If you read this on the URL itself, there are nine click-ons in Glen Greenwald's response in the text itself, such as "there are numerous official documents - THAT HAVE RECENTLY EMERGED - You access them by clicking on 'that have recently emerged.' They are there to substantiate indications the situation hasn't improved or gotten worse, contrary to the administration's desperate attempt to stem the tidal wave roused by this report, get the money now being debated in the House and keep this disaster going.
Nine of them. http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/26/this-is-how-your-white-house-defends-its-war/ This Is How Your White House Defends Its War Posted by Byard Duncan on @ 7:36 am Article printed from speakeasy: <http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy URL to article: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/26/this-is-how-your-white-house-defends-its-war/ Here's the White House's full response to the latest WikiLeaks saga: The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security. Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents - the United States government learned from news organizations that these documents would be posted. These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people. The documents posted by Wikileaks reportedly cover a period of time from January 2004 to December 2009. On December 1, 2009, President Obama announced a new strategy with a substantial increase in resources for Afghanistan, and increased focus on al Qaeda and Taliban safe-havens in Pakistan, precisely because of the grave situation that had developed over several years. This shift in strategy addressed challenges in Afghanistan that were the subject of an exhaustive policy review last fall. We know that serious challenges lie ahead, but if Afghanistan is permitted to slide backwards, we will again face a threat from violent extremist groups like al Qaeda who will have more space to plot and train. That is why we are now focused on breaking the Taliban's momentum and building Afghan capacity so that the Afghan government can begin to assume responsibility for its future. The United States remains committed to a strong, stable, and prosperous Afghanistan. Since 2009, the United States and Pakistan have deepened our important bilateral partnership. Counter-terrorism cooperation has led to significant blows against al Qaeda's leadership. The Pakistani military has gone on the offensive in Swat and South Waziristan, at great cost to the Pakistani military and people. The United States and Pakistan have also commenced a Strategic Dialogue, which has expanded cooperation on issues ranging from security to economic development. Pakistan and Afghanistan have also improved their bilateral ties, most recently through the completion of a Transit-Trade Agreement. Yet the Pakistani government - and Pakistan's military and intelligence services - must continue their strategic shift against insurgent groups. The balance must shift decisively against al Qaeda and its extremist allies. U.S. support for Pakistan will continue to be focused on building Pakistani capacity to root out violent extremist groups, while supporting the aspirations of the Pakistani people. And Glenn Greenwald's take, via Salon. It's hardly a shock that the war in Afghanistan is going far worse than political officials have been publicly claiming. Aside from the fact that lying about war is what war leaders do almost intrinsically - that's part of what makes war so degrading to democratic values - there have been numerous official documents that have recently emerged or leaked out that explicitly state that the war is going worse than ever and is all but unwinnable. A French General was formally punished earlier this month for revealing that the NATO war situation "has never been worse," while French officials now openly plot how to set new "intermediate" benchmarks to ensure - in their words - that "public opinion doesn't get the impression of a useless effort." Anyone paying even mild attention knows that our war effort there has entailed countless incidents of civilian slaughter followed by official lies about it, "hit lists" compiled with no due process, and feel-good pronouncements from the Government that have little relationship to the realities in that country (other leak highlights are here). This leak is not unlike the Washington Post series from the last week: the broad strokes were already well-known, but the sheer magnitude of the disclosures may force more public attention on these matters than had occurred previously. Byard Duncan is a contributing writer and editor for AlterNet. His work has appeared on AlterNet, Truthout, Common Dreams and the China Daily. *** http://www.thenation.com/blog/37675/huge-fly-swatter-no-flies-top-secret-americas-vast-counterterrorism-machine Huge Fly Swatter, No Flies: Top Secret America's Vast Counterterrorism Machine By Robert Dreyfus The Nation: July 10, 2010 Not surprisingly, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is complaining about the Washington Post's blockbuster series, "Top Secret America," whose first installment appeared today. (You can read the whole series, as it appears, at the Post's special site, TopSecretAmerica.com.) Laughably, the ODNI says: The reporting does not reflect the Intelligence Community we know.. We have reformed the [intelligence community] in ways that have improved the quality, quantity, regularity, and speed of our support to policymakers, warfighters, and homeland defenders, and we will continue our reform efforts. We provide oversight, while also encouraging initiative. We work constantly to reduce inefficiencies and redundancies, while preserving a degree of intentional overlap among agencies to strengthen analysis, challenge conventional thinking, and eliminate single points of failure. But as the Post makes clear, the world of Top Secret America has grown like Topsy Secret America. Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, who wrote the series, report that the post-9/11 apparatus has exploded to include at least 1,271 government organizations and nearly 2,000 private contractors in 10,000 locations, with 854,000 people holding top-secret security clearances. The intelligence budget for the United States has risen from $30 billion a year in 2001 to $75 billion today, and that only scratches the surface. And they report: Twenty-four organizations were created by the end of 2001, including the Office of Homeland Security and the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Force. In 2002, 37 more were created to track weapons of mass destruction, collect threat tips and coordinate the new focus on counterterrorism. That was followed the next year by 36 new organizations, and 26 after that; and 31 more, and 32 more, and 20 or more each in 2007, 2008, and 2009. What's missing from the story, however, is any assessment of the threat against which this vast and growing machinery is arrayed. The Post notes that twenty-five separate agencies have been set up to track terrorist financing, which admirably shows the overlapping and redundant nature of the post-9/11 ballooning of agencies and organizations targeting terrorism. But the article barely mentions that there are hardly any terrorists to track. The Post points out that among the recent, nuisance-level attacks by Muslim extremists-the Fort Hood shooter, the underwear bomber, the Times Square incident-the intelligence machine failed to detect or stop them. True. That's an indictment of the counterterrorism machinery that has become a staple for critics of the outsize budgets and wasteful bureaucracy that has been created since 9/11. The core problem, which the Post doesn't address, is that Al Qaeda and its affiliates, its sympathizers, and even self-starting terrorist actors who aren't part of Al Qaeda itself, are a tiny and manageable problem. Yet the apparatus that has been created is designed to meet nothing less than an existential threat. Even at the height of the cold war, when the Soviet Union and its allies were engaged in a brutal, country-by-country battle across Asia, Africa and Latin America to combat the United States, NATO, and American hegemonism, there was nothing like the post-9/11 behemoth in existence. A thousand smart intelligence analysts, a thousand smart FBI and law enforcement officers, and a few hundred Special Operations military folk are all that's needed to deal with the terrorism threat. It's been hugely overblown. Yet in the Post story, sage-like gray beards of the counterterrorism machine stroke their chins and pontificate about how difficult it is to coordinate all these agencies, absorb all the data, read all the reports and absorb the 1.7 billion e-mails and phone calls that are picked up every day by the National Security Agency. It's an "Emperor's New Clothes" problem. The emperor isn't naked, but no one, really, is threatening him. Robert Dreyfuss ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[email protected]?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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