TARNISHED GLORY: THE MYTH OF "SPECIAL OPERATIONS"
December 14, 2009 posted by Gordon Duff · 15 Comments
WHEN DID "SPECIAL OPS" BECOME KIDNAPPING, DRUG DEALING, TORTURE and POLITICAL DIRTY TRICKS
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor
What does "Special Ops’ mean? Why would a special operations command, JSOC, be answerable to our Vice President, a mentally unstable draft dodging hack from the oil industry? Why would the CIA outsource its most secret projects to Blackwater, a GOP mercenary group with the worst reputation of any firm the US has ever done business with?
Years of kidnapping and torturing people based on mistaken identity, intelligence that is ALWAYS WRONG, chasing dead men, invading wrong countries and picking out allies that are gangsters, con men and drug dealers isn’t an accident, its policy. Now we are told Blackwater, the CIA, MI-6, the Mossad and RAW work together, not only against Iran but in friendly nations also. The stories we are told are that some of what is done is contracting for commercial clients and foreign governments and not anything involving fighting terrorism or protecting anyone, in fact, much the opposite. When is a mercenary a gangster? Are these missions or are they capers or hits?
Blackwater has become the punching bag for the press of late. With accusations of close ties to the CIA and charges of murder and gangsterism floating around after years of more than empty accusations of massive incompetence, their name is abused most.
Are they the only ones? When "private contractors" are involved in terrorism against US allies, the real scandal few are talking about in the US, and Blackwater’s name is brought up, is it really them or someone else? There are dozens of companies involved, not just "Blackwater."
We now know that Blackwater alone has an endless web of secret fronts making it impossible to trace what is done and for whom. Other companies are doing the same, all unaccountable to the United States or her allies.
Many of these companies exist as offshore entities and are, thus, free to work for the highest bidder, be it Iran, Libya, Georgia, the Sudan or even Israel or India.
The charges against private contractors and "special ops" and intelligence organizations are these:
- Planning and executing terrorist acts inside Pakistan killing hundreds of civilians and targeting military and intelligence facilities
- Organizing revolutionary groups inside Baluchistan which are now fighting along side the Taliban along with organizing attacks inside Iran.
- Transporting narcotics and arranging international banking for warlords involved in opium
- Using rendition and torture to create falsified intelligence used to justify unnecessary military operations
- Manipulating and creating terrorist threats to influence American elections
- Private contractors are said to provide security and training for Iran and other countries unfriendly to the United States
- Creating a trade in phony terrorist suspects, innocent people who are bought and sold into years of torture, imprisonment and even murdered for profit.
- Facilitating terrorist acts in Western Europe and elsewhere through withholding vital intelligence or worse, much worse, in order to maintain an international climate of fear.
- Facilitating a world market in selling American secrets around the world which involved well known "think tanks" working for the US government, members of Congress and key Whitehouse and State Department officials.
- Maintaining high level contacts with terrorist leaders for reasons we can only guess.
The last charge and the most serious charge is also the most substantiated. Sibel Edmonds, the FBI translator who was held under gag order by the Bush administration for 6 years has testified to the fact that the CIA under Bush was regularly communicating with Osama bin Laden until immediately before 9/11. Her sworn testimony is available and a recap of her charges is available thru the American Conservative.
Evidence, to some degree, exists to support all of these charges but, although some investigations are going forward, any attempt to begin a comprehensive investigation of this massive national security threat is being blocked at every level.
What are the rationales for this pattern of abuse of power? How could this be accomplished? Let’s look at a few of the factors involved:
- Israel is the key to many issues, but not in the sense of Israeli security. For instance, Israel is the largest arms supplier to India and many other countries, often reselling extremely sensitive US missile technology. Israeli is also involved financially in oil and gas projects in many of the destabilized areas.
- Global security experts have long suspected that the "War on Terror" was little more than an excuse to keep the arms business going after the fall of Communism. Revelations that most threats, from Iraq to "worldwide terror networks" have been overblown are now commonly accepted.
- Wide mistrust of America’s democratic system of government and legal protections by powerful groups, some of whom profited massively from rigged gasoline prices, financial deregulation and "no bid" war contracts, led to a marriage of special interest and politics in America that undermined Constitutional liberties and controls on corruption to create a much less free but seemingly "more efficient" corporate state.
