The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., November 19, 2007: “What we have in Pakistan is a Keystone Cop drama being played out by the grossly incompetent CIA agents there (Hello Mr. Mason!) that would have you rolling around on the floor screaming with laughter if it weren’t so pathetic and, eventually, very dangerous. The Bush people are scared shitless that the Taliban will take over the government in Pakistan, after blowing the other side to bits, and then get their hands on Pakistan’s formidable nuclear arsenal.  Bush knows he can’t do anything with the Pakis so the next step under discussion is to locate all the weapons caches, bring in U.S. troops (as new Embassy employees and aid groups), make lightening raids on the depositories and whisk them off to several targeted airfields where U.S. aircraft will be ready and waiting to fly up and away from the evil ragheads. Given the gross incompetence of the CIA, whose people have been blabbing to all and sundry about this, the bombs will no doubt be misdelivered to the Tamal Tigers or perhaps the Zapatistas in Mexico. Not only are our Blessed Leaders now  making pant loads, the Israelis are also screeching with terror lest the Taliban drop something nasty on them (which it is now believed they are planning to do)  Will Dudley Doright succeed? Will Justice be done? Bush picked the wrong horse over there like he always does but this time, if the steely-jawed Saviors of Democracy can take time out from waterboarding old men and cripples but are not successful in even one raid, there will be fallout all over the Gulf. Or the San Fernando valley. Of course the Taliban could nuke India as a second choice which would shut down the very  many American businesses who have all moved there. That will teach them to throw Americans out of work, won’t it?”

Historical Frauds and Coverups

An unfortunate number of historical writers write to an idea, disregarding inconvenient facts and simply creating their own reality to suit their needs.

A classic example of this latter case is to be found in a work by Hungarian-American author, Gitta Sereny. It first appeared in 1974 and was entitled Into That Darkness. This work purports to be based on an interview with Franz Stangl, an alleged SS officer who ran a camp in occupied Poland during the war where many prisoners were later stated to have been gassed. The book contains a lengthy section quoting Stangl, who according to Sereny’s version, fully admits his part in the purported killings and asks for forgiveness from God and his victims. The balance of the work consists of various supplementary testimonies from former associates and family members, all attesting to the evil nature of Stangl’s activities and all clearly acknowledging his willing cooperation in a state-sponsored program of genocide.

Unfortunately for Sereny's thesis, Franz Stangl was not an SS officer or even a member of the SS, as a check of the copies of the SS personnel records now in the U.S. National Archives will clearly disclose. Further, Stangl was an Austrian policeman and not a camp commandant.

Sereny, it should be noted, has made a comfortable living writing books and articles dealing with holocaust killings. But this particular book shows with great clarity the pitfalls that occur when a journalist, as opposed to a legitimate academic historian, produces a work which is not only entirely anecdotal in content, but ideological in thrust. There is no documentation, whatsoever, in this work which relies almost entirely on the author’s purported interviews with various people. Stangl died on the day following Sereny’s visit to him in prison where he was appealing his life sentence.

Herein lies the key to the questionability of the entire book. Stangl had been sentenced to a life term in prison as the result of his easily-foreseen conviction as a camp commander. He, through his attorneys, was appealing this sentence. It is highly doubtful if either Stangl or his attorneys would permit such a damaging interview to take place and to permit Sereny, whose extremist views were well known, free and unfettered access to the prisoner. There would appear to be no question that Sereny and her photographer husband, Don Honeyman, did indeed visit the prison and did see Stangl. Sereny’s husband took several photographs of him, photographs which are extensively reproduced in the book. The published pictures, however, do not support statements alleged to have been made by the former Austrian police officer, but merely prove that he permitted himself to be photographed by his visitors. By making such incriminating statements as Sereny placed, post mortem, in his mouth, Stangl would have irrevocably destroyed any chance he might have had in his pending appeal before the German courts.

It is beyond reasonable belief that such statements were made under the circumstances indicated. A dead Stangl, however, could comfortably be alleged to have made any statement that the author chose to put into his mouth, and without the possible embarrassment to her or her publisher of an instant denial or possible legal proceedings.

