> Subject: US Military opposes Obama's wars

> Subject: US Military opposes Obama's wars
>
> The only reason that the world is not already engaged in a global nuclear war is that top US military leaders including the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, have openly picked a fight with the mad President Obama and his British and Israeli cohorts, to refute the lie that Iran is on the verge of building nuclear weapons, and warned that any new war in the Mideast could rapidly escalate out of control - exactly as LaRouche has warned, adding that this is in fact the British intention.
>
> The following articles from the current EIR must be read and disseminated widely:
> 1) U.S. Military's Efforts Alone Can't Stop Empire's War Drive by an EIR Investigative Team, reporting on the fight by Gen. Dempsey, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Gen. James Clapper, and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) head Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, to stop Obama's lunatic war plans.
> 2) Documentation: Russian Spokesmen See Threat of Nuclear War.
> 3) LT. COL. DANIEL DAVIS -- Officer Risks Career: 'I Knew Too Much To Remain Silent' on the active-duty Colonel who has blown the whistle on the lies of the official reporting from Afghanistan, making clear that the US war has been lost, and done horrible damage in the process.
> Mike Billington
> U.S. Military's Efforts Alone Can't Stop Empire's War Drive
>
> by an EIR Investigative Team
>
> [PDF version of this article]
>
> Feb. 20—We are on the very edge of the potential breakout of World War III, Lyndon LaRouche warned during a Feb. 18 broadcast on Lyndon LaRouche PAC-TV, and we're looking at the month of March. Leading figures in the U.S. military, and others, have delayed this outbreak over the last months, but as long as President Barack Obama remains in power, there is a very real danger that such a war could occur. The British Empire and Obama are committed to it, so they must be stopped.
>
> The leading triggers for the thermonuclear confrontation the British are seeking, of course, are Syria and Iran, but those are only triggers. Should attacks occur on these nations, these will only function as detonators for attacks on the real targets, Russia and China, which are well aware that this is the case.
>
> LaRouche said that the month of March is shaping up to be a potentially critical point in this strategic battle. First, and of extreme concern to the British, comes the first round of the Russian Presidential elections on March 4, where Vladimir Putin, whom the British hate and fear, is the leading candidate. Second comes a scheduled issuance of a new report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran's nuclear capability, which the warhawks expect will support their cause. Third is the annual meeting of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), moved up to March 5, which will feature British puppet and warmonger Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and provide the occasion for a major war rally, attended up hundreds of members of Congress.
>
> There is also the very real question of whether the bankrupt world financial system will even exist, into the month of March.
>
> Thus, the British imperial circles have accelerated their war drive—only to be checkmated, so far, by determined efforts from the top levels of the U.S. military command, buttressed by Russian and Chinese officials. But the military cannot do it alone. Either leading political figures in the United States take the necessary public steps to get rid of the British-controlled madman in the White House immediately, or the chances of survival are bad, to nil.
> General Dempsey Speaks Out
>
> Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey has been a consistent voice calling for restraint by Israel against Iran, over the last months, but his statements during a Feb. 19 interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria were the strongest yet, on both the Iran and Syria questions:
>
> "I think it's premature to take a decision to arm the opposition movement in Syria because I would challenge anyone to clearly identify for me the opposition movement in Syria at this point. And let me broaden the conversation a bit. Syria is an arena right now for all of the various interests to play out. And what I mean by that is you've got great power involvement. Turkey clearly has an interest, a very important interest. Russia has a very important interest. Iran has an interest. And what we see playing out is that not just those countries, in fact, potentially not all of them in any case, but we see the various groups who might think that at issue is a Sunni-Shi'a competition for regional control."
>
> On Syria, Dempsey added that the United States should not arm the opposition, adding that "there are indications that al-Qaeda is involved, and that they're interested in supporting the opposition."
>
> Asked about a pre-emptive strike on Iran, he replied:
>
> "I think it would be premature to exclusively decide that the time for a military option was upon us. I think that the economic sanctions and the international cooperation that we've been able to gather around sanctions is beginning to have an effect.... I mean, fundamentally, we have to be prepared. And that includes, for the most part, at this point, being prepared defensively."
