CONNECTING THE iDiOTS

NPR's web scribes, for the Friday ME story "US 'Connects the Dots' to Catch Roadside Bombers" tell us

"With his doctorate from Princeton, Army Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has become the prime example of a special breed of soldier: the warrior-scholar, trained in history and politics as well as how to fight wars. Now there's a variation on the theme: the warrior mathematician, adept in the complex modeling that has become a key part of military planning."

Hey, if it's all about scholars, war, and deep cover thoughts then who better than the CIA's best friend in journalism - Tom Gjelten. And why not honor Reporter Tom with another installment of his own dynamic, hyperlinked comic strip [click on each panel to visit the super-brainy links] :

Warped Times and Time Warps

(image source)

Israel / Palestine

Amazingly, and almost three years to the day, NPR reprises its typically pro US/Israel coverage of the war on Palestinians with a piece that is essentially a repetition of the piece it ran three years ago. Back then it was the much-touted, amazing Bush inspired Annapolis conference for peace in the Middle East and Michele Kelemen was all over it with Aaron David Miller and Robert Malley representing the State Department far right view and the State Department center right view of the matter respectively. Guess what tonight's ATC piece on the Obama State Department's Unbelievalble 90-day Breakthrough for Israel featured? No really, go out on a limb and take a guess:

Kelemen: "Israeli officials say the package includes $3 billion in fighter jets, continued diplomat cover at the United Nations and a promise that the U.S. won't ask Israel to renew the settlement moratorium again three months from now. Woodrow Wilson Center scholar Aaron David Miller says it's a high price to pay but may be worth it."

and

Kelemen: "Rob Malley of the International Crisis Group has his doubts and is troubled by the apparent U.S. assurances that it won't push the settlement issue beyond the 90-day moratorium."

Can you say Groundhog Day?

Afghanistan

And then there's those crazy stopped clocks of Afghanistan. Exactly 17 months ago NPR and General McChrystal assured us that in 12 to 18 months we'd all know whether or not the Obama Nobel Prize winning Afghanistan Surge™ was working. Well it isn't - as any joker could tell you. But don't let past claims get in the way of NPR's hopeful assessments of the new endless war with magically shifting timelines:

First there's Julie McCarthy on ATC:

McCarthy: "Ambassador Holbrooke said...marks a turning point for American and allied forces fighting in Afghanistan...the United States will be in a transition mode with a target date of the end of 2014 for Afghanistan to take the lead for its own security....said it was important to make clear this is not an exit strategy, but a transition strategy....The U.S. and its allies would remain in Afghanistan past 2014. But for training and mentoring...The 2014 date marks the most concrete blueprint to end the war since the president took office. President Obama has set next summer as a starting point for the gradual drawdown of U.S. combat personnel. His envoy said July 2011 still stands."

Makes perfect sense to me (hee, hee).

And then Bob Siegel and Tom Bowman also on ATC:

Siegel: "Well, 2014, the deadline, is still four years off. What do people think there? Is there any way to judge if these forces can actually be ready to take over by that time?"

Bowman: "Well, it's possible. And four years is a long way off, of course, and that would give them time to build up their junior leaders especially. But be careful by the term they're using - takeover. I think even if all works as planned by 2014, and that's frankly a very big if, there will still be a lot of American troops here helping with training and especially logistics."

Now you understand don't you? The 12 to 18 month window was so we could get all geared up for the 3-4 year window, by which time we should be all set for the 10-50 year plan which NPR will no doubt explain. Also worth noting in this sad coverage was Tom Bowman's super empathetic coverage of the ruthless, cynical JSOC night raids that practically guarantee no end to the Afghanistan tragedy. When Siegel asks what's wrong with the night raids Bowman states:

"Well, this isn't a new complaint. But Karzai is rightly concerned about it. The night raids are more likely to get civilians killed, mistakes can be made. You go to the wrong house or the wrong compound. But the U.S. sees this as critical in their efforts to really bring the Taliban to its knees. A NATO officer I spoke with in Kabul says there have been more than 1,000 raids by U.S. Special Forces troops over just the past several months. Hundreds of Taliban have been killed or captured in those raids. So I think Karzai's complaints will, frankly, be dismissed."