A careful reading of the book not only disclosed the author’s prejudice towards Stangl and the system he served, but also is entirely devoid of any facts to support her thesis. She notes that a number of witnesses died before the book was published, of course including her main source, Stangl. Much of the anecdotal material Sereny has put together to support her case is of such a nature as to preclude its ever being introduced in a court of law. A prime example is set forth as an illustration.

Sereny claims that Stangl’s wife wrote her a letter following an interview Sereny had with the wife in Brazil. In this letter, which is not reproduced, Frau Stangl allegedly states that in 1945 she was interviewed by two members of the U.S. Army’s Counter Intelligence agency, and that they knew of her husband’s whereabouts in an American jail. “I examined their papers,” she is quoted as writing, “I have no doubt whatever that they were genuine.” The flaw in this scenario is obvious. It is simply not believable that the wife of an obscure police officer would have the slightest idea what “genuine” U.S. CIC identification papers looked like. But Sereny states that the woman would have no reason to invent the incident. Perhaps the invention did not originate with Stangl’s wife, but with the author herself.

It is anecdotal and imaginative material, at charitable best, that suffuses and supports the entire untenable structure of this work. Unfortunately, a large proportion of what purports to be important historical studies are based either on entirely faked documents or on the wishful thinking of mendacious and ideological journalists. Generations must pass before the fictive is eventually weeded out from the factual, and in the meantime an appellation which has been applied to the Sereny book, Dialogs with the Dead, could well be applied to other mendacious creative writing essays herein studied.

The so-called Slapton Sands incident of April 1944 is far more important than the Sereny creative writing efforts in that it points out many of the problems encountered in joint operations between two basically hostile allies.

This incident has received some attention in the past, but is not widely known. In all the accounts, neither the reasons for the German attack nor its successes have ever been adequately addressed. Given that the Germans undoubtedly obtained very accurate information about the exact disposition of the Allied invasion force months before it took place, their discovery of the area in which their enemies were practicing landing attempts using large numbers of unwieldy and vulnerable landing craft is well within reason.

In late 1943, the British decided that the area at Slapton Sands, a small seaside area located at Slap Bay on the eastern Devon side of the Channel coast, closely replicated the areas of Normandy where the main thrust of the forthcoming invasion was to be directed. This area was cleared of all of its 3,000 inhabitants along with all their worldly possessions, livestock and vehicles as rapidly as possible, and this evacuated area was then occupied by the US V Corps.

Once the area was totally evacuated, British engineers constructed bunkers and other installations along the coast in imitation of German defenses on the French coast.

The first practice amphibious landing took place on December 28, 1943 and was called “Operation Duck.” Among the American Army units involved was the 1st Engineer Special Brigade which had been in combat in Italy. During its transfer to England, all of its special equipment had been left behind and it became urgently necessary to resupply it.

“Operation Duck” in December of 1943 was followed on March 29, 1944, by “Operation Beaver.” This was viewed in retrospect as less than successful; lack of coordination between the various units involved, coupled with command confusion were cited as critical difficulties which had to be overcome. To correct these failings, “Operation Tiger” was scheduled for the end of April.

The American naval units involved were under the command of US Rear Admiral Don Moon, who headed Force U, which was designated to land at Normandy’s Utah Beach.

The British Royal Navy, which oversaw the naval units involved was commanded by British Vice Admiral Letham, stationed at the British naval base at Portsmouth on the Channel.

By April 1, 1944, British Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay had assumed command of the Western Naval Task Force.

“Operation Tiger,” which commenced on April 26, was to simulate the projected landing of the US Army’s Fourth Division on Utah Beach in Normandy.

In Plymouth on April 24, while US troops were moving to board their LSTs (Landing Ship Tanks) which were to transport them to the exercise area, naval officer personnel involved with the exercise were briefed at the Royal Marine Barracks.

The loading of inexperienced troops was badly executed and showed clearly that far more training was necessary if a successful invasion was to be maintained.

On April 24, Admiral Moon and his staff boarded Task Force U flagship, the Bayfield.

This task force was intended to supply support and protection for the ships headed for the Slapton Sands training area. A number of senior US military personnel, including General Eisenhower, CIC SHEAF, British Chief Air Marshal Tedder, Lt. General Omar Bradley and Lt. General Lewis Brereton, commander of the Ninth Air Force would be observing the exercise from a Landing Craft Infantry (LCI) standing just outside the combat zone, while Major General Lawton Collins, commander of the VII Corps, would accompany the men to the beach area.