>
> On Tehran's leadership:
>
> "I'll tell you that I've been confronting that question since I came into Central Command in 2008. And we are of the opinion that the Iranian regime is a rational actor. And it's for that reason, I think, that we think the current path we're on is the most prudent path at this point."
>
> Dempsey emphasized that
>
> "we also know—or believe we know—that the Iranian regime has not decided that they will embark on the effort to weaponize their nuclear capability."
>
> When asked by Zakaria whether the Israelis understand that the United States is urging them not to strike Iran, and whether he thinks that Israel will be deterred from striking in the near future, Dempsey did not answer directly, but said that he is "confident that they understand our concerns, that a strike at this time would be destabilizing and wouldn't achieve their long-term objectives." He noted that he was in Israel three weeks ago engaging in dialogue on the matter.
>
> Indeed, sources familiar with Dempsey's visit to Israel report that he delivered the most blunt and unequivocal message from the United States, perhaps since President Dwight Eisenhower ordered Israel, Great Britain, and France to withdraw from their invasion of the Suez Canal in 1956. His message to Tel Aviv was, in effect: "Don't you dare!"
>
> In addition to calling for restraint with respect to the flashpoints around Syria and Iran—in stark contrast to Obama's British-scripted bellicosity—Dempsey stated that the U.S. military's strategic shift to the Pacific region provides an opportunity to improve U.S.-China relations. "I think this is more opportunity than liability to improve our relationship with China," Dempsey said, "and I am personally committed to having that as the outcome, rather than get into an arms race or into some kind of confrontation with China."
> He's Not Alone
>
> Dempsey's interview followed significant war-avoidance testimony given in the U.S. Congress on Feb. 15 by Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Gen. James Clapper and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) head Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess. Both made several additional points against military intervention.
>
> In response to questions from Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), Clapper described a Syrian opposition that is mostly based outside the country, and is torn by an internal feud over who is going to lead it. He noted that the recent suicide bombings were all targeted against security and intelligence facilities and "had all the earmarks of an al-Qaeda-like attack. And so we believe that 'al-Qaeda in Iraq' is extending its reach into Syria."
>
> The next day, Clapper's remarks about al-Qaeda involvement were picked up by the leading Russian online news outlet, Russia Today—a sharp contrast with the lack of coverage in the largely British-controlled mainstream news outlets in the U.S.
>
> Clapper repeated his earlier testimony that the intelligence assessment of Iran's nuclear program is that Iran is retaining the option of being able to build nuclear weapons, but has not yet decided to do so. "And we believe that the decision would be made by the Supreme Leader himself, and he would base that on a cost-benefit analysis in terms of—I don't think he'd want a nuclear weapon at any price," he said.
>
> Clapper also expressed a certain disagreement with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who told the same committee that if Iran decided to weaponize, "It would probably take them about a year to be able to produce a bomb, and then possibly another one or two years in order to put it on a deliverable vehicle of some sort in order to deliver that weapon." Clapper said, with respect to the one-year perspective, that it was technically feasible, but not very likely. "There are all kinds of combinations and permutations that could affect how long it might take the Iranians to make a decision to pursue a nuclear weapon."
>
> In his testimony, DIA chief Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess stated what should be obvious, but is usually ignored by the pro-war crowd: Iran is likely to respond if attacked, but "the Agency assesses Iran is unlikely to initiate or intentionally provoke a conflict."
> The Warmongers Can't Wait
>
> Provoking a conflict is precisely what the British Empire and its assets are anxious to do. And they are revving up the political environment precisely in this direction.
>
> One of the major problems they face is that Iran has agreed to resume talks with the so-called P5+1 (the Permanent Five members of the UN Security Council—the U.S., Russia, Britain, France, China—plus Germany), which had been formed to discuss the nuclear issue. For months, the whining establishment line about Iran has been that Tehran has never responded to an October 2011 letter from EU Foreign Minister Lady Catherine Ashton, offering to start talks with preconditions such as Iran's agreeing to stop uranium enrichment, as a basis for the talks. The Ashton letter was a provocation, aimed at guaranteeing that no talks would resume. That has now been trumped by Iran.
