#2
The fact that Senator McCain would knowingly associate himself with this duplicitous slime-ball transcends his often contrarian positions on the issues. This goes to the heart of what many have questioned about his character. And that is his judgment. (Or lack there of.)
Do Americas secret soldiers play well together? There is fresh evidence that the post-9/11 military still is plagued by inter-service rivalries that may be impacting critical counterterrorism operations. The revelations have come out in the extraordinary case unfolding in a tiny makeshift courtroom at Camp Lejeune, N.C., where a Marine court of inquiry - the first convened in a half-century - is probing the killings of at least 19 Afghan civilians the morning of March 4, 2007, by a company from the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command.
On Sunday, I reported in the New York Daily News that at the time of the alleged shooting spree, the units commander, Maj. Fred Galvin, was trying to offer up his small force of specially trained Marines to the CIA for secret counterterrorism missions along the Afghan-Pakistan border. The unit was neither trained for, nor permitted to engage in, covert CIA operations, sources have told me. But the inquiry has also revealed how units primarily engaged in classified missions against Osama Bin Ladens allies have clashed with each other.
Witnesses in this fascinating case have included Marines, soldiers and Afghan victims of the March 4 shootings, including one man who provided security for CIA operatives as a mujahideen commander during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Their testimony has described not only the complex command structure that governs sensitive military operations along Afghanistans eastern border with Pakistan (Regional Command-East), but the fact that the Marine special ops Company Foxtrot - called MARSOC-F - was treated like an ugly stepsister by just about everybody after they arrived at Jalalabad Airfield three weeks before their convoy opened up on civilians.
Heres how it worked in Nangarhar province, home to the Tora Bora mountains where Bin Laden made his last stand in December 2001 and what remains a hotbed of infiltration by Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hizb-I Islami-Gulbuddin (HIG) and other militias. The landowner in March 2007 was Task Force Spartan, commanded by a conventional infantry unit: a brigade from the Fort Drum-based 10th Mountain Division. Spartan had the power to veto any covert mission in their area of operations by Navy SEALs, Delta Force operators, Green Berets or Marines, because of the cultural and political sensitivities of combat in the Pashtun tribal lands.
So what did the Marines do? They submitted mission proposals (con ops or concept of operations) to their bosses at Bagram Airfield north of Kabul, the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan (CJSOTF-A). But they concealed their con-ops from Spartan, which was a violation of chain of command, witnesses testified. To further complicate things, in early 2007 Spartan was in the process of transitioning from a U.S. military force to a NATO/ISAF component. So officially, we couldnt coordinate with CJSOTF, Spartans operations officer Army Maj. Thomas Gukeisen testified last week, when I covered two days of the proceedings.
Gukeisen said he took Maj. Galvin on a four-day tour of remote U.S. outposts to meet 10th Mountain company commanders. But Gukeisen had reservations about Galvins men. Operating in Nangarhar with such a large force, he testified, could be detrimental for counterinsurgency purposes.
Later, when he learned Galvin was meeting with Special Forces operators and OGAs - a military euphemism for the CIA that means Other Government Agency - in another area of operations to the south, he began to think the Marines were hiding something from us.
I thought there was a level of untruthfulness, or not sharing information between organizations, Gukeisen told the court of inquiry. I became, in my mind, suspect of what they were doing.
This is not to suggest that CJSOTF had much affection for the Marine special ops unit, either. Witnesses last week testified that the MARSOC unit was deployed without any support and had to scrounge at Jalalabad for food and potable water, according to the Jacksonville Daily News court of inquiry blog. Marine Capt. Robert Olson, the units intelligence officer and executive officer, recounted on the witness stand (under a grant of immunity from prosecution) that CJSOTF regarded him as a bit of a nuisance when he embedded with them at Bagram prior to MARSOCs arrival.
After the March 4 killings on Highway 1, Galvin was relieved of command and MARSOC-F was kicked out of Afghanistan.
#1
I remember when the Marsoc thing came up a few yrs back. I thought it was a bad idea then, still do. We have some core missions in the USMC - MHO is that we stick to them. Let the better funded services do the snoop n' poop. I respect the heck out of my flag grade leadership but sometimes I think they are trying too hard to re-market what it is that we do.
What if Gaza were to conquer Egypt? The possibility is not as remote as it may seem just by glancing at the map.
