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    Prez orders mercenaries from Saudi Temp agency. Consumer fraud found.

    By jollyroger on Sun, 01/24/2016 - 12:29am |

    Ostensibly motivated by a tight budget line for fielding proxy armies (aka "boots on the ground, not ours"), President Obama (whom we have previously tagged as not  much of a military strategist) apparently went back to the same folks who sent him Obama bin Laden, (that time he called out for a temp field organizer).

     

    I lay the root of this idiocy in budgetary constraints, because 

     

    “They understand that they have to have us, and we understand that we have to have them,” said Mike Rogers, the former Republican congressman from Michigan who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee when the C.I.A. operation began. Mr. Rogers declined to discuss details of the classified program.

     

    So because in our 700 billion dollar defense package we can't find the money to hire Syrian mercenaries to fight ISIS, we go to the Saudi Temp Mercenary Agency. Because that has worked out so well in the past. So to save money, we hire from Wahabbi Mujahid &^Co., "your truly temporary solution"

    Comments

    The money flowed through a C.I.A.-run Swiss bank account. In the book “Charlie Wilson’s War,” the journalist George Crile III describes how the C.I.A. arranged for the account to earn no interest, in keeping with the Islamic ban on usury.

    What a considerate gesture! 


    by jollyroger on Sun, 01/24/2016 - 12:47am

    Reading the NYT will make you crazy and this story is old-old news KSA/USA shared goals and actions were the norm even with the KSA taking on the intervention duties recently.

    I'm surprised by your ignorant use of the word mercenaries to describe Syrian rebels fighting in Syria for Syrian goals, even the foreign Muslim volunteers can't be branded as mercenaries because they are fighting Jihad not for personal gain.   The only true mercenaries (soldiers of fortune) fighting in Syria were hired by Iran, they are Afghan refugees offered permanent residency, and other enticements, in Iran for their service. The other foreign  militia forces, Hezbollah, Iraqi Shia Militias and others defy easy description but they are foreign Shia forces defending a hereditary, minority, dictator.

    The failed attempt by the US to train and direct  a separate force to exclusively fight the IS is a recent development and has nothing to do with the CIA/KSA arming and training of rebels fighting Assad, it wasn't their operation.


    by Peter (not verified) on Sun, 01/24/2016 - 11:30am

     ignorant use of the word mercenaries

    I will confess to having chosen the term purposively with an eye towards the function as seen from our vantage pint, ie, anyone but us.  And the fact of the matter is that the structural defect imp[licit in choosing to delegate the job of supervision bites us in the ass as badly as if we wre hiring hessians Indeed, some of those guys from South Africa or Australia are more reliable than the rag tag assemblage of civilian life doctors and lawyers that you get with a sincere bunch of rebel

     

     

     


    by jollyroger on Sun, 01/24/2016 - 4:45pm

    Attacking US policies in the ME is fair game but branding Syrian rebels, fighting for their families and home, as mercs and even if they are Islamist is deceptive and matches Axis of Resistance/Russian propaganda. The rebels may depend on the US/KSA for arms and support but have shown they aren't controlled or motivated by US policy, it's their war.

    I don't know what you mean by 'reliable' or 'sincere' or even 'delegating', the rebels are not 'ours' and the KSA is a long time ally and close military partner familiar with the area and factions involved.


    by Peter (not verified) on Sun, 01/24/2016 - 7:58pm

    point taken

     

    The fact of the matter is, I was making fun on a larer perspective of us having any role in this nightmare whatsoever.

     

    The3 proposition that the best thing we can do is discontinue the projetion of force in that part of the owrld is pursuasive.

