Bad News Baer

www.motherjones.com ^ | July 5, 2006 | The former CIA agent talks about suicide bombers and his dark vision of what Iran’s really up to.

[Howlin]

People who further the lurid fantasies of the 9/11 conspiracy moonbats--even in a novel--deserve absolutely none of my time. Sorry.

If you didn't see it today/tonight, don't miss the rerun of this moonbat convention:

CSPAN airs panel this weekend accusing US gov't insiders of 9/11 attacks and blowing up 3 WTC bldgs (Rebroadcast Sun, July 30th, 2:15 PM EDT / 11:15 AM PDT / 12:15 PM MDT / 1:15 PM CDT)

[GeronL]

the worst magazine ever

BTW- it'd be a lot worse than he thinks if the muzzies win WW3/4

[STARWISE]

criticisms which come from a more respectable source, Pulitzer prize-winning author Thomas E. Ricks in his new book, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.

Sources, know-it-alls and experts are everywhere; and they all have meditated on their navels long enough to produce yet another vain slab of expert advice, criticism, armchair quarterbacking, and 20/20 hindsightsmanship.

Our brave, finest-in-the-world military and our constantly besieged leaders are wrestling 24 hours a day with the most rapidly changing, multi-faceted war calculations and strategies ever faced by any President and Commander in Chief and his team in the last 100 years for the most insidious and despicable enemy we've known... NOW. We're in the battle for our lives.

The intangibles .. will to fight, morale, esprit de corps, confidence in support back home...they're all fragile but vitally essential elements to the success of the military machine.

These folks .. comprised of honorable inviduals who volunteer to kill, destroy, suffer, sweat, witness unspeakable atrocities, bleed, get injured and die to defend their country and us .. they and their state of mind must be considered and protected.

We're so grateful for them, we love and honor their precious service to us. How can they not hear the constant drone of doubt .. how can it not penetrate their spirits and be deflating and demoralizing? They have to be primed, psyched and confident for battle every minute of every day.

It's enough already. Save the autopsies for later. In the midst of this huge and desperately important undertaking, and in this age of instant communication and internet access, all the pundits, opinion pieces, biased media jabs, political adversaries, books, lectures, ads, etc. dissecting, criticizing the past and the present have gone beyond the pale.

Anymore, consider the source. Politics is playing a huge role in most of it ... and the Pulitizer Prize has been cheapened immeasurably. If Dana Priest can get one for publishing classified information that's compromised our country's security, it obviously doesn't mean much anymore .. because politics is there now, too, just as it lurks in everything today it seems.

It's probably true: if today's media and immediate access to everyone's latest burp occurred in WWII, we'd probably be speaking German.

God bless and protect our courageous President and incredible Armed Forces.

[msnimje]

Baer is playing checkers and the president is playing chess.

Iran is now sandwiched in between about a quarter of a million coalition troops plus a lot of pissed off Iraqis and Afghanis.

Iran very well may be "taken" without a single drop of blood or bomb.

[Smokin' Joe]

...the thrust of the article is that Bush made a mistake by taking on Iraq instead of Iran. Had it been the other way around, the article would have said we underestimated Saddam and his Al Qaeda ties, and should have attacked him first.

COrrect assessment aobut the article, imo.

Anyone with a map can see the importance of Iraq in long term planning, Afghanistan fits, too, not just because it was the Taliban stronghold and because the Russians did not fare well there.

I think the geopolitical setup got stymied when the third launching point, the UAE, was slapped down over the P&O deal, which may have been the 'gimmie' for massing an invasion on yet a third Iranian border. ymmv.

[nathanbedford]

It's enough already. Save the autopsies for later. In the midst of this huge and desperately important undertaking, and in this age of instant communication and internet access, all the pundits, opinion pieces, biased media jabs, political adversaries, books, lectures, ads, etc. dissecting, criticizing the past and the present have gone beyond the pale.

It might be regrettable, but democracies simply do not work that way even in their times of gravest peril. George Washington and the Continental Congress were in no way immune from savage criticism in the Revolutionary war. John Adams got nowhere with the alien and sedition acts. Abe Lincoln was vilified to a degree unimaginable today even though he suspended habeas corpus and threw some of his detractors in jail- it did not stop the criticism. Wilson had no support after the war for his 14 points. FDR was criticized for ignoring the threats to Pearl Harbor. Truman was roundly berated for the stalemate in Korea. We literally had rioting in the streets over Vietnam. We all know how Carter was lambasted for the disaster in Iran. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest Reagan's plan to install missiles in Europe.

No administration has ever been given a free pass for its conduct of policy or it's waging of war. Bush will not get one either and he has not gotten one. The question is not whether criticism will be mounted, it has been and it will be, the question is whether conservatives will participate in the debate or simply foreclose themselves out of it and cede policymaking to the left.

This is not only the way it is, but the way it should be. Democracy is not immune from making mistakes but our great advantage is in recognizing and correcting them, a characteristic unknown to the leaders in the Kremlin and so as their economy and so as their society lurched further and further into error and out-of-control they were powerless to stop the disintegration.

Better to sustain the pain of rigorous and honest examination now in time to correct a live policy then to postpone today's pain until there is nothing left but, as you say, an autopsy.