>
> This is the setting for an escalation of measures against Iran which amount to a de facto embargo, in addition to the squeezing of Syria, an Iranian ally—both calculated to pressure Iran into retaliation. The British warmongers won't take peace for an answer.
>
> On Feb. 16, warhawk Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), and Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) launched their effort to prevent any possible peaceful resolution to the conflict. Twenty-nine other Senators, including a number of "liberal" Democrats, signed on to S. 3112, a sense of the Senate resolution which tells President Obama that he will have strong bipartisan support in Congress if he launches a military attack on Iran. The resolution defies all sound military and intelligence judgment and declares that Iran must be prevented from obtaining a nuclear weapons capability, and rejects any policy of containment of a nuclear Iran.
>
> The U.S. could have diplomacy and war avoidance with the nuclear-armed Soviet Union for four decades, but can't contain Iran? The resolution is just a blatant push for war.
> And Now Syria
>
> Meanwhile, the Obama Administration, primarily through British-trained asset and UN Ambassador Susan Rice, is escalating against Syria, again ignoring the U.S. military's warnings about al-Qaeda's role in the opposition, and it's being pressured to go even further along the Libyan path, specifically to set up a so-called "humanitarian corridor" that would serve as a base for the violent overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad.
>
> On Feb. 17, fifty-six pro-British ass-kissing neoconservative liars and chickenhawks who brought the world the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan issued an open letter to Barack Obama, demanding an "immediate" U.S. intervention into Syria, in the name of "humanitarian" concerns. Sponsoring the letter is the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the same group that LaRouchePAC fingered last week as a key promoter of the Mossad-funded and -trained Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK) terrorists being deployed as assassins inside Iran. The signators' demands are a virtual carbon copy of a war plan put out earlier by the London-headquartered Henry Jackson Society: U.S. and other foreign forces must establish "safe zones within Syrian territory," and "no-go zones for the Assad regime's military and security forces," and work with Congress to impose "crippling" sanctions against Syria's energy supplies, banking, and shipping. Plus supplying military aid to the non-existent Free Syrian Army, and coordinating with and supplying communications technologies to the very "political opposition" that U.S. intelligence officers, including DNI Clapper, say is fragmented and infiltrated by al-Qaeda. The reality is that the armed opposition in Syria is al-Qaeda, with some equally odious Salafi fanatics thrown in for good measure.
>
> UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is lining up behind the views of the interventionists, and in separate meetings in Europe on Feb. 16, informed the French and Russian foreign ministers that the UN's "top priority" is to establish "humanitarian access" for foreign forces inside Syria. So, too, like sheep lining up for their own slaughter, a majority of the nations of the world then voted up, 135 to 12, with 17 abstentions, a non-binding UN General Assembly resolution demanding that the Syrian government allow such "humanitarian assistance."
>
> Not to be left out, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) on Feb. 16 introduced Senate Resolution 379, "Condemning Violence by the Government of Syria Against the Syrian People," which promises that the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations will immediately schedule a hearing to assess "international options available" to be taken against Syria. Like his neocon allies, Kerry's resolution singles out Russia and China for refusing to capitulate to this demanded new war. It cannot be forgotten that Kerry's similar treasonous defense of Barack Obama's unconstitutional Libya War was crucial in bringing the world to the brink of the global thermonuclear war which the now-demanded action against Syria may well trigger.
>
> Russian Spokesmen See Threat of Nuclear War
>
> Sergei Markov, a public policy expert with close ties
> to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, said the
> Kremlin sees the U.S./NATO goal of overthrowing
> Syrian President Hafez al-Assad as a first step to war
> against Iran, the Christian Science Monitor reported on
> Feb. 13. “We’ve been deceived over and over again,”
> Markov said. “We consider the claims that Assad is
> massacring people are falsifications, basically a pretext
> to introduce troops and start a war there. We saw the
> U.S. invade Iraq on false pretenses. Then they lied
> about the humanitarian situation in Libya, and per-
> suaded Russia to allow a UN resolution on a no-fly zone
> to protect civilians. Why should we believe them now?
> [Russia thinks] the purpose of the West is not peace but
> war in Syria. They have their own goals which they are
> cynically pursuing.”