Egypt has more than 50 times the population of its former colony and 2,800 times the landmass. But Gaza is sovereign Hamas territory, Hamas is the Palestinian branch of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, and Egypt -- not Israel -- is the country that has most to fear from a statelet that is at once the toehold, sanctuary and springboard of an Islamist revolution.
No wonder liberal Egyptians are reacting with near-hysterical alarm to last Wednesday's demolition of the border fence between the Gaza Strip and the Sinai. The Brotherhood organized at least 70 demonstrations throughout Egypt early last week to protest Israel's economic blockade of the Strip, itself a reaction to Hamas's rocket barrages into Israel. "Arm us, train us and send us to Gaza," chanted the demonstrators, along with "O rulers of Muslims, where is your honor, where is your religion?" The independent Egyptian daily Almasry Alyoum also described conversations between Hamas leader Khaled Mashal and Mohammed Mahdi Akef, the Brotherhood's Supreme Guide, to coordinate their activities. "We will take to the streets and defend our brothers in Gaza, even if we are all tried in military courts," Mr. Akef was reported as saying.
As Middle Eastern power plays go, Hamas's decision to dismantle the Gaza-Sinai border was a masterstroke. Gaza's economic woes are almost wholly self-inflicted, but they are real. Dynamiting and bulldozing the border of a neighboring country is legally an act of war, but it was made to seem like a humanitarian necessity and a bid for freedom. Flooding that neighbor with hundreds of thousands of desperate people is a massive economic burden on Egypt, but one that it shirks at its political peril.
Above all, Hamas exploited the myth of pan-Arab solidarity with the Palestinians in order to explode it. Having whipped itself into its usual frenzy over Israel's "siege" of Gaza, it was a delicate matter for the state-run Egyptian press to make the government's case for deploying truncheon-wielding police to turn back the Palestinian human tide. It's an equally delicate matter for the Egyptian government to arrest Brotherhood protesters peacefully demonstrating "for Palestine," even if the Brotherhood's real target is Hosni Mubarak's regime and the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty that it supports.
For Palestinians who have spent squalid decades in the refugee camps of Lebanon (which forbids Palestinians from owning property or having any sort of gainful employment), or have been systematically abused as laborers in the Gulf sheikdoms (Kuwait expelled its Palestinian population en masse following its 1991 liberation from Iraq), or have had a country denied to them by a Hashemite regime in Jordan, the lies of the Arab world are well known.
Still, it must have seemed to Palestinians an especially galling contrast that Israel announced the resumption of fuel supplies to Gaza just as Egypt was cutting its deliveries of fuel and foodstuffs to its border towns of Rafah and El Arish in the Sinai, in order to keep the Palestinians out. For good measure, Egyptian sources tell me that yesterday the government also arrested 3,000 Gazans who had made their way to Cairo -- yet another betrayal that will surely linger in Palestinian memory for a long time.
For the Brotherhood all this is excellent news. Yesterday, Nabil Shaath, a Palestinian minister in President Mahmoud Abbas's cabinet, reportedly sought a meeting in Cairo with Supreme Guide Akef in order to negotiate a new border arrangement. Mr. Akef declined to see him, a telling indicator of the Brotherhood's newfound political confidence. It can now lay firm claim to the Palestinian cause, never mind that its "brothers" in Hamas are the real source of current Palestinian misery.
By contrast, the Egyptian government faces a serious quandary, and not just as a matter of rhetoric. By its treaty with Israel, it is forbidden from deploying its army in large numbers to the Sinai. In previous years, it used this restriction as an alibi in its lackluster efforts to prevent the arms flow from Sinai to Gaza. Now that flow threatens to go in the opposite direction, endangering not just Israel but also Egyptian tourist resorts such as Taba and Sharm el-Sheikh. "The situation in Sinai now poses the greatest threat to Egypt's national security," writes one perceptive Egyptian blogger. "Any Palestinian crossing the border could take with him weapons and explosives and supply them to Al Qaeda affiliated groups in Sinai."