At 9:50 AM on April 26, the Bayfield moved from her moorings in Plymouth and anchored in Plymouth Sound. At 3:15 PM, General Collins and his staff came on board and at 5:38 PM, Admiral Moon’s command ship raised anchor and headed for the Channel.

During her voyage to the Slapton Sands debarkation area, the Bayfield was escorted by LCH 86 and 95, and at 10;45 PM, joined the USS Barnett, the USS Joseph Dickman and HMS Empire Gauntlet, and sailed in formation with Barnett in the van.

Their destination was an area about twelve miles off the coast and by the time the convoy reached the exercise area, the landing was well under way. At 4:03 AM, the Bayfield sounded General Quarters and a few minutes later dropped anchor in Start Bay. She immediately started lowering her boats and by 5:00 AM, all of these were launched, General Collins and his staff going ashore about 6:00 AM.

The senior officers, including Eisenhower and British General Montgomery, observed the landing exercises from different ships, split up for security reasons. There was considerable confusion; support aircraft never arrived, men landed in the wrong areas and some of the purportedly waterproof tanks proved not to be and quickly sank. Units landed in the area of naval bombardments which had to be halted, and subsequent troop landings were equally disoriented with men wandering around the beach without bothering to take cover.

The entire exercise was executed in a highly unprofessional and slapdash manner which greatly annoyed the senior officers. They would have been far more alarmed than annoyed had they learned that across the Channel, German S- (for “Schnell” or fast) Boats, very fast and deadly motor torpedo boats, of the 5th and 9th S-Boat flotillas were being readied for action in the Lyme Bay area of the British Channel coast.

The German S-Boats were highly effective torpedo boats, over 90 feet long, equipped with four standard torpedoes and armed with 20 and 40 mm guns. These boats were capable of speeds of up to 40 knots and were considered as very dangerous enemies by the Royal Navy. They worked in flotillas and in the Channel areas, used to wait in ambush along known convoy routes. During 1944, their basic tactics changed from passive to active attack and their new tactics were to make hit and run raids against the convoys which the highly efficient German naval radio interception units had located for them.

The 5th Flotilla under Korvettenkapitän Bernd Klug and the 9th Flotilla under Kapitänleutnant Götz Freiherr von Mirbach were stationed at Cherbourg in April 1944, and during that month had conducted a number of sorties against Allied shipping off the southern coast of England. On April 22, the 5th and 9th Flotillas had attacked British Motor Gun Boats in Lyme Bay and on the 24th, S-Boats of the same units successfully attacked shipping, sinking the coastal freighter, Roode Zee of 468 BRT, sinking it, and setting a British MGB on fire.

On April 27-28, both flotillas were ordered out to attack a significant number of Allied ships known to be in the Lyme Bay area. Ships from the 5th Flotilla constituted the S-100, S-136, S-138, S-143, S-140, and S-142. The 9th Flotilla consisted of S-130, S-145 and S-150 making a total of nine boats.

“Operation Tiger” consisted of two days of training. The first landing which was observed by the Allied high command, was to be followed by a second landing early on the morning of April 28. This force was centered in LST Group 32, a newly-constituted group under US Navy Commander B.J. Skahill, who was in the leading LST, LST 515.

None of the ships under his command had been in British waters for more than a month and had undergone no training whatsoever.

Just prior to sailing, Admiral Moon informed his officers about the danger posed by the S-Boat strikes and during his conference, a British naval officer described the highly effective hit and run techniques used by the Germans.

The convoy left Plymouth harbor in the morning of April 27 with a complement of five LSTs. This was termed “T-4” and the bulk of the US troops on board were members of the 1st Engineer Special Brigade along with their newly-acquired replacement equipment. The ships also carried amphibious vehicles and the last ship in the convoy, the LST 58, towed two heavy pontoon bridges which materially slowed the speed of the other units.

The convoy that left Plymouth consisted of LST 58, LST 496, LST 511, LST 515 and LST 531. The British Royal Navy was scheduled to provide the protection for the convoy with the escorts, HMS Azalea, a corvette, and the destroyer HMS Scimitar.