     

    This guy has a very well  informed perspective on our Middle East adventue, and he says it's time to fold'em.

    http://www.wemeantwell.com

    I beliee thatr Syria will be the UN's shays rebellion, that is, the chaos that scares the states into surrendering sovereignty upward.


    by jollyroger on Sun, 01/24/2016 - 9:28pm

    Before you leap to adduce present EU refugee tensions to the contrary, I am aware that this doesn't seem to be organivally emerging, as it were.


    by jollyroger on Sun, 01/24/2016 - 9:36pm

    Refusing to Recognize Reality The Obama/Clinton/Sanders/Cruz/Rubio/Pentagon/et al. solution — let someone else fight the ground war against IS — is based on what can only be called a delusion: that regional forces there believe in American goals (some variant of secular rule, disposing of evil dictators, perhaps some enduring U.S. military presence) enough to ignore their own varied, conflicting, aggrandizing, and often fluid interests. In this way, Washington continues to convince itself that local political goals are not in conflict with America’s strategic goals. This is a delusion. In fact, Washington’s goals in this whole process are unnervingly far-fetched. Overblown fears about the supposedly dire threats of the Islamic State to “the homeland” aside, the American solution to radical Islam is an ongoing disaster. It is based on the attempted revitalization of the collapsed or collapsing nation-state system at the heart of that region. The stark reality is that no one there — not the Gulf states, not the Kurds, not the Turks, not the Sunnis, nor even the Shia — is fighting for Iraq and Syria as the U.S. remembers them. Unworkable national boundaries were drawn up after World War I without regard for ethnic, sectarian, or tribal realities and dictatorships were then imposed or supported past their due dates. The Western answer that only secular governments are acceptable makes sad light of the power of Islam in a region that often sees little or no separation between church and state. Secretary of State John Kerry can join the calls for the use of “indigenous forces” as often as he wants, but the reality is clear: Washington’s policy in Syria and Iraq is bound to fail, no matter who does the fighting. - See more at: http://wemeantwell.com/blog/?p=18625#sthash.g43XF1A3.dpuf


    by jollyroger on Sun, 01/24/2016 - 9:52pm

    You made some great points.  Thanks. 


    by trkingmomoe on Mon, 01/25/2016 - 4:54am

    the block quote thing failed me--not my words tho i endorse


    by jollyroger on Mon, 01/25/2016 - 2:18pm

    The other Peter writes some useful analysis but i have trouble listening to people who spent their careers projecting US foreign policy and then retire to criticize what they helped accomplish. Even the 'we meant well' is bogus unless he and others at State were Pollyannaish and naive rubes  which i doubt.

    This criticism seems more political and interdepartmental than tactical or strategic, the DOD and WH are making mistakes because they don't listen to the smart people at State, He continues this, they don't understand, meme with 'unworkable national boundaries' that functioned quite well for a century with authoritarian rule until the US blew them up and he almost sounds like he supports the creation of the Caliphate, but i doubt that. Although he doesn't offer any advise as to what should be done he seems to indirectly be saying that the only force capable of confronting the Islamic State is the US military. The quip and dismissal about the IS 'direct threat to the Homeland'  is a clever bit of diversion from the fact that the IS has no need to invade or even terrorize the US. Their existence and possible growth could put them in control of Western and even Chinese civilization/economies through their control of their oil resources or our interests in the region.

    Van Buren does make one important point that the House of Saud is secular, separate from the Salafist Saudi religious establishment but then he proceeds to repeat rumors, opinions  and unsupported Russian propaganda about the KSA and other Gulf monarchies supplying money and arms to their mortal enemies, the Islamic State and AQ.

    Neither the US nor Russia have any appetite for the carnage that would result from sending massive foreign Western/Russian troops into the meat grinder in Syria and elsewhere in the ME, they both have tasted the bitter fruit of trying to defeat rising Political Islam. The new KSA led anti-IS/AQ military alliance with about 30 Muslim nations involved may fail but they know the US is not willing or able to defend them beyond air support.

     

     


    by Peter (not verified) on Mon, 01/25/2016 - 12:21pm

    Their existence and possible growth could put them in control of Western and even Chinese civilization/economies through their control of their oil resources or our interests in the region.

