Out with the New! (with update)

Today we learn that the United States has agreed to more than triple the rent it pays for use of a key air base in Kyrgyzstan. Apparently the base is vital for Obama's "surge" in Afghanistan.

The accord comes just four months after the Kyrgs had ordered U.S. troops to leave their country. But that was then-- this now and $60 million a year sweeter.

So here we have President Obama, at a time when the U.S. economy is staggering upping the ante in the "War on Terror". You might therefore suspect that the banking Brahmins and their high priests on the Council for Foreign Relations are pressuring the new administration on Afghanistan. You'd probably be right.. but that does not mean the truth is fit for public consumption... after all, we voted out Cheney and his war-loving neocons! ... right?

*(update) The NYTimes reports that someone in the Justice Dept has slipped documents to the families of the 9-11 victims implicating the Saudi Royal family in the attacks. We'll wait and see how far the courts will go to cover up our own government's complicity.

"In a nutshell, we have to decide more precisely what is the objective of our involvement. Because we are increasingly running the risk of getting bogged down both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan in pursuit of objectives which we are lacking the power to reach ... The problem is the more we get involved in Afghanistan the more deeply we get involved in Pakistan as well."

That is what former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told the Huffington Post.

The same Brzezenski that wrote this back in 1998: "It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America."

and this: "For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia... Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia - and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.”

So has Brzezinski had a dramatic change of heart ... "seen the errors of his imperialist ways...?" On the surface one is tempted to say yes. Here is what he had to say about a potential Obama presidency: "There is a need for a fundamental rethinking of how we conduct world affairs.. and Obama seems to me to have both the guts and the intelligence to address that issue and to change the nature of America's relationship with the world."

A fractured, fractious world that looks much the way it does thanks to dear old Zibby.

Brzezinski to Jihadists: Your cause is right!
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Obama's Oxymorons

"You Americans are Crazy"-Ahmed Shah Massoud

In "Legacy of Ashes, a History of the CIA," Tim Weiner exposes how through an astonishing combination of arrogance, incompetence and criminal deceit American intelligence agencies have been masterful at creating enemies and wreaking chaos.

In one chapter Weiner describes how CIA station-chiefs in Latin America would regularly harrass their local hires, appropriate govt. funds and run "counternarcotics" operations which saw millions of dollars worth of illegal drugs funneled to Miami streets. Known torturers and criminals were frequently discovered on secret CIA payrolls. But perhaps no intelligence blunder will ever rival the mayhem that has been foisted upon half the world as a result of America's boneheaded actions in Afghanistan.

In their zeal to destroy the Soviet Union, during the Carter and Reagan presidencies the CIA and other US intelligence agencies made a Faustian bargain with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) along with Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Department, and a myriad of Afghan warlords to help the Islamists desperate to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan.

Afraid that overt U.S. action might lead to a superpower clash and WW III the CIA conspired to remain the invisible puppet master and placed responsibility for the covert operation in Pakistan’s hands. Even the most cursory knowledge of that country's unstable beginnings and fractious politics should have made it clear this was a truly bad idea. The rest, as they say, is history.

Obama seems to share the neocon delusion that even now that the entire region has been destabilized the genie can somehow be put back in its bottle and the riled-up hornets pacified by force. As the increasing eruptions of murder and violence in Pakistan attest I strongly suggest he ignore the oxymorons called America's "military intelligence" and think again.