Unfortunately, the Scimitar had sustained minor hull damage on the previous day when an American LCI had rammed her, and the British naval authorities in Plymouth refused to permit the destroyer to sail although her captain told these authorities that he was detailed to protect a convoy now about to sail. The authorities had no knowledge of this convoy and the Scimitar was ordered to remain in harbor and have her minor damage attended to. The captain did not notify Admiral Moon of his situation and assumed that the British authorities at Plymouth would do so. The naval command at Plymouth did nothing whatsoever and Admiral Moon and Commander Skahill were under the impression that their highly vulnerable, lumbering convoy would be adequately protected on its journey through dangerous waters by the Royal Navy.

The commander of the corvette, Lieutenant Commander G. C. Giddes, RN, noted that the Scimitar was still in harbor when he sailed, but made no mention of this to Admiral Moon or Commander Skahill because he did not feel it was his responsibility to do so, and furthermore, had no radio contact with any of the LSTs. The British had neglected to supply the American naval units with their operational frequencies.

The Azalea had three more LSTs behind it as it joined Skahill’s convoy. These were LST 287, LST 499 and LST 507, the latter bringing up the rear

By 7:30 PM, the convoy had increased speed to seven knots as it moved towards the exercise area on a quiet sea illuminated by the moon.

The Germans, who had departed their base at Cherbourg about 10 PM, were moving westward and had passed two British destroyers earlier without incident and shortly after midnight, sighted the lumbering convoy. They sent up signal flares which were seen by the convoy escort, but were assumed to be part of the ongoing exercise.

In spite of the sighting by the Royal Navy of lead elements of the advancing S-Boats and the flares, nothing further was done by the British to protect the convoy, now sailing in an area where the Germans were known to have been active in the recent past, and without its primary defense of a British destroyer.

From just after midnight until approximately 1:30 AM, flares and tracers coming from unknown sources were observed by both the commanders of the corvette and the LST directly behind him, but no steps were taken to warn anyone about a possible German attack.

At 1:30 AM, the S-Boats were coming up on the convoy in Lyme Bay and two of their units, S-136 and S-138 (during attacks, the S-Boats worked in pairs) identified targets and fired torpedoes at them. Im­mediately, LST 507 exploded. The stores of gasoline on board and in the tanks of its army vehicles ignited turning the big ship into an inferno. The flaming ship could be seen for miles, but the escort took no action and shortly after 2 AM, it was the turn of LST 531 to suffer the same fate. It too caught on fire after being torpedoed, and on both ships there was great panic among the untrained troops, many of whom jumped over the side in full combat gear and were promptly drowned.

About 1:30 AM, the British naval authorities at Plymouth suddenly realized that the American convoy was not properly covered and the destroyer HMS Saladin, the nearest ship, was dispatched to aid the convoy which the British had concluded might be in some danger.

The Saladin was thirty miles away from the LSTs and it was estimated that it would take her at least an hour to make visual contact with her new charges. By that time, the S-Boat attack was well under way, two LSTs had been sunk and another, the LST 289 torpedoed and severely damaged.

Lyme Bay was filled with the bright colors of flaming ships, streaking American and German 20 and 40 mm tracers and the flash of star shells thrown up by the S-Boats to illuminate their targets.

Frantic LST crewmen were firing at other LSTs, but the British were firing at no one. At 2:25 AM, one of the LSTs sent out a distress message to the British base at Portland indicating an enemy attack was in progress. This message was not acknowledged because it was never received. Neither the British or Americans used the same wavelengths that evening.

By 3:00 AM, the Germans broke off the engagement and returned to base leaving the waters of Lyme Bay dotted with floating corpses, wreckage and lifeboats.

When the sun came up, the major rescue efforts moved into full swing with some US and British units engaged in gathering up the survivors. Corpses and fragments of the dead were left in the water by the British to be scooped up by American ships.

A number of bodies washed up on shore and boats brought in many others during the course of the day. The survivors and the wounded were taken to various military hospitals, treated and warned by British and American intelligence officers about speaking to anyone about the disaster. Direct threats were made that anyone revealing the nature of the disaster would be subject to the harshest penalties.