Notice how completely Bowman accepts that the civilians are killed only by mistakes and how he asserts that "hundreds of Taliban have been killed or captured" with absolutely no confirming evidence. I challenge anyone to watch and/or listen to Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley discuss their investigations of these night raids and not be struck by their courageous reporting and humanity as opposed to NPR's lazy and crass attitude toward the misery and horror that the US is visiting upon Afghanistan.

Our Lives - Their Deaths : NPR Spins Afghanistan

On Tuesday morning Tom Bowman - embedded with Green Berets (it's special) - proclaims that

"What happened in this village [Azizabad] last summer tightened the rules about the use of air strikes. They should only be used in life or death situations."

Life or death situations: that is a statement that Yossarian would appreciate! Bowman doesn't mention that the lives that count in Afghanistan are US-NATO service members and the throw-aways are any and all others that get in the way of preserving those lives. Robert Fisk summed it up last May after another US air-launched massacre:

"And of course, the reason is quite simple. We live, they die. We don't risk our brave lads on the ground – not for civilians. Not for anything. Fire phosphorus shells into Fallujah. Fire tank shells into Najaf. We know we kill the innocent."

Being embedded with US special forces also tends to constrict and simplify the complexities of Afghanistan into US/them, good-guy/bad guy nonsense. Though he mentions a "tightening of the rules" - Bowman fails to mention the lengths that the US-military went to in trying to cover-up and deny the Azizibad killings - and the subsequent Callan report (critiqued here by HRW) put out by the US military which undercut the premises of "tightening the rules" in the first place.

Bowman's report also features the typical lumping of all insurgent forces under the Taliban name - a distortion that Anand Gopal of the CSM noted in this discussion of insurgent forces in Afghanistan. Bowman has so adopted the language the Green Berets that he states that after the US massacre in Azizibad, US forces pulled back and "allowed the Taliban to regroup and move into the void. Coalition forces call them anti-Afghan forces or AAF." Anti-Afghan forces? According to who? According to what impartial evidence?

Bowman ends his report with this extra shiny assessment of what the US is up to in Afghanistan:

"Fighting among civilians, winning a counterinsurgency takes a particular patience, these soldiers say, and a willingness to make sure your weapons are precise, helping the people, killing only the enemy."

This from a man who last fall reported on the wonderful counterinsurgency efforts of the US during the Vietnam War and then in December gave a glowing report on the use of drone attacks in Afghanistan.

I Hope It's a Trend

Monday morning I missed the segment of Anne Garrels reporting on Special Forces in Iraq. To be honest, I just wasn't interested in ragging on her coverage - but I listened to it on the web today and was flabbergasted. It's a pretty gutsy piece that implies that US Special Forces in Iraq are brutally torturing prisoners

"I happened on a group of Iraqi prisoners who had just been brought in by a joint US/Iraqi special forces team. It was clear the prisoners had been badly beaten; they were covered in blood."

carrying out extrajudicial killings

"Iraqi witnesses say a US Special Forces team interrogated Ahmed, and then shot him. These same witnesses say American soldiers then shot Ahmed's wife."

and trying to cover up their crimes by keeping the media at bay

"...the special forces were angry that I had seen what I had seen and demanded that I be removed from the base."

"....when the US military was asked to provide more information...and access to those who took part in the raid, the request was denied....a request to speak to the head of Special Operations in Iraq was also denied. "

or by simply lying about what is going on.

"...asked about the raid the US military produced a brief press release. It says, 'Unspecified coalition forces responding to hostile intent killed three unnamed suspects.' "

Like the Tom Bowman piece I recently commended, Garrels actually took the time to speak to IRAQI witnesses and quotes them at length, and lets the US military present its version. But she puts it in a context of corroborative testimony, the evidence of abuse she actually saw, and the way in which military press statements obscure names and locations of such abuse.

Her only misstep is when she tells us, "There is only one thing the US and Iraqi accounts agree on: the main target of the raid, Ahmed Mahmood Ali, was probably not a good guy. Both say he had hand grenades; relatives say insurgent DVDs and a video camera, possibly used to document insurgent attacks, were also found in his possession. However, villagers say the other victims were not likely to have been involved with al-Qaeda..." That silly "good guy" "bad guy"stuff comes off pretty strange in this story. Frankly, I don't see how being an insurgent makes someone objectively a good or bad guy - and it certainly does not mean that that person is an al-Qaeda fighter.

Seriously though, I hope that this practice of investigating US operations, talking to witnesses, seeking evidence, and reporting when the military is being secretive, vague or evasive will continue; after all it's the right thing to do...