From Bu$hia, With Love

by pessimist

As if the United States isn't already deep in the dung up to our eyebrows, Bu$hCo is seeking new ways to stir the stuff:

Pentagon seeks greater powers to combat terrorism

The US Defense Department is seeking powers to allow Special Operations forces to enter foreign countries to combat terrorist threats without seeking permission from resident US ambassadors, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

Gee - do you think that just maybe the foreign national governments would have something to say about this?

Special Operations missions envisioned in the plan would largely be secret, known to only a handful of officials from the foreign country concerned, if any, the report said.

Oh - that's supposed to make it all OK?

The plan would weaken the long-standing "chief of mission" authority under which the US ambassador -- as the president's top representative in a foreign country – decides whether to grant entry to US government personnel based on political and diplomatic considerations. The Pentagon sees the greater leeway as vital in enabling commando forces to launch operations quickly and stealthily against terrorist groups without time-consuming inter-agency debate, said administration officials.

Not to mention getting the OK of the national government in question! Who needs their approval, anyhow?

Both the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have opposed the proposal on the grounds that it would be dangerous to dilute the authority of US ambassadors and CIA station chiefs to oversee US military and intelligence activities in other countries.

I guess they aren't good Bu$hido, are they?

Over the past two years, the State Department has repeatedly blocked Defense Department efforts to send Special Operations forces into countries surreptitiously and without the' formal approval of ambassadors, the report quoted current and former administration officials as saying.

One has to wonder why the Bu$h (mis)Administration wouldn't be listening to the input from those whose job it is to know the country to which they have been assigned to represent the US?

Add this to the mix, and things could really get interesting!

Pentagon seeks more leeway in special ops

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has also made it clear that she does not intend to allow US envoys’ authority to be weakened.

Could there yet be hope for this proven incompetent? Considering these reports - maybe:

Anonymous sources described an instance for the daily when US commanders attempted to dispatch Special Operations forces into Pakistan without ambassadorial approval but were rebuffed by the State Department. The soldiers eventually entered Pakistan with proper clearance but were ordered out again by the ambassador for reckless behavior. According to the Washington Post source there were "SF [Special Forces] guys in civilian clothes running around a hotel with grenades in their pockets".

Another case involved a group of Delta Force soldiers who shot an alleged assailant when leaving a bar in a Latin American country, but did not inform the US embassy for several days.

Does no one hold a leash on these guys? It sounds like someone should! A past incident involving our military personnel just may be resulting in a leash-holding arrangement that we need to be watching:

In other news, the head of the US Army’s criminal investigation command, Major General Donald Ryder, told a Pentagon news conference on Wednesday that the military was reworking its detention operations in light of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Ryder said six manuals detailing the revised interrogation policies and techniques had been developed.

He also said that army prisons would no longer hold 'ghost' detainees brought in by the government’s intelligence agencies off the books. No specific details regarding the new interrogation manual were released to the public.

That is progress of a sort, I suppose.

Don't [Defecate] On Condi's Watch?

Pentagon pushes for covert foreign raids

Debate over the issue reignited last month, as Armitage and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell departed and Condoleezza Rice prepared to replace him, an administration official said. When the Pentagon refused to change language in the execute order, that put the issue before Rice. Some officials have viewed the debate as a test of how Rice will defend State Department views in bureaucratic infighting with the Pentagon.

In the past week, however, she has made it clear that she intends to protect the existing chief-of-mission authority. Ambassadors have full responsibility for supervising all US government employees in a country. The State Department's concerns are twofold: conducting military operations would be perilous without the broad purview of an ambassador, and it would set a precedent that other agencies could follow.

"The chief-of-mission authority is a pillar of presidential authority overseas," the administration official said. "When you start eroding that, it can have repercussions that are ... risky. Particularly, military action is one of the most important decisions a president makes."

It would have been nice if this had been kept in mind two years ago! There just might be some good reasons not to pursue certain actions that those on the ground would know better than those who think they can run the world from inside the Beltway. Case in point:

Pentagon seeks leeway on overseas operations

One reason the U.S. military never conducted aggressive operations against al-Qaida in Pakistan was a fear that such actions would incite the local population to overthrow the fragile, nuclear-capable government of President Pervez Musharraf.

The rift between the Pentagon and State Department over chief-of-mission authority parallels broader concerns about the push to empower the Special Operations Command in the war on terrorism. The CIA, for example, has concerns that new intelligence-gathering initiatives by the military could weaken CIA station chiefs and complicate U.S. espionage abroad.

Without close coordination with the CIA, former senior intelligence officials said, the military could target someone whom the CIA is secretly surveilling and disrupt a flow of valuable intelligence.

As I recall, the 9/11 Commission reported on at least one such instance. but then, what else are we to expect from those who fit this description from a career soldier?

Pentagon is lying its way out of an unwinnable war - again

The White House and the Pentagon are run by civilians who have never sweated it out on a battlefield. Never before in our country’s history has an administration charged with defending our nation been so lacking in hands-on combat experience and therefore so ignorant about the art and science of war.

Now the increasingly flummoxed Bush team is stealing the page on Vietnamization from Nixon’s Exit Primer, coupled with the same deceitful tactics he used to get us out of the almost decade-long Vietnam quagmire: telling lies. Inquiring minds want to know: Is our president still being fed bad skinny comparable to the intel incorrectly linking Saddam to Sept. 11 or claiming that Iraq was chockablock full of weapons of mass destruction?

Bush needs to set up a truth squad directly outside his Oval Office door quicksmart. Then, whenever the Pentagon plays fast and loose with the truth, the liars can be immediately rounded up and punished - because lying won’t get our troops out of Iraq without our national security taking a long-term hit that our country simply cannot afford.

But then - these guys ARE amateursish dilatantes when it comes to Sun-Tzu! Otherwise, if they knew what they were doing, the world just might not be in the shape it currently is!

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