- The world economy entered a period when the US could be realigned from its position of "economic powerhouse" to "milk cow." America could be "looted", financial institutions made insolvent, real estate markets collapsed while America’s military forces could be used to secure global markets for multinational corporations under the guise of "spreading Christian values" or "ending tyranny."
- The "information revolution" would make this, not only possible but expedient thru centralized control of media, TV and Radio and the ability to use the internet to systematically flood millions of households with continual irrational scares about poisoned vaccines, socialist conspiracies, gun seizures and mysterious plots. Where media manipulation failed, hacking electronic voting machines would leave a semblence of democratic freedoms while eliminating all real public participation in government.
- One fact regarding 9/11 has always been known, one fact only: Osama bin Laden, now known to have been working for the CIA on 9/11, was not involved. Since the debunking of the 9/11 Commission Report, much done by those who wrote it themselves, we are left with no proven facts involving this tragedy.
Some glimpses into these patterns of misconduct and conspiracy came up during the Edmonds interview with former CIA analyst Philip Giraldi, published in the American Conservative:
"GIRALDI: You also have information on al-Qaeda, specifically al-Qaeda in Central Asia and Bosnia. You were privy to conversations that suggested the CIA was supporting al-Qaeda in central Asia and the Balkans, training people to get money, get weapons, and this contact continued until 9/11…
EDMONDS: I don’t know if it was CIA. There were certain forces in the U.S. government who worked with the Turkish paramilitary groups, including Abdullah Çatli’s group, Fethullah Gülen.
GIRALDI: Well, that could be either Joint Special Operations Command or CIA.
EDMONDS: Maybe in a lot of cases when they said State Department, they meant CIA?
GIRALDI: When they said State Department, they probably meant CIA.
EDMONDS: Okay. So these conversations, between 1997 and 2001, had to do with a Central Asia operation that involved bin Laden. Not once did anybody use the word “al-Qaeda.” It was always “mujahideen,” always “bin Laden” and, in fact, not “bin Laden” but “bin Ladens” plural. There were several bin Ladens who were going on private jets to Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. The Turkish ambassador in Azerbaijan worked with them.
There were bin Ladens, with the help of Pakistanis or Saudis, under our management. Marc Grossman was leading it, 100 percent, bringing people from East Turkestan into Kyrgyzstan, from Kyrgyzstan to Azerbaijan, from Azerbaijan some of them were being channeled to Chechnya, some of them were being channeled to Bosnia. From Turkey, they were putting all these bin Ladens on NATO planes. People and weapons went one way, drugs came back.
GIRALDI: Was the U.S. government aware of this circular deal?
EDMONDS: 100 percent. A lot of the drugs were going to Belgium with NATO planes. After that, they went to the UK, and a lot came to the U.S. via military planes to distribution centers in Chicago and Paterson, New Jersey. Turkish diplomats who would never be searched were coming with suitcases of heroin.
GIRALDI: And, of course, none of this has been investigated."
The last sentence is the most telling. "None of this has been investigated." When discussing the Joint Special Operations Command, they are referring to General McChrystal and Vice President Cheney. Drugs on NATO planes? Flying terrorist leaders around the world?
Is this what we mean by "special operations." How does flying terrorists around and delivering narcotics protect us? How many whistleblowers have been silenced? These are the charges made against Blackwater, as printed in The Nation:
A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia.
The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince’s companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."
Since these charges were made public, we have learned that this same company had been involved, on a massive scale, in US operations around the world. We learned this week, from Brigadier General Asif Haroon Raja in Opinion Maker that Blackwater is accused of terrorist attacks against Pakistan:
"Having fully committed the army in fighting a futile US war on terror, RAW sponsored terrorists duly aided by Blackwater elements are playing havoc into major cities of Pakistan through almost daily bomb blasts and suicide attacks."
Can America afford to continue with our current special operations command, be it CIA or JSOC or whatever the flavor of the day, if even a single of the seemingly endless charges made are true?
Is blocking investigations meant to protect America or to facilitate our own "evil doers?"
Veterans Today Senior Editor Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.
Hmmm Left out the French Foreign Legion or are they ‘the good guys’ now?