A large, mass grave was dug in the sands of Slap Bay and 749 bodies were hastily dumped into it, accompanied with a quantity of quicklime to hasten decomposition.

The demand for security came from Eisenhower himself and was rigidly enforced, not only in the weeks preceding the invasion in June of that year, but in the decades to come.

Although 749 casualties were buried, at least three hundred more had vanished into the sea or had been carried down to the bottom of the bay in their sinking LSTs or by the weight of their combat gear. The best estimate of the total casualties is slightly over a thousand men lost, more than died during the actual landing over a month later.

The Germans reported their tremendous successes when they returned to base and with them they brought the corpse of a US Army officer on whose body they found waterlogged, but legible plans for the coming invasion. This information, which indicated Normandy as the main target, was sent on to the higher commands, but by the time it was evaluated, D-Day was at hand and the early warnings could not be acted upon.

Muted recrimination on the Allied side began even before dawn on the day of the successful German assault. These comprised a number of salient points among which were:

•The failure of the US naval commanders to establish liaison with their opposite numbers in the Royal Navy;

•The failure of both parties at all levels to establish a coordination of lines of radio communications;

•American troops on the LST had no knowledge of abandon ship methods and had never been informed what to do in the case of an emergency at sea. The ensuing panic resulted in many preventable deaths;

•Prolix operational orders which ran to over a thousand pages and were delivered to the command in Plymouth just as the operation was starting;

•Such radio frequencies as had been given to the Americans were suddenly changed with no notice given to anyone involved;

•British radar in England had picked up the movement of the S-Boats in the Channel about midnight, but this information was not passed to Plymouth Command;

•HMS Azalea had known of the S-Boat activities about midnight, but never informed the rest of the convoy;

•On April 27, British Signals Intelligence intercepted a German message at 10 PM that German S-Boats were to depart Cherbourg for actions in the western Channel. This information was not passed to anyone else until the evening of the 28th, nearly 24 hours after the disaster.

No one was officially reprimanded for these actions which might be best summed up as resulting from typical British carelessness and American inexperience.

There was a saying which was very popular in wartime England relating to a British view of American units stationed in their country. Americans were accused of being “overpaid, oversexed and over here.” The Americans, in turn, responded by saying that their unwilling hosts were “underpaid, undersexed and under Eisenhower.”

Admiral Moon, though not charged, was subjected to a great deal of hostility from both the British and American commands although he was absolutely innocent of any wrongdoing.

Admiral Moon killed himself on August 5, 1944 because of what was officially termed “combat-related stress,” but which was the result of the campaign of vilification launched against him by those who were, in fact, guilty of the dereliction of duty they passed on to him.

Army Desertion Rate Soaring

Number Of U.S. Army Deserters Up 80% Since Iraq War Started; Highest Rate Since 1980

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16, 2007

CBS/AP)

Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980, with the number of Army deserters this year showing an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

While the totals are still far lower than they were during the Vietnam War, when the draft was in effect, they show a steady increase over the past four years - and a 42 percent jump since last year.

According to the Army, about nine in every 1,000 soldiers deserted in fiscal year 2007 (which ended Sept.  30), compared to nearly seven per 1,000 a year earlier. Overall, 4,698 soldiers deserted this year, compared to 3,301 last year.

Nearly 64 percent of the desertions last year were reported from April to December, reports CBS News correspondent Sam Litzinger, which would suggest the pace is picking up.

Sgt. Phil McDowell is one of those deserters. Now living in Canada, he had served one tour in Iraq and was getting out of the Army when Uncle Sam said "not so fast."

"The reason I was being called back was to go to another tour in Iraq, and I didn't agree with that," McDowell told CBS News national security correspondent David Martin.

McDowell could eventually be deported from Canada and court-martialed, but for him that beats going back to Iraq.

"If I had been asked to go to Afghanistan I would have gone there," he told Martin. "But the Iraq War I didn't want to have any part of that any more."

The rate of desertions seems to be accelerating in a pattern that tracks almost exactly with the extension of tours in Iraq from 12 months to 15 months.

Analysts say the Army has borne the brunt of the war in Iraq. Marine and Navy desertions actually declined last fiscal year.

Military leaders - including Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey - have acknowledged that the Army has been stretched nearly to the breaking point by the combat. And efforts are underway to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps to lessen the burden and give troops more time off between deployments.

