under enemy fire right before begging his colleagues and superiors to stop lying about Tillman dying under enemy fire. '

THE ATLANTIC
"Cheney's Man For Obama's War"
Cheney is still in charge?

' But what the blogs have been talking about at length and what the mainstreamers seem to be afraid to acknowledge, is that McChrystal can be placed at the very center of the controversy the Obama Administration is now wrestling with and Cheney seeks to defend: the torture and abuse — sanctioned and delegated from the top — of battlefield detainees throughout the GWOT theater under President Bush. It doesn’t take long to click through and read in-depth accounts of the goings-on under McChrystal’s special operations command in The Atlantic (May 2007) and Esquire (August 2006) '

THE ATLANTIC
"Obama Reverses Course On Torture Photos"
And so it begins...

' In what can only be seen as a stunning reversal, the president is now refusing to release photographs that would help prove that the abuse and torture techniques revealed at Abu Ghraib were endemic in the Bush military. I can't help but wonder if this is related to his decision to appoint Stanley McChrystal as the commander of his Afghanistan war and occupation. There is solid evidence that McChrystal played an active part in enabling torture in Iraq, and his activities in charge of many secret special operations almost certainly involved condoning acts that might be illustrated by these photos. The MSM has, of course, failed to mention this in their fawning profiles of McChrystal. '

FREE REPUBLIC.COM
"The Hidden General Stan McChrystal runs 'black ops.' Don't pass it on "
"Jedi knight"? Alas, journalism!

' JSOC is part of what Vice President Dick Cheney was referring to when he said America would have to "work the dark side" after 9/11. To many critics, the veep's remark back in 2001 fostered his rep as the Darth Vader of the war on terror and presaged bad things to come, like the interrogation abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. But America also has its share of Jedi Knights who are fighting in what Cheney calls "the shadows." And McChrystal, an affable but tough Army Ranger, and the Delta Force and other elite teams he commands are among them. '

THE COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW
"McChrystal Clear"
Obama adopting right-wing death squad approach that didn't work in Afghanistan?

' JSOC has considerably more success fending off the press than, say, the NSA. But in March, it made another of its rare appearances in the news. First, The New York Times reported that the U.S. had, in February, temporarily halted some of JSOC’s raids in Afghanistan, “reflecting a growing concern that civilian deaths caused by American firepower are jeopardizing broader goals there.” Seymour Hersh was giving a talk at the University of Minnesota around the same time and, citing reporting from a book he’s working on, described JSOC thus: "It’s an executive assassination ring, essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on… Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us." Hersh later had to backpedal. (“I must drive my editors crazy when I say things that are loaded,” he said.) But he stuck to his guns, so to speak. “JSOC… has been given executive authority by the president in as many as 12 countries to go in and kill, we’re talking about high value targets” without congressional oversight, he told Wolf Blitzer, who rejoined, “Is there anything wrong with that?” Hersh thinks so. But counterinsurgency scholar Andrew Exum of the blog Abu Muquwama was dismissive. It’s not like JSOC is some partisan task force that went away when Obama got elected… I don’t think any of us would dispute the need for highly-trained, highly-specialized commandos capable of carrying out ‘capture or kill’ or hostage-rescue missions of some high degree of strategic importance. '

PAKISTAN DAILY TIMES
"Afghan war rules set to change"
Mark the official beginning of the Pakistan War.

' The new US commander in Afghanistan, Lt-Gen Stanley McChrystal, is likely to be willing – unlike his predecessors – to fight on both sides of the border with Pakistan, the New York Times has announced. McChrystal, it says, is a counterinsurgency expert who for years has viewed the violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a single problem. Senior US officials told the paper that Gen McChrystal would have no “explicit mandate” to carry out military strikes in Pakistan. At the same time, current and former officials said he was ideally suited to carry out a White House strategy that regards Afghanistan and Pakistan as a single problem. “For him to be successful, he’s going to have to fight the war on both sides of the border,” said Robert Richer, a retired CIA officer who has worked with McChrystal. Two officials said McKiernan had resisted the creation of a new operational command in Afghanistan that Gates announced on Monday. McChrystal not only supported the plan, but has also pressed for the creation of a new cadre of American officers who would specialise in Afghanistan and serve repeated tours there. '

THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
"Biography of Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal "
Well, the Illuminati seem to like him. Hm. I thought Obama was against them?

' Assignment: Aug 99 - Jun 00 Military Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, New York, New York '

More on McChrystal tomorrow.
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