> Gen. Nikolai Makarov, Russia’s Chief of the
> General Staff, told reporters on Feb. 14 that an attack
> from the West against Iran could take place as early as
> this Summer. The RIA News Agency said that Makarov
> “expects Iran’s enemies to decide in the next
> few months how to deal with a nuclear program that
> the United States and Israel have said they might
> attack.”
> “Iran, of course, is a sore spot,” Makarov said.
> “. . .There has to be some kind of decision about it now.
> It will be made, probably, closer to Summer.”
> He also spoke, according to the Chinese news
> agency Xinhua, against the U.S./NATO forward-basing
> of missile defense installations in Eastern Europe,
> which the U.S. claims is to counter potential missile
> threats from Iran. “By 2018,” Xinhua reported, “an entirely
> differenct generation of those missiles would be
> ‘capable of shooting down strategic missiles over our
> territory,’ Makarov said.”
> Russia’s highest military official also warned of the
> prospect of the United States deploying warships in the
> Black Sea or in the Arctic. “In a case where [Aegis antimissile
> system-equipped] ships appear in the Barents
> Sea, or in the Black Sea, for instance, we will likely
> take special measures in the frame of the state rearmament
> program,” Marakarov told reporters. “But we
> would not like to use these measures, as they increase
> the financial burden for us.”
> On Feb. 15, General Makarov told the Russian
> Public Chamber that “the possibility of local armed
> conflicts virtually along the entire perimeter of [Russia’s]
> border has grown dramatically. I cannot rule out
> that, in certain circumstances, local and regional armed
> conflicts could grow into a large-scale war, possibly
> even with nuclear weapons.”
> Russia Today news service quoted him saying that
> “almost all countries formerly belonging to the Warsaw
> Pact have become NATO members, and the Baltic
> States that were earlier a part of the U.S.S.R. have also
> joined the alliance.”
> The online news service noted an earlier statement
> by Prime Minister Putin, that “at time of the withdrawal
> from Eastern Europe, the NATO Secretary General
> promised the U.S.S.R. it could be confident that
> NATO would not expand beyond its current boundaries.
> So where is it now? I asked them [the NATO officials].
> They have nothing to say. They deceived us in
> the rudest way.”
> Then on Feb. 16, radio Ekho Moskvy interviewed
> General Makarov, who warned that Russia has the
> right to use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty is
> threatened.
> Expanding on a theme he had developed in November
> of last year, when he warned of the danger of
> nuclear war, Makarov said: “We are certainly not
> planning to fight against the whole of NATO, but if
> there is a threat to the integrity of the Russian Federation,
> we have the right to use nuclear weapons, and we
> will.”
> The general said that Russia’s nuclear deterrent is
> the cornerstone of strategic stability, and serious efforts
> are being taken by the Russian government to modernize
> the country’s nuclear triad. These include adding ten
> Borey-class strategic nuclear submarines, bringing its
> Tu-160 Blackjack and Tu-95 Bear strategic bombers up
> to date, and adding Yars mobile ballistic missile systems.
> Makarov stressed that the country should also maintain
> efficient conventional forces: “Unfortunately, we
> are facing threats from a number of unstable states,
> where no nuclear weapons, but well-trained, strong,
> and mobile armed forces are required to resolve any
> conflict situation.”
> On Feb. 16, Russian Security Council head Nikolai
> Patrushev was quoted by the daily Komsomolskaya
> Pravda, citing comments made this week at a hearing
> by Gen. James Clapper, the U.S. Director of National
> Intelligence, about Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Patrushev
> said that Russia has no intention of attacking the NATO
> alliance or any other countries.
> But, he added, “our Army must fulfill its deterrent
> function and maintain the country’s sovereignty and
> peaceful life. And if the United States ignores our proposals
> regarding a missile defense system in Europe,
> we will be forced to prepare an asymmetric response.
> That global system is clearly aimed at Russia. And at
> China. Earlier the irritant was Moscow. Now it’s
> Beijing, although the theme of the break-up of Russia
> is still a current one for them. In certain circles, they
> sleep and dream about how to get the resources of
> Siberia and the Far East. And gain access to the Caspian
> and to the transportation corridor of Central
> Asia.”