The Egyptian-Israeli treaty may ultimately have to be revised to take account of the changing facts on the ground. Israel, too, will have to rethink some basic strategic assumptions. Supporters of Ariel Sharon's "disengagement" plan -- present company included -- can take a measure of satisfaction in noting that Gaza is increasingly becoming an Arab problem rather than an Israeli one. But in addition to the physical challenge of having to defend against incessant (if so far rarely deadly) rocket attacks from Gaza, and reinforce its long desert border with Egypt, Israel must also now consider the possibility that the current regime in Egypt may not long survive the death of its soon-to-be octogenarian president.
Who and what comes next is anyone's guess, though it would be foolish to gamble on Gamal Mubarak, the president's West-leaning son. Egypt is a military regime, and the younger Mubarak, who never served in uniform, is not well-loved among the generals who will have the final say in matters of succession.
A more serious question is whether the military might take a more indulgent view of the Brotherhood, either because it has been infiltrated by Islamist officers, or because it seeks a condominium with the Brotherhood in order to shore up its own legitimacy. (In this connection, U.S. efforts to "engage" the Brotherhood in a political dialogue would have a disastrous effect, as it would signal to the military that it could cut its own deal with the Islamists without having to pay a price in U.S. support.)
In the meantime, the border with Gaza is again being sealed, bringing the crisis to a temporary end. It won't remain quiet for long, and neither will Egypt -- the next great foreign policy crisis on the American horizon.
Startling developments in Gaza highlight the need for a change in Western policy toward this troubled territory of 1.3 million persons.
Gaza's contemporary history began in 1948, when Egyptian forces overran the British-controlled area and Cairo sponsored the nominal "All-Palestine Government" while de facto ruling the territory as a protectorate. That arrangement ended in 1967, when the Israeli leadership defensively took control of Gaza, reluctantly inheriting a densely populated, poor, and hostile territory.
Nonetheless, for twenty years Gazans largely acquiesced to Israeli rule. Only with the intifada beginning in 1987 did Gazans assert themselves; its violence and political costs convinced Israelis to open a diplomatic process that culminated with the Oslo accords of 1993. The Gaza-Jericho Agreement of 1994 then off-loaded the territory to Yasir Arafat's Fatah.
Those agreements were supposed to bring stability and prosperity to Gaza. Returning businessmen would jump-start the economy. The Palestinian Authority would repress Islamists and suppress terrorists. Yasir Arafat proclaimed he would "build a Singapore" there, actually an apt comparison, for independent Singapore began inauspiciously in 1965, poor and ethnically conflict-ridden.
Of course, Arafat was no Lee Kuan Yew. Gazan conditions deteriorated and Islamists, far from being shut out, rose to power: Hamas won the 2006 elections and in 2007 seized full control of Gaza. The economy shrunk. Rather than stop terrorism, Fatah joined in. Gazans began launching rockets over the border in 2002, increasing their frequency, range, and deadliness with time, eventually rendering the Israeli town of Sderot nearly uninhabitable.
Faced with a lethal Gaza, the Israeli government of Ehud Olmert decided to isolate it, hoping that economic hardship would cause Gazans to blame Hamas and turn against it. To an extent, the squeeze worked, for Hamas' popularity did fall. The Israelis also conducted raids against terrorists to stop the rocket attacks. Still, the assaults continued; so, on January 17, the Israelis escalated by cutting fuel deliveries and closing the borders. "As far as I'm concerned," Olmert announced, "Gaza residents will walk, without gas for their cars, because they have a murderous, terrorist regime that doesn't let people in southern Israel live in peace."
That sounded reasonable but the press reported heart-rending stories about Gazans suffering and dying due to the cutoffs that immediately swamped the Israeli position. Appeals and denunciations from around the world demanded that Israelis ease up.
Then, on January 23, Hamas took matters into its own hands with a clever surprise tactic: after months of preparation, it pulled down large segments of the 12-km long, 13-meter high border wall separating Gaza from Egypt, simultaneously winning goodwill from Gazans and dragging Cairo into the picture. Politically, Egyptian authorities had no choice but uneasily to absorb 38 wounded border guards and permit hundreds of thousands of persons temporarily to enter the far northeast of their country.
Israelis had brought themselves to this completely avoidable predicament through incompetence signing bad agreements, turning Gaza over to the thug Arafat, expelling their own citizens, permitting premature elections, acquiescing to the Hamas conquest, and abandoning control of Gaza's western border.
What might Western states now do? The border breaching, ironically, offers an opportunity to clean up a mess.