     

    you cannot be serious...


    by jollyroger on Mon, 01/25/2016 - 2:06pm

    you have misunderstood Van Buren's fundamental point.\

     

    Her certainly is NOT advocating inserting US MIlitary as ah alternative to the demonstrably bankrupt proxy army program.\

     

    How did you score in reading comprehension when last tested?

    edit to add Van Buren::

     

    Get out. Land the planes, ground the drones, and withdraw. Pull out the boots, the trainers, the American combatants and near combatants (whatever the euphemism of the moment for them may be). Anybody who has ever listened to a country and western song knows that there’s always a time to step away from the table and cut your losses. Throwing more money (lives, global prestige…) into the pot won’t alter the cards you’re holding. All you’re doing is postponing the inevitable at great cost. In the end, there is nothing the United States can do about the processes now underway in the Middle East except stand on the beach trying to push back the waves. - See more at: http://www.wemeantwell.com/#sthash.NZUFTIxS.dpuf


    by jollyroger on Mon, 01/25/2016 - 5:01pm

    You need to read my comment more slowly, i never used the word advocate but was referring to Van Buren's  opinions about the other countries and groups threatened by the IS and their problems and limitations in confronting them. Inferring that the US is the only military force that 'could' confront the IS  but not advocating more intervention.

    The cut and run scenario above is a pipe dream that no one in power could or would  support, the stakes are too high now. I'm sure Van Buren doesn't support the IS but he seems resigned to their conquest of the MENA which I agree is likely. When or if that happens  the KSA and Iraq will cease to exist and their oil will be controlled by the IS to do with as they please. They may decide to trade with the West but if they don't they could bring down Western and Asian economies and the civilization that relies on that oil.

    The KSA and Iran are enemies but they don't seem to want to do more than skirmish indirectly through proxies while the Islamic State has stated clearly it intends to conquer them both, take their wealth for the Caliphate and exterminate their ruling classes.

    I wonder why VB thinks we can magically isolate ourselves from the Armageddon we helped cause or that isolation would absolve us of our sins but it is too late for that escape.


    by Peter (not verified) on Mon, 01/25/2016 - 10:28pm

    he seems to indirectly be saying that the only force capable of confronting the Islamic State is the US military.

     

    I will deal with the rest at some other time.  I will try to tease out your position from the flouncing and huffing that that you attach by way of messenger assassination


    by jollyroger on Mon, 01/25/2016 - 11:27pm

    I doubt you are up to the task of defending PVB from my 'message' assassination and I wonder who's messenger he actually is.

    VB is/was a career State Department operative, for 23 years, but in one of his missives last year he identified the CIA compound in Benghazi as a US State Department Consulate and when i challenged him about this misdirection he defended his  white lie as common usage or some other nonsense. That was the last word from this messenger I could trust or defend because if after a long career at State he doesn't know what a consulate is or isn't he is stupid or more likely he has an agenda that supports something other than the truth. His parroting the Gulf Monarchies/Islamic State alliance rumors  is just more proof of his unreliability as a messenger.


    by Peter (not verified) on Tue, 01/26/2016 - 12:51pm

    KSA and Iraq will cease to exist and their oil will be controlled by the IS to do with as they please

     

    (openYIT)Because the disappearance of Iraq and KSA will do what, exactly to discomfort the regional (Shia) Persian hegemon how?(CloseYIT).

     

    Edit to add: bearing in mind. the oil in question has Shia living on trop of it, which perhaps escaped your attention

     

    I assume that I do NOT need to explain the ISIS-Iran situation?


    by jollyroger on Tue, 01/26/2016 - 12:42am

    Rush Limbaugh says that Iran is behind ISIS--do you get your talking points here?


    by jollyroger on Mon, 01/25/2016 - 11:51pm

    I distinguish "yit".  Y.I.T. is an acronym. beginning with the word "You".  "I", of course, begins the word "ignorant" and "t" can, in any orderly world, stand for only one word, viz, "twit":


    by jollyroger on Tue, 01/26/2016 - 12:28am

    That Wahidi temp field organizer brought down the $600 billion Soviet army for no extra charge - probably better than Manpower or Kelly temps would have done. 20 years later, someone should have put him on the permanent payroll (though some say they did). Anyway, his typing wasn't worth shit, so as Arnie said, "we had to let him go".