Despite the continued increase in desertions, however, an Associated Press examination of Pentagon figures earlier this year showed that the military does little to find those who bolt, and rarely prosecutes the ones they get. Some are allowed to simply return to their units, while most are given less-than-honorable discharges.

The report on rising desertion rates comes a day after two U.S. Army deserters who fled to Canada and sought refugee status on grounds of their opposition to the Iraq war lost their bids to have the Supreme Court of Canada hear their cases.

The court refused Thursday to hear the appeals of Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey, who were rejected by Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board in 2005. Hinzman and Hughey deserted the U.S. Army in 2004 after learning their units were to be deployed to Iraq to fight in a war they have called immoral and illegal.

Arrest Of Deserter Who Sought Treatment For PTSD

Earlier this week, a soldier who served two combat tours in Iraq was arrested for leaving the Army without permission more than a year ago. The arrest occurred just hours after Sgt. Brad Gaskins spoke at a news conference saying he left his base in New York State in August 2006 because the Army wasn't providing effective treatment after he was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and severe depression.

"They just don't have the resources to handle it, but that's not my fault," Gaskins said.

Last month, the Veterans Administration said more than 100,000 soldiers were being treated for mental health problems, and half of those specifically for PTSD.

Gaskins, 25, of East Orange, N.J., was taken into custody at a Watertown cafe ono Wednesday by civilian police officers from Fort Drum and two local police officers, Ensign said. The lawyer said he had been on the phone with military prosecutors working out the details of Gaskins' surrender when the soldier was arrested.

Fort Drum spokesman Ben Abel said after a soldier is AWOL for more than 30 days he becomes classified as a deserter and a federal arrest warrant is issued. He said he was unaware of the specifics of Gaskins' case and declined to comment on it.

An eight-year Army veteran, Gaskins served two tours in Iraq and a peacekeeping tour in Kosovo. He said his mental health began deteriorating during his second tour in Iraq, which began in June 2005, when his job was to conduct road searches and locate improvised explosive devices.

He said after returning to Fort Drum in February 2006, he began suffering flashbacks and nightmares, headaches, sleeplessness, weight loss and mood swings that took him from depression to irrational rages. Military doctors sent him to the Samaritan Medical Center in Watertown, where he spent two weeks and was diagnosed with PTSD. When he later asked his commanders about returning to Samaritan, they told him it would delay any chance he had at obtaining a medical release, Gaskins said.

At the time, the Fort Drum mental health facility had a staff of a dozen caring for approximately 17,000 troops, Ensign said.

Gaskins said that because he had been unable to get proper help, he requested a two-week leave and went home to New Jersey, where he has been living since.

Gaskins said he hasn't been able to get a job because of his PTSD, and that he and his wife have separated. He said he has only supervised visitation rights with his two children.

Pentagon Cover Up: 15,000 or More US Deaths in Iraq War?

November 18, 2007

by Mike Whitney

CounterPunch

The Pentagon has been concealing the true number of American casualties in the Iraq War. The real number exceeds 15,000 and CBS News can prove it.

CBS's Investigative Unit wanted to do a report on the number of suicides in the military and "submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense". After 4 months they received a document which showed--that between 1995 and 2007-- there were 2,200 suicides among "active duty" soldiers.

Baloney.

The Pentagon was covering up the real magnitude of the "suicide epidemic". Following an exhaustive investigation of veterans' suicide data collected from 45 states; CBS discovered that in 2005 alone "there were at least 6,256 among those who served in the armed forces. That's 120 each and every week in just one year."

That is not a typo. Active and retired military personnel, mostly young veterans between the ages of 20 to 24, are returning from combat and killing themselves in record numbers. We can assume that "multiple-tours of duty" in a war-zone have precipitated a mental health crisis of which the public is entirely unaware and which the Pentagon is in total denial.

If we add the 6,256 suicide victims from 2005 to the "official" 3,865 reported combat casualties; we get a sum of 10,121. Even a low-ball estimate of similar 2004 and 2006 suicide figures, would mean that the total number of US casualties from the Iraq war now exceed 15,000.

That's right; 15,000 dead US servicemen and women in a war that--as yet--has no legal or moral justification.