Washington and other capitals should declare the experiment in Gazan self-rule a failure and press President Husni Mubarak of Egypt to help, perhaps providing Gaza with additional land or even annexing it as a province. This would revert to the situation of 1948-67, except this time Cairo would not keep Gaza at arm's length but take responsibility for it. Oh, I'm sure the egyptians will jump with both feet on that golden opportunity.
Culturally, this connection is a natural: Gazans speak a colloquial Arabic identical to the Egyptians of Sinai, have more inbreeding family ties to Egypt than to the West Bank, and are economically more tied to Egypt (recall the many smugglers' tunnels). Further, Hamas derives from an Egyptian organization, the Muslim Brethren. As David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen notes, calling Gazans "Palestinians" is less accurate than politically correct.
Why not formalize the Egyptian connection? Among other benefits, this would (1) end the rocket fire against Israel, (2) expose the superficiality of Palestinian nationalism, an ideology under a century old, and perhaps (3) break the Arab-Israeli logjam.
It's hard to divine what benefit American taxpayers have received for the $65 billion they have lavished on Egypt since 1948; but Egypt's absorbing Gaza might justify their continuing to shell out $1.8 billion a year.
#1
I agree that this proposal is probably the best at this point. I also agree that Egypt will turn snowier than Aspen before it happens.
What bothers me about this is:
"Israelis had brought themselves to this completely avoidable predicament through incompetence signing bad agreements, turning Gaza over to the thug Arafat, expelling their own citizens, permitting premature elections, acquiescing to the Hamas conquest, and abandoning control of Gaza's western border."
These events were pushed on to Israel by the international community that refuses to allow Israel to act in its own security interests. (See Bolton on Rice & Leb). While Israel has made some dubious choices the world has forced them to choose between lousy alternatives.
#2
I can't believe Pipes is trying to sell this. The Egyptians are too smart to take Gaza, the Paleos are too stupid to run it themselves, the rest of the Arab world likes Gaza to be a thorn in the "Zionist Entity"'s side, and the Israelis just wish it would go away. Gaza will stay Gazoo for a long time.
#4
I think that Israel has said "no" about as much as can reasonably be expected. They're not exactly the big-dog in the fight and can't alienate allies too much.
#5
Israel was unwilling to expel the Arab populations. I can understand that but they should at least cherry pick things. What I mean is this: Move the worst case bastards from West Bank to Gaza and do not allow them to return. If someone is a reasonable Gazan and they want to live in the West Bank, that also can be allowed. Divide the herd so that hopefully you get one reasonably sane country and one that's just batshit in Gaza.
Create a special area in and around Jerusalem that is sealed off
from both West Bank and Israel. Which is zoned and designed to allow businesses that employ Arabs so that the Arab workers don't need to travel into Israel. Build suburbs for workers and try to get folks out of refugee camps into these suburbs if possible to break the power of the refugee camps. This is where jobs will be. If it is destroyed by psycho Pals at least the rest of Israel is thus secured.
Cut off Gaza and let them eat their own filth. Let the international community support them.
Lastly, every Thursday night, drop itching powder all over the Temple Mount to entertain the flocks on Friday Prayers.
#6
Must be nice to be able to write your own rules. Well, I suppose you can do that if you are the only one who can write. But then again, how would those around him know what was written, since most were probably totally illiterate! "Here is the aya" my a$$!
Is this really written in the holy Crayon, or is it in some of the supporting "literature"?
Working with manure can drastically reduce chances of developing lung cancer, according to a report in The Daily Telegraph.
Dairy farmers are five times less likely than the general populace to develop the disease, New Scientist magazine reports.
The study found farmers typically breathed in dust that consisted largely of dried manure and all the bacteria that grew in it.
New Scientist said adults who had a greater exposure to germs than usual might build up a better resistance to bugs, including cancer.
"Some researchers are starting to wonder whether the higher incidence of certain cancers in affluent populations including breast cancer, lymphoma and melanoma might also have something to do with sanitized, infection-free living," the researchers said, noting the unexpected links between exposure to dirt and germs and cancer risk.
"If they're right, the implications are huge. If we can understand exactly what it is about some germs that has a protective effect, we should be able to reduce people's risk of developing certain tumors later in life by exposing them to harmless microbes."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
By James Gordon Meek