>
> LT. COL. DANIEL DAVIS
> Officer Risks Career:
> 'I Knew Too Much To Remain Silent'
>
> by Carl Osgood
>
> [PDF version of this article]
>
> Feb. 20—Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, in a scathing 84-page report entitled "Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leaders' Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort," takes apart, with meticulous documentation, and from his own experiences, the lies of senior military officers and defense officials that are being used to mischaracterize the war in Afghanistan as some kind of success, when the reality is that it's anything but. He not only names names, but takes on the largest icon of the war, Gen. David Petraeus (ret.), a virtual super-hero among some military and neocon circles, who believe that Petraeus snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in Iraq in 2007.
>
> Davis demonstrates that the truth in Iraq is quite different from legend, but that the legend is doing us great damage in Afghanistan. Davis knows, by telling these unvarnished truths, that he has sacrificed his career. "Why write this report when you know you're going to get flamed by the Army brass?" is the question that many have asked of him, he writes. "Honestly, after all I've seen over the past decade and a half, I felt a moral obligation to do so. I believe that with knowledge comes responsibility; I knew too much to remain silent."
>
> Davis has not only confronted us with the reality on the ground in Afghanistan, a reality that contradicts the official pronouncements about the war, but has also challenged members of Congress: Do you have the guts to put the future of the nation ahead of your own political career?
>
> Davis's critique first emerged on Feb. 5, in an article he authored for the Armed Forces Journal, and a profile of him in the New York Times that appeared the same day. By his own account, Davis was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010, as part of the Rapid Equipping Force, an acquisition task force set up to bypass the Army's normal bureaucratic channels to get soldiers in the field what they need as quickly as possible. In the course of that assignment, he traveled over 9,000 miles, interviewed more than 250 soldiers, from 19-year-old privates up to two-star generals, as well as Afghan soldiers, police, and others, and walked patrols in some of Afghanistan's most dangerous districts. What he saw and was told was at such variance with the official statements from Petraeus, who was the U.S./NATO Commander in Afghanistan until last July, and others, that he felt compelled to do something about it.
>
> So, after conferring with his pastor, he wrote two reports, one classified, one not, took them to four members of Congress, briefed a dozen staff members, spoke to a reporter for the New York Times, and sent his reports to the Department of Defense Inspector General. Only then, did he inform his chain of command what he was doing. Davis had no intention of releasing his unclassified report without screening it through the Army's public affairs office, but it was leaked on Feb. 10 by Rolling Stone magazine, making it available to a much wider audience.
>
> If the Army has not yet acted against him, it's likely because he has generated sympathy for his views on Capitol Hill. "For Col. Davis to go out on a limb and help us understand what's happening on the ground, I have the greatest admiration for him," Rep. Walter Jones (R-S.C.) told the New York Times' Scott Shane. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Colo.) called him a valuable witness because his extensive travels and mid-level rank gave him access to a wide range of soldiers. And Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta suggesting that he set up an independent panel to review the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, citing Davis's report, along with a very pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate that was leaked to the press last month.
>
> On Feb. 16, The Hill reported that Davis had briefed five members of Congress, Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), at their invitation, on the situation in Afghanistan.
>
> The title that Davis chose for his unclassified report is itself significant. It refers to the 1997 book Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam, by then-Army Major H.R. McMaster, who is now a brigadier general. McMaster's book created quite a stir at the time because he had taken on an icon of an earlier time, Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, who played a key role in the lies that he writes about.
> Debunking Counterinsurgency Theory
>
> Davis's "Dereliction of Duty II" is not simply an indictment of those leaders of the U.S. military for the deception they have engaged in with respect to what is actually happening in Afghanistan. It is, in fact, a direct challenge to the undermining of the institution of the U.S. military that has been underway since the Vietnam era. He goes so far as to quote Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who compared the statements of U.S. military leaders concerning conditions on the ground in Afghanistan, with the infamous "five o'clock follies" of Gen. William Westmoreland in Vietnam.
>
> In other words, the claims of "progress" are so at variance with the realities on the ground that you can't trust any official statements that come out of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters, or from the military and civilian leadership at the Pentagon.