CBS interviewed Dr. Ira Katz, the head of mental health at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Katz attempted to minimize the surge in veteran suicides saying, "There is no epidemic of suicide in the VA, but suicide is a major problem."

Maybe Katz is right. Maybe there is no epidemic. Maybe it's perfectly normal for young men and women to return from combat, sink into inconsolable depression, and kill themselves at greater rates than they were dying on the battlefield. Maybe it's normal for the Pentagon to abandon them as soon as soon they return from their mission so they can blow their brains out or hang themselves with a garden hose in their basement. Maybe it's normal for politicians to keep funding wholesale slaughter while they brush aside the casualties they have produced by their callousness and lack of courage. Maybe it is normal for the president to persist with the same, bland lies that perpetuate the occupation and continue to kill scores of young soldiers who put themselves in harm's-way for their country.

It's not normal; it's is a pandemic---an outbreak of despair which is the natural corollary of living in constant fear; of seeing one's friends being dismembered by roadside bombs or children being blasted to bits at military checkpoints or finding battered bodies dumped on the side of a riverbed like a bag of garbage.

The rash of suicides is the logical upshot of the U.S. war on Iraq. Returning soldiers are traumatized by their experience and now they are killing themselves in droves. Maybe we should have thought about that before we invaded.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com

US military strike on Pakistan advocated

November 19, 2007

by Khalid Hasan

Daily Times of Pakistan

WASHINGTON: Two experts have proposed that the US should take pre-emptive action to secure Pakistan’s nuclear weapons before they fall into the wrong hands.

Frederick Kagan of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute and Michael O’Hanlon of the more liberal Brookings Institution argue in an article published in the New York Times on Sunday that the US simply cannot stand by as a nuclear-armed Pakistan descended into the abyss. Nor would it be strategically prudent to withdraw US forces from an improving situation in Iraq to cope with a deteriorating one in Pakistan. While Pakistan’s officer corps and ruling elites remain largely moderate and more interested in building a strong, modern state, the same was true of Iran on the eve of the Islamic revolution. Pakistan’s intelligence services, the two writers maintain, contain enough sympathisers and supporters of the Afghan Taliban, and enough nationalists bent on seizing Kashmir from India, that there are grounds for real worries.

Complete collapse: The likely dangers include the complete collapse of Pakistani government rule that allows an extreme Islamist movement to fill the vacuum, a total loss of federal control over outlying provinces, or a struggle within the Pakistani military in which the minority sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda tries to establish Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism.

While admitting that all possible military initiatives to avoid those possibilities are daunting, given Pakistan’s size and complexity and the scanty US knowledge about the location of its nuclear weapons, the US would have to act before a complete government collapse, and for that it would need the cooperation of “moderate Pakistani forces”.

Possible plan: One possible plan would be a Special Forces operation with the limited goal of preventing Pakistan’s nuclear materials and warheads from getting into the wrong hands. Given the degree to which Pakistani nationalists cherish these assets, it is unlikely the United States would get permission to destroy them. Somehow, American forces would have to team with Pakistanis to secure critical sites and possibly to move the material to a safer place. For the United States, the safest bet would be shipping the material to someplace like New Mexico, but even pro-American Pakistanis would be unlikely to cooperate. It would be better for the US to settle for establishing a remote redoubt within Pakistan, with the nuclear technology guarded by elite Pakistani forces backed up and watched over by crack international troops. It is realistic to think that such a mission might be undertaken within days of a decision to act. The price for rapid action and secrecy, however, would probably be a very small international coalition.

Support army: Kagan and O’Hanlon suggest that a broader option would involve supporting the core of the Pakistani armed forces as they sought to hold the country together in the face of an ineffective government, seceding border regions and Al Qaeda and Taliban assassination attempts against the leadership. This would require a sizeable combat force from the US, other Western powers and moderate Muslim nations. Since the decline of the Pakistani state is likely to be gradual, it will give the US time to act, they argue. “The most likely directive would be to help Pakistan’s military and security forces hold the country’s center - primarily the region around the capital, Islamabad, and the populous areas like Punjab to its south ... If a holding operation in the nation’s centre was successful, the foreign forces would then seek to establish order in the parts of Pakistan where extremists operate. Beyond propping up the state, this would benefit American efforts in Afghanistan by depriving terrorists of the sanctuaries they have long enjoyed in Pakistan’s tribal and frontier regions ... There was a time when volatility in places like Pakistan was mostly a humanitarian worry — today it is as much a threat to our basic security as Soviet tanks once were.”