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 01/24/2016 - 12:25pm

    History is replete with double agents who ultimately turned on their prior spymasters.

     

    Many think, while we're on the subject of ISIS and its anteedants, that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's transition from Jordanian Jail to Iraqi Kurdistan prior to the invasion of Iraq was the insertion by Mossad (or Shin Bet, or whoever is in charge of insertion these days) of a double agent into the burgeoning Sunni resistance to toppling Saddam, who really lost his country because of the $5,000 widows/orphans of martyrs fund that he bankrolled.

     

    Pissed off the Israelis beyond all power to describe.


    by jollyroger on Tue, 01/26/2016 - 12:39am

    You should have your own news program.


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 01/26/2016 - 1:50am

    Can't  The 'equipment is embargoed


    by jollyroger on Tue, 01/26/2016 - 2:16am

    You look sooo.. umm... well nice hat! LOL, I had to hide my laughter at work when I saw that pic, I nearly choked on my coffee. Nicely done JR. 


    by tmccarthy0 on Tue, 01/26/2016 - 12:35pm

    Your statement that 'many think', followed by rumorous rubbish makes me think you and this 'many' must be drinking that delicious Flint river water, watch out it will eat right through your TF hat and leave you with foggy thinking and being prone to emotional outbursts.

    The Iranians do appreciate these 'thinkers' and regularly produce news just for them with Onion like convincing fables that prove the Israelis are behind all their enemies and that the Islamic State is led by a Mossad plant.

     


    by Peter (not verified) on Tue, 01/26/2016 - 11:58am

    As I said, the Israelis are pissed off beyond all power to describe.

     

    I understand now the huffing and flouncing.

     

    We have our own hasbarachik.


    by jollyroger on Tue, 01/26/2016 - 1:40pm

    Very Very lame response JR but typical and predictable. The only Israeli I read, respect or would defend is Uri Avnery but I'm sure there are  a few others worthy of support.

    The real depredations committed by Israel are sufficient to condemn them but fantasies and dim witted fables offered by not very clever Iranian propagandists and parroted by their rube believers only make those who write or believe them appear slow and fools.

    I'll leave the huffing and flouncing to an expert, you!


    by Peter (not verified) on Tue, 01/26/2016 - 3:10pm

    < The only Israeli I read, respect or would defend is Uri Avnery

     

    Well, this is a fascinating surprise--(you might ask yourself in passing how it could be, exactly, that a person who admires the estimable Uri could get his scrawny shit talkin' ass mistaken for a hasbara apparatchik.)

     

     

    But I digress.

     

    What I mean to say is that since you invoke Avnery's name, I will try and walk this with you step by step given that we appear to be having trouble making ourselves understood.

    A crude but trenchant index is provi9ded, incidentally, by a simple word count algorithm applied to your perorations thus far, vis-a-vis the extraordinary surplus of ad hominem atttacks upon this or that player or analyst vs. substantive discussion directed at the hypothetical with which I'm sure you recall Van Buren begins his analysis--

     

    you are the adviser to the candidate in whom he places trust on this issue.  Advise him.

     

     


    by jollyroger on Tue, 01/26/2016 - 8:11pm

    Thus far, to review the bidding:

     

     I offered Van Buren's conclusion--do nothing in pursuit of the geopolitical desiderata of the post otttoman post soviet era.