>
> How did this situation come about? How is it that the leadership of the U.S. military is engaged in such delusion and deception and, perhaps, even outright lying, to claim that the strategy is working, when it clearly is not? What are the consequences for American troops in Afghanistan, for Afghans, and for the future course of America in the world? Davis attempts, with his 84-page report, to answer these questions.
>
> The first target of Davis's report is the counterinsurgency doctrine that is being employed in Afghanistan. The man most closely identified with that doctrine is Petraeus, now director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. As is well known, Petraeus oversaw the development of the counterinsurgency doctrine manual at the Army's Combined Armed Center in 2004. That doctrine derives from two historical sources: the U.S. experience in Vietnam, where the so-called CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support) program has been deemed a success by military historians; and the Anglo-French experience of the 1950s and '60s, especially the British campaign in Malaya.
>
> However, it is not the case that American officers came across the British Malayan experience just while doing their research. It was explicitly pushed on the U.S. Army by the British themselves. Maj. Gen. Jonathon Riley, formerly the senior British officer assigned to U.S. Central Command, during a panel discussion at the annual Association of the U.S. Army conference in October 2006, indicated as much. He invoked the image of the 1950s British campaign in Malaya "as the textbook example of counterinsurgency," and suggested that that may be the model for the future.
>
> British success in Malaya has been attributed to two things, Riley said: British experience in imperial policing, and the development of concepts and techniques for waging limited war. Riley cited the 1966 book by Sir Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam, which enshrined Malaya as the "touchstone" of British expertise in counterinsurgency methods, and said, "Now that the Cold War is over, perhaps the long view may give us a different perspective, although I think [Thompson]'s wrong to dismiss imperial policing, which one can characterize as expeditionary campaign to seize the territory followed by counterinsurgency to keep it."
>
> Petraeus incorporated these British theories (along with certain French theories with which he was also enamored) into U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, and then took that doctrine to Iraq in 2007 as leader of the Iraq "surge." The outcome over the next two years made Petraeus an icon of almost god-like proportions in certain circles in Washington. But did the doctrine actually work as advertised? Davis proves in spades that the surge had little to do with the turnaround in Iraq in 2007; rather, it was the Sunni insurgency's break with al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) that did it.
>
> AQI originally showed up as an ally of the Sunnis who were fighting the U.S. occupation, but it was so brutal towards the Sunnis that they eventually had no choice but to side with U.S. forces in order to get rid of this menace. Davis credits Petraeus with recognizing the significance of the Sunni Awakening that had actually begun in Anbar Province months before the first surge troops arrived. But he then quotes a number of U.S. commanders and former Iraqi insurgents to the effect that had the Sunni/al-Qaeda break never occurred, the surge and its accompanying strategy of "protecting the population" would have had little effect on the level of violence there.
>
> The story that was told back in Washington, however, was that it was Petraeus's "brilliant generalship" that "won the war" in Iraq, a narrative that became so hegemonic, nobody could counter it. The failure to properly understand what had happened in Iraq meant that when it was time for the Obama Administration to make some decisions about its future policy in Afghanistan, the Petraeus template became the strategy. The problem is, there is no al-Qaeda anymore in Afghanistan, and there's no "Awakening" movement to take a large portion of the fighters away from attacks on U.S. troops. As Davis documents, the civilian casualties have risen to their highest levels since the war began, and U.S. casualties rise and fall with the numbers of U.S. troops engaged on the ground, unlike what happened in Iraq. And yet the happy talk continues, as Davis thoroughly documents.
>
> What may be the most important aspect of this part of the story, however, is left unsaid by Davis. He notes that AQI's attacks on Shi'ite civilians inflamed sectarian tensions in Iraq, and its brutal treatment of the Sunnis alienated the Sunni insurgency. Left implied is that AQI, by its actions, prevented the Sunni and Shi'a resistance to the U.S. occupation from uniting, a strategy which bears the hallmarks the classical British method of controlling subject peoples by dividing them, and setting them against each other.