So many different spy agencies, working for so many different countries, (which party is in power now? I forgot) then you throw in a couple of drug dealers, gunrunners, Slavery folks, Mafioso, Chinese, Russian, Mexican, American gangs, maybe one or two that are just trying to make a living IE the common criminal, have I missed anybody? If I did, I’m sorry. Even wearing a uniform doesn’t guarantee they’re a good guy. Even had some ‘never weres’, I mean Wanna bes trying to tell me what’s wrong with America and the ‘liberal guy is a $%^*&(^ for not parroting the GOP party line.
All you have to do is read, just read what they are telling you to see it’s just like everything else. Something they say, that they want YOU to die for, not them.
Think I’ll just set in on my Sofa, with a stiff , I mean STIFF eggnog and watch the world slowly sink into another civil war unless they snap out of it, which is also good.
Wonder if I can still find my ‘coolie hat’? They’re pumping oil from Turkmenistan to China now that they made a deal instead of a war there. Tsing Tao beer wasn’t too bad as far as beer goes and how thirsty you are.
Start looking at those "not so public" news stories of Americans being arrested in strange places, sometimes armed to the teeth.
There are two big clients out there, India and Israel.
What do you think they are buying?
g
Forgot what the movie was called back in the 60s. Starred James Coburn and Godfrey Cambridge I believe. Coburn was a psychologist working for the Government (hmm, strange a psychologist working for the Government) and he was consoling Cambridge which worked for the CIA and they were talking about his 5th Avenue ‘kill’ the day before. “I didn’t feel anything doc”. Ok later on in the movie, he couldn’t take it anymore so he took off with his new girlfriend somewhere else. He knew too much and the FBI, CIA, NSA and KGB were after him and killed each other in a field when they couldn’t find a hotel, so to speak and in the end everybody came to his house to celebrate Christmas, even Kapotkin the KGB guy. Wonder if it’s like you know, ESP? Hmm, Maybe I need to watch Catch 22 again? This time i might understand the plot.
H?
alton, tsing tao king of the commie beers? what about the south east asias blue ribbon winner panther piss.the only problem i have with keeping in true asian style drinking is, in north america its difficult to keep the beer temperature above 80 degrees.
those two the ex marine and the blackwater whistleblower i’ve heard have been accidented.sibel edmonds is going the same way that the don seigelman case is going,slow death by the bushcrime family friendly doj.our cia has brought the the russian way of life here and super sized it. i can’t beleive your still on the web,you can get a free ticket to club torture paradise for telling the truth. i’ll see you on the flight. oh by the way don’t bring anything to drink they have plenty of h2o.
i am planning on renditing myself
cut out the middle man
free flight
free torture
i will tell them i just saw bin laden
working at a burger king in kalamazoo michigan
drove in with elvis.
g
beautiful G! he-he-he..
Soap
American forces play computer sinulation computer games now as thier special operations. The money DC gives out to other countries may be real on paper with all principal and interest going to China.
The days of reald eal sp ops is over as we knew it. Today its all re-set the computer and chaching the interest machine, and all in the name of freedom, god, and the children.
TSA is American special operations now. It’s one big bullshit image and we lose a little bit more each day.
Sorry to write this crap but it is what I see, read, and hear from many people returning from duty. Damn, Hollywood isn’t even putting out any good propaganda anymore.
Gorgon, if I may: This is a very special operation for those women who have been left stranded. As I did way back when as a door gunner on the HMM 262 CH-36D helicopter I believe we need to rescue this special group . In my minds eye they are much like those Marines I picked up during the monsoon season in 1970 due west of Marble Mountain, stranded in trees and on rooftops. We saved many and did lose a few. These women combat veterans need our help and we thiers. Please let this this notice be printed my friend. If they can stay clean, stay busy, help me get into office I will be able to assist them and more of us. Sempre Fi….Cpl. Lovenguth
Women Combat Veterans Needed
Women combat veterans with PTSD are suffering a serious injury which is treatable but the military and the Dept. of Veterans Affairs and the general public will not accept this reality.
I can only tell all of you that from my generation of Vietnam Marine combat veterans it is the veterans who help out one another. I’m not talking group and drugs but only other combat veterans will understand this “headache”.
I will tell you to be very aware of what the VA gives you regarding medications as many of the meds will only cause you more problems; of mind and body.
I will tell you to call on the inner strength you do have and do not drink! That will only make everything really worse.
