Tuesday, March 12, 2013

CIA ramps up what role in Iraq?


Some days you just want to scream.  Adam Entous, Julian E. Barnes and Siobhan Gorman have an article that went up at the Wall St. Journal website late last night.  It's entitled "CIA Ramps Up Role in Iraq" and here's a sample:

 In a series of secret decisions from 2011 to late 2012, the White House directed the CIA to provide support to Iraq's Counterterrorism Service, or CTS, a force that reports directly to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, officials said.
The CIA has since ramped up its work with the CTS -- taking control of a mission long run by the U.S. military, according to administration and defense officials. For years, U.S. special-operations forces worked with CTS against al Qaeda in Iraq. But the military's role has dwindled since U.S. troops pulled out of the country at the end of 2011.


Are we supposed to believe what Entous, Barnes and Gorman have submitted?  If so are we also supposed to believe that they're stupid?

Do they not know what's already been reported by others?  December 12, 2011 on NBC's
Rock Center with Brian Williams, Ted Koppel filed a report about who would remain in Iraq after the drawdown:


MR. KOPPEL: I realize you can't go into it in any detail, but I would assume that there is a healthy CIA mission here. I would assume that JSOC may still be active in this country, the joint special operations. You've got FBI here. You've got DEA here. Can, can you give me sort of a, a menu of, of who all falls under your control?


AMB. JAMES JEFFREY: You're actually doing pretty well, were I authorized to talk about half of this stuff.


September 25, 2012,  Tim Arango (New York Times) reported:

 
 Iraq and the United States are negotiating an agreement that could result in the return of small units of American soldiers to Iraq on training missions. At the request of the Iraqi government, according to General [Robert L.] Caslen, a unit of Army Special Operations soldiers was recently deployed to Iraq to advise on counterterrorism and help with intelligence.


Negotiating an agreement?  We may be the only ones who covered that agreement.  It was finalized December 6, 2012 (and it's posted in full in that day's snapshot). It's the Memorandum of Understanding For Defense Cooperation Between the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Iraq and the Department of Defense of the United States of America.

We addressed its meaning at length in the December 10th and the December 11th snapshots.

When have Entous, Barnes and Gorman addressed it?  Not in the article in today's Wall St. Journal, not ever.

They 'report' but they're so ignorant (or so willing to play ignorant) that they're completely useless and what they tell you has no value within the article itself.

You have to take the bits of actual information and do the job they didn't, apply it.

Forget the nonsense about Syria.  Two years ago the decision was made to beef up the CIA presence in Iraq.  Two years ago, the issue of Syria was not what it is today.  That includes the fact that two years ago, the US government thought war on Syria was going to be very easy.  That was before the regional players made clear that a green light wasn't being given automatically.

So Syria's relationship with the beefed up presence of the CIA in Iraq is tangental at best.

What has been beefed up is counterterrorism which is linked to counter-insurgency (some see it as the same thing).  And the CIA force working on that "reports directly to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki."  I bet it does.

Question, September 8, 2011, were CIA forces in Iraq "report[ing] directly to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki"?

Specifically, were they reporting to him on the assassination of journalist Hadi al-Mahdi.


That assassination was rather intricate for Nouri's fumbling forces to pull off.  Hadi -- a journalist calling out the corruption in Iraq and in Nouri's government and also an activist and organizer behind the protests -- let someone into his apartment.  He served them tea.  This person or persons then killed him.  Now Nouri's thugs could have managed that.  But who would have thought to kill the outside security cameras that the apartment complex had installed?

Nouri's goons?  Why?  They've never worried about being caught because they always get away with everything.

Hadi al-Mahdi's assassination utilized something more than just Nouri's forces.

The question is: Was the CIA involved in that assassination?

And there are a lot more questions about the CIA's actions.  But that tends to happen when the CIA is backing a thug.

In Sunday's "TV: The War Crimes Documentary," Ava and I reviewed the documentary from BBC Arabic and the Guardian newspaper James Steele: America's Mystery Man In Iraq about the US government bringing Steele and others into Iraq to train death squads.  We noted:

Referring to the death squad era, Peter Maass says in the documentary, "The clear priority at that time in Iraq was to not have this incredibly shaky provisional government defeated by the insurgency.  That was priority number one -- to which every other priority democracy, human rights, etc. was subordinate."  Sounds a lot like the priority today, the same priority that led the Obama administration to ignore the 2010 election turnout and instead insist that second place Nouri get a second term.   That was more important than the voters, the vote, the country's Constitution or the democratic process.  In other words, very little has changed from the 'past' the documentary covers.

It does sound like the priority today.  And as activitsts are targeted and killed -- most recently Sunday when sit-in organizer Bunyyan Sabbar al-Obeidi was assassinated in Kirkuk -- it's worth asking, exactly how is the CIA 'helping' in Iraq?  In our review, Ava and I pointed out:

If the documentary has a short coming, it's probably in failing to explore the CIA ties to what was going on.  Steele is CIA-connected and Petraeus ended up Director of the CIA for something other than military knowledge. In fact, the CIA is all over the British documentary but never explored. There's Ahmed Chalabi who's mentioned in a fleeting sentence. There's the memo Steele writes and Rumsfeld forwards which contains the name of a CIA informant who spent time in California before moving back to Iraq.


At some point, people will have to answer for what they did.  A lot of them seem to think that day is far off in the distant future.  I wouldn't be so sure.

Naomi Spencer (WSWS) covers the BBC Arabic and Guardian newspaper today noting:

 Petraeus hired Steele and Colonel James Coffman as advisors. Steele arrived in Baghdad as an “energy consultant” and began working with Coffman to train the paramilitary units under the authority of the interior ministry. These forces, including one called the Wolf Brigade, were composed largely of former Shi’a members of Saddam Hussein’s security forces. Steele acted as Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s personal envoy to the group.
The 2,000-man brigade roved the streets of Baghdad, Samarra, and Mosul in American pickup trucks, rounding up Sunnis for interrogation. Captives would be thrown into secret prisons established in libraries, airports, and ministries. Anti-occupation politicians, human rights activists, and journalists were murdered. Bodies, at times tortured beyond recognition, were deposited in garbage dumps or on the streets. Thousands of corpses piled up in morgues each month, many of them still wearing police handcuffs.
“We would be blindfolded and handcuffed behind our backs,” a former Samarra prisoner told the Guardian /BBC. “Then they would beat us with shovels and pipes. We’d be tied to a spit, or we’d be hung to the ceiling by our hands, and our shoulders would be dislocated.”


The following community sites -- plus Media Channel, Jane Fonda, Antiwar.com, Pacifica Evening News, Ms. magazine's blog and Cindy Sheehan -- updated last night and this morning:








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