>
> As EIR Online reported on Sept. 27, 2005, many in Iraq and the Arab world were already suspicious that the secret services of the U.S., Britain, and Israel were stoking the sectarian fires in Iraq. The same report noted that it was Anglo-American intelligence networks that set up what became al-Qaeda in the first place, under Osama bin Laden, during the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
> Psywar Against the U.S. Public
>
> Davis devotes considerable space to the "information operations" aspect of the Afghanistan War. He documents conclusively that the information being provided to the American public is based, not on any effort to be truthful, but on political considerations. He cites a 2006 article in Military Review that advocated changing Federal law so that "Military Information Operations" could be more effective, by defining acceptable activities "that organizations may perform to protect a key friendly center of gravity, to wit, U.S. national will." What has happened, is that the public affairs function, which, by definition, is supposed to merely inform the American public about military policies and activities, has become intertwined with the psychological operations function, which, by definition, targets foreign audiences to influence them to support U.S. military policies.
>
> The author of the cited article, as well as another one that Davis cites, completely ignores the possibility that U.S. public support for the war in Iraq might have been falling because of events on the ground there. This is reminiscent of those historians of a conservative bent who blame the U.S. defeat in Vietnam on the news media and the anti-war movement, rather than on anything that was happening on the ground. Without characterizing it as such, Davis is actually describing the Goebbels propaganda method—repeat a lie often enough and people will accept it as the truth without question—as applied by the U.S. military.
>
> Davis realizes that the deception didn't begin with, nor is it limited to the current wars. He describes his own involvement in two programs, the Advanced Warfighting Experiment (AWE) of 1997, and the Future Combat System (FCS) in 2003-07, to illustrate how the Army's modernization programs have been victims of the same problem. The AWE was supposed to demonstrate the efficacies of "digitization" of an entire Army division to increase its speed and lethality. The idea was that information technology would make the division so much more lethal that its force structure could be reduced, thereby making it lighter and more agile. The problem was that the experiment showed that the only thing that was accomplished was to reduce its combat power.
>
> Similarly with the FCS, which was supposed to replace the array of different vehicles and systems in an Army brigade with a single family of vehicles and reconnaissance systems all tied together with a network. Neither program worked, but Army leaders (probably encouraged by the contractors who were making billions off these programs) hid the failures from Congress and the American public.
>
> Perhaps what Davis doesn't realize is that these failures also proved that the whole Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) concept, which was the theory behind these programs, itself didn't work: the notion that new information age technologies, combined with new operating concepts, would give us perfect knowledge of the battlefield and make us unbeatable.
>
> The driving force within the Pentagon behind this concept has been Andrew Marshall, the director of the Office of Net Assessment since 1973. He's an example of the permanent bureaucracy in the British government that Franklin Roosevelt once complained about: "Governments come and governments go," Roosevelt was reported to have said, "but the permanent undersecretary is always there." Marshall has been the continuity of policy within the Pentagon on the RMA, and is also the force behind the Obama Administration's "Asia pivot." The RMA has been proven to be a failure several times since 1997, yet it remains the underlying concept for restructuring U.S. military forces.
> From Afghanistan to Iran?
>
> The wide gulf between what is happening on the ground in Afghanistan and what our top civilian and military leaders say about Afghanistan has serious domestic policy implications. Davis writes:
>
> "If the American people do not demand their leaders be completely honest with them, we all forfeit the ability to determine our own destiny. If our acquiescence for a war decision is gained by some leader telling us a version of events that will result in our support, but that version is not in accordance with what really exists, how can we know whether war or supporting a war is really a good idea or not? Are the American people content to allow selected individuals, for reasons important to them, to decide when they are told the truth and when they are given fiction? When we tacitly know leaders don't tell the truth and yet do nothing about it, we effectively surrender control to our leaders and give them free reign to do as they see fit. Already we have gone far down this path and as a public have already relinquished considerable control that ought to reside in the people's hands."
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> Davis has just described how we got into the Iraq War in the first place. It takes not only the deception and lies of the leadership of the country, but the corruption of the population to acquiesce in those lies. The exact same game is being played with respect to Iran, a war, that, if allowed to occur, would be far more devastating, indeed, civilization threatening, than anything we have seen up until now. Will the elected members of the Congress again "go along to get along" or will they put the fate of the nation ahead of their own political interests, and act to remove Obama from office in time to prevent this catastrophe from happening?
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> —cjosgood@att.net