Walk if you are able, drive if you can across this country, and for those who can handle the administrative process get yourself in to a small community college and read and read and write and for me and many others this worked.
It’s a therapy and has stress but nothing like the combat zone type. You will be surrounded by hundreds in a training environment which means everyone has issues and you will actually get a sense on safety and a sense of completion every 16 weeks.
The VA will eventually pay you for the hours spend in a college.
Do not expect the VA to do anything for you, you must be strong and it was your strength that allowed you to survive this far. Don’t wait for the American society to welcome you, which is all BS. Welcome yourself and get on with life as a civilian. Failing sorry for yourself is nowhere.
Get into a school and pursue whatever you what to be a part of educationally, it works. The rank in the civilian world is the degree and you with the level of military training can and will outpace any little rich kid who had his mommy making his bed while you were protecting his rich daddy’s stock holdings. That’s a fact.
Again, don’t wait for the VA or society as it doesn’t work that way. They both want to shove you under the rug as they did my group. You can make it and do not drink or fall into the feel sorry rap to the drug thing. Sempre Fi….a former door gunner 1970-71 USMC (H) And don’t forget to register to vote as that was one of the hidden reasons you were over there. Do it!
Respect to all of you, been there, done that, and now I’m a candidate for the Florida 2010 United States Senator as an Independent. I have been assisting fellow PTSD veterans with their claims for close to 30 years. If you’re in Florida, read my site and know my focus is on veterans and that includes you. One last thing. Email me if you want to get involved. I’m not taking any corporate funds and I need a few good people and I’d love to have a few former combat people on my team. Thanks, Jorge Antonio Lovenguth George@lovenguth.org
Our government is as awful as any and guilty of continuing unspeakable atrocities around the globe.
of course, if public acknowledgment of this would result in an even 1% decrease in my Quality of Life, I’ll gladly look the other way.
For writing this article.
It’s refreshing to see someone who hasn’t bought the Orwellian lies being told to us by our government.
Patriotism is questioning government.
I am a former Gulf vet and I approve of your message.
More miserable, Al-Qaeda-stooge propaganda on this disgraceful site.
Gee, why am I not surprised that Veterans Today is saying nothing about the shameful, unjustified prosecution of the three Navy Seals who captured Ahmed Abed? Their “crime”? Boo-hoo, they punched him in the stomach and gave him a bloody lip. Poor baby. Abed is the guy who was behind the murder and public display of four Blackwater contractors in Iraq.
If there are any real vets still reading Veterans Today, here’s an article on this absurd debacle:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34844
There are now several petitions to free/pardon the Seal 3. Here’s one of them:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34775
Dozens of Congressmen are now also calling for a halt to the prosecution of the Navy 3.
Where is Veterans Today?
AL-CIA-DA?
Sibel Edmonds testimony on this guy Fetullah Gulan (pg 95-96)
“…he was given immediately visa to stay in the United States, and he has been in the United States until now as far as I know. He has since established more than 300 madrasahs in Central Asia and what he calls universities that have a front that is called Moderate Islam, but he is closely involved in training mujahideen-like militia Islam who are brought from Pakistan and Afghanistan into Central Asia where his madrasahs operate, and his organization’s network is estimated to be around $25 billion. He has opened several Islamic universities in the United States. As I said it’s being promoted under Moderate Islam. It is supported by certain U.S. authorities here because of the operations in Central Asia, but
7 what they have been doing since late 1990s is actually radical Islam and militizing (phonetic) these very, very young, from the age 14, 15, by commandoes they use…”
Why would he get such treatment? Because of “interests of the people who are interested in the energy sources in Central Asia” (p 98)
Transcript:
http://www.bradblog.com/Docs/SibelEdmondsDeposition_Transcript_080809.pdf
In this war, both sides are being run by the same people in the name of criminal profit. I’d imagine those seals were punished in a roundabout way for interfering with an ongoing operation. Dick Marchinko (Seal Team 6 founder) served jail time during the 80′s for trumped up charges. That happens when you step on the toes of secret power.
hey tough guy, if the privateers that entered bagdad illegally weren’t caught or sold out,we would have not gone in to fuckin’ bagdad because you see the commander in cheif had said” major combat operations has ended”.these seals are probably being punished for harming a friendly.