     

    you thought this would lead to IS taking over the worlds' oil

     

    I said "But Persia"

     

    And you say?


    by jollyroger on Tue, 01/26/2016 - 8:14pm

    here

    H e, in detail, for your convenience

     

     

    :

     

    We Have to Do Something So here’s what you might suggest that your candidate do, because you know that s/he will demand to “do something.” Start by suggesting that, as a society, we take a deep look at ourselves, our leaders, and our media, and stop fanning everyone’s flames. It’s time, among other things, to stop harassing and discriminating against our own Muslim population, only to stand by slack-jawed as a few of them become radicalized, and Washington then blames Twitter. As president, you need to opt out of all this, and dissuade others from buying into it. As for the Islamic State itself, it can’t survive, never mind fight, without funds. So candidate, it’s time to man/woman up, and go after the real sources of funding. As long as the U.S. insists on flying air attack sorties (and your candidate may unfortunately need to do so to cover his/her right flank), direct them far more intensely than at present against one of ISIS’s main sources of cash: oil exports. Blow up trucks moving oil. Blow up wellheads in ISIS-dominated areas. Finding targets is not hard. The Russians released reconnaissance photos showing what they claimed were 12,000 trucks loaded with smuggled oil, backed up near the Turkish border. But remind your candidate that this would not be an expansion of the air war or a shifting from one bombing campaign to a new one. It would be a short-term move, with a defined end point of shutting down the flow of oil. It would only be one part of a far larger effort to shut down ISIS’s sources of funds. Next, use whatever diplomatic and economic pressure is available to make it clear to whomever in Turkey that it’s time to stop facilitating the flow of that ISIS oil onto the black market. Then wield that same diplomatic and economic pressure to force buyers to stop purchasing it. Some reports suggest that Israel, cut off from most Arab sources of oil, has become a major buyer of ISIS’s supplies. If so, step on some allied toes. C’mon, someone is buying all that black-market black gold. The same should go for Turkey’s behavior toward ISIS. That would extend from its determination to fight Kurdish forces fighting ISIS to the way it’s allowed jihadis to enter Syria through its territory to the way it’s funneled arms to various extreme Islamic groups in that country. Engage Turkey’s fellow NATO members. Let them do some of the heavy lifting. They have a dog in this fight, too. And speaking of stepping on allied toes, make it clear to the Saudis and other Sunni Persian Gulf states that they must stop sending money to ISIS. Yes, we’re told that this flow of “donations” comes from private citizens, not the Saudi government or those of its neighbors. Even so, they should be capable of exerting pressure to close the valve. Forget a “no-fly zone” over northern Syria — another fruitless “solution” to the problem of the Islamic State that various presidential candidates are now plugging — and use the international banking system to create a no-flow zone. You may not be able to stop every buck from reaching ISIS, but most of it will do in a situation where every dollar counts. Your candidate will obviously then ask you, “What else? There must be more we can do, mustn’t there?” To this, your answer should be blunt: Get out. Land the planes, ground the drones, and withdraw. Pull out the boots, the trainers, the American combatants and near combatants (whatever the euphemism of the moment for them may be). Anybody who has ever listened to a country and western song knows that there’s always a time to step away from the table and cut your losses. Throwing more money (lives, global prestige…) into the pot won’t alter the cards you’re holding. All you’re doing is postponing the inevitable at great cost. In the end, there is nothing the United States can do about the processes now underway in the Middle East except stand on the beach trying to push back the waves. This is history talking to us.

     


    by jollyroger on Tue, 01/26/2016 - 9:10pm

    Reading VB's second rate rambling and schitzo message is getting boring and beginning to remind me of Eastwood lecturing to an empty chair. You may have missed the glaring contradiction in this expanded excerpt where he tells us that we need to bomb the hell out of civilian truck drivers and  Syrian oil fields and then cut and run back to the safe homeland where we need to treat our tame and good Muslims better.

    His nostrums for shutting down the oil trade in Syria, besides blowing it up, just show he never had a real job or understands how the mercantile world operates or even how the IS is financed.

    Next time you might use Sy Hersh as an example of a nutty messenger who at least used to appear to be a first rate reporter.


    by Peter (not verified) on Wed, 01/27/2016 - 11:30am

    You: IS will control the world's oil !!!!!

     

    Me: Bullshit

     

    You: Van Buren is a schmuck, and so is Roger

     

    Me: More bullshit.


    by jollyroger on Wed, 01/27/2016 - 5:36pm

    You ignorant twit


    by jollyroger on Wed, 01/27/2016 - 5:40pm

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