[StJacques]

We have made a number of mistakes in the way in which we fought the war in Iraq. We did not use overwhelming force and, after Saddam's regime fell; we did not have sufficient forces available to secure the borders with Syria, Jordan, and even Saudi Arabia, which is not very passable, but still should have been covered with some forces; we did not have sufficient forces available to secure the arms dumps Saddam had scattered throughout the country, thus permitting the insurgents to arm themselves and especially with explosives which they secured by using artillery shells; and we did not have an immediate plan ready to go to train a new Iraqi military, which should have been a necessity given that we fired everyone in the old Iraqi army. These mistakes all come down to one larger problem, we did not commit enough resources to do the job right.

We also have been too easy on Syria, who we all know has been training and supplying logistical support to the insurgents, and that is a diplomatic failure. And then there is the missed chance to fight an aggressive propaganda war we could have inititated by putting Saddam on trial ourselves, rather than following this lame line that "we will let the Iraqi people try Saddam and deal with him on their terms." It's three years since the invasion and over a year and a half since his capture and what do we have? One trial completed except for its verdict and a second just beginning. We could have brought scores of the lesser culprits up to work our way up to Saddam and earned a lot of points with the Iraqi people, even with Sunnis who knew the nature of Saddam's regime deep down, even though they supported the social context of his national rule.

But for all these failures, we haven't ruined the job as completely as some people seem to suggest. We can point to individual months in the Vietnam War when we lost more soldiers killed than we have in any single year of the Iraq War. We can also point to the fact that there is an Iraqi political process underway, it's very fragmented and chaotic, but that is something I think we all can expect. It's government is recognized in the Arab world. This is war, and it's not supposed to look pretty. We are getting about what we should have expected from the beginning. There is only one test we face that will determine whether or not we win this fight; will we maintain our commitment to see it through? If we do not cut and run, we win. It's that simple.

[STARWISE]

God bless us ping.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6162397493278181614&hl=en

[Fudd Fan]

BINGO.

[strider44]

Cool link and a great engineering feat.

[kcvl]

September 12, 2003

Robert Baer, Former CIA Case Officer and Author of "Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude."


BAER: I could have sat down and done a list of all my former colleagues from the CIA who ended up on the Saudi Arabian payroll. Some of them are known, like Ray Close. Others have gone public, but there are others that haven’t. A bunch of my colleagues went to work for a public consulting firm where the initial capital was paid for by the Saudi embassy to lobby the Hill for the Gulf countries. A former member of the National Security Council under Reagan set this up. And it’s not like it’s a secret. Even Bandar [Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi prince and U.S. ambassador] has said, according to the Washington Post, that if I take care of people coming out of office, the new ones coming in are going to be a lot friendlier to Saudi Arabia once it gets known.


Smart people in the Middle East tell me that there are a lot of Saudis heading into Iraq right now to set up cells to attack American troops. There was an article recently about it – I think it was in the Christian Science Monitor. And Bremer has even said it. What to do? I offer one solution, which is Syria, 1982, where they confronted a fundamentalist problem. And I’ve been criticized by people that say that you can’t shell cities like Asad did in ’82.


There's a Syrian who's been convicted in Chicago and he has a Saudi wife. The Saudi embassy issued her a passport so was able to flee the U.S.; even though she was part of the case and shouldn’t have left. And the Saudis didn't really let us question Bayyumi [Bayyumi had showed up in San Diego with thousands of dollars and helped settle two Saudi 9/11 hijackers] But it was a controlled interrogation.


The Interior Minister said that 9/11 is a Zionist conspiracy. He said the Saudis had nothing to do with it. He stiffed Freeh [Louis Freeh, former FBI director] when he went out there in ’96 – just refused to see him. I don’t care what Freeh says now. He refused to see him, and no one did anything. The Saudis, and their arrogance, have gotten away with this for a long time because they think they have enough money to buy people off. Their attitude is: You don’t want to buy our oil, don’t buy it. We’ll sell someplace else. And what would happen if they did impose another embargo? Do we invade? I offer that possibility at the end of my book, but that’s if nothing else works. If the place is ready to go down, you have to consider it.

It wouldn't be an Iraq-like invasion with the stated goal of imposing democracy. An invasion of Saudi Arabia would be to save our economy.

[nopardons]

BRAVO....you just nailed him!

[nopardons]

Thanks for the ping and link!

[nopardons]

bttt

[Enchante]

Baer is just "serious" enough to tell us we have a problem, but devoid of any serious solutions (his bashing "neo-cons" for taking down Saddam's regime is a worthless piece of lib-PC groupthink). I agree with you 2000% and I think what you said bears repeating:

"Baer is the perfect example of why we have such a big problem with the CIA. He consistently positions himself outside the current conventional wisdom on the Middle East, tells us just enough about how serious this matter is because we're dealing with capable people of dangerous intent -- that's CIA speak for "my problem is bigger than yours so give me the resources" which we now convert into ". . . give me the attention" -- but at the same time he suggests absolutely nothing in the way of policies that will lead to solutions"

[Majie Purple]

Wow! Intense! A must see/hear.
That video about sums it(the subject).

[GOPJ]

Yeah. I think Ahmadinejad’s letter to us was an offer for us to surrender [to him]. We’re courting disaster. I find the Iranians very sophisticated. They’re by far the most sophisticated player in the Gulf. They don’t really deal in spin like we do at the policy level. They take this very seriously. They’re capable people. They consider themselves a civilization that’s equal to ours intellectually. They’ll go on for hours about this, how just because we invented the computer doesn’t make us superior.

ping