U.S. Secretly Aids Pakistan in Guarding Nuclear Arms

November 18, 2007

by David E. Sanger and William J. Broad

New York Times

WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 — Over the past six years, the Bush administration has spent almost $100 million on a highly classified program to help Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, secure his country’s nuclear weapons, according to current and former senior administration officials.

But with the future of that country’s leadership in doubt, debate is intensifying about whether Washington has done enough to help protect the warheads and laboratories, and whether Pakistan’s reluctance to reveal critical details about its arsenal has undercut the effectiveness of the continuing security effort.

The aid, buried in secret portions of the federal budget, paid for the training of Pakistani personnel in the United States and the construction of a nuclear security training center in Pakistan, a facility that American officials say is nowhere near completion, even though it was supposed to be in operation this year.

A raft of equipment — from helicopters to night-vision goggles to nuclear detection equipment — was given to Pakistan to help secure its nuclear material, its warheads, and the laboratories that were the site of the worst known case of nuclear proliferation in the atomic age.

While American officials say that they believe the arsenal is safe at the moment, and that they take at face value Pakistani assurances that security is vastly improved, in many cases the Pakistani government has been reluctant to show American officials how or where the gear is actually used.

That is because the Pakistanis do not want to reveal the locations of their weapons or the amount or type of new bomb-grade fuel the country is now producing.

The American program was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the Bush administration debated whether to share with Pakistan one of the crown jewels of American nuclear protection technology, known as “permissive action links,” or PALS, a system used to keep a weapon from detonating without proper codes and authorizations.

In the end, despite past federal aid to France and Russia on delicate points of nuclear security, the administration decided that it could not share the system with the Pakistanis because of legal restrictions.

In addition, the Pakistanis were suspicious that any American-made technology in their warheads could include a secret “kill switch,” enabling the Americans to turn off their weapons.

While many nuclear experts in the federal government favored offering the PALS system because they considered Pakistan’s arsenal among the world’s most vulnerable to terrorist groups, some administration officials feared that sharing the technology would teach Pakistan too much about American weaponry. The same concern kept the Clinton administration from sharing the technology with China in the early 1990s.

The New York Times has known details of the secret program for more than three years, based on interviews with a range of American officials and nuclear experts, some of whom were concerned that Pakistan’s arsenal remained vulnerable. The newspaper agreed to delay publication of the article after considering a request from the Bush administration, which argued that premature disclosure could hurt the effort to secure the weapons.

Since then, some elements of the program have been discussed in the Pakistani news media and in a presentation late last year by the leader of Pakistan’s nuclear safety effort, Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai, who acknowledged receiving “international” help as he sought to assure Washington that all of the holes in Pakistan’s nuclear security infrastructure had been sealed.

The Times told the administration last week that it was reopening its examination of the program in light of those disclosures and the current instability in Pakistan. Early this week, the White House withdrew its request that publication be withheld, though it was unwilling to discuss details of the program.

In recent days, American officials have expressed confidence that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is well secured. “I don’t see any indication right now that security of those weapons is in jeopardy, but clearly we are very watchful, as we should be,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference on Thursday.

Admiral Mullen’s carefully chosen words, a senior administration official said, were based on two separate intelligence assessments issued this month that had been summarized in briefings to Mr. Bush. Both concluded that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal was safe under current conditions, and one also looked at laboratories and came to the same conclusion.

Still, the Pakistani government’s reluctance to provide access has limited efforts to assess the situation. In particular, some American experts say they have less ability to look into the nuclear laboratories where highly enriched uranium is produced — including the laboratory named for Abdul Qadeer Khan, the man who sold Pakistan’s nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

The secret program was designed by the Energy Department and the State Department, and it drew heavily from the effort over the past decade to secure nuclear weapons, stockpiles and materials in Russia and other former Soviet states. Much of the money for Pakistan was spent on physical security, like fencing and surveillance systems, and equipment for tracking nuclear material if it left secure areas.