George Will Links Republicans, Neo-Cons, to Nazis

“Come September, America might slip closer toward a Weimar moment. It would be milder than the original but significantly disagreeable.
After the First World War, politics in Germany's new Weimar Republic were poisoned by the belief that the army had been poised for victory in 1918 and that one more surge could have turned the tide. Many Germans bitterly concluded that the political class, having lost its nerve and will to win, capitulated. The fact that fanciful analysis fed this rancor did not diminish its power”.

So writes George Will in his latest Washington Post Op-Ed.

Will is referring to the myth used by military leaders to explain Germany’s surrender which was negotiated by the civilian politicians.
The German military claimed they had never been defeated and would have “won" WWI if not for their betrayal by the civilian government suing for peace, which the generals termed a “stab-in the back” (or Dolchstosslegende)

The facts were that the Germans simply reached the limit of their resources and could fight no longer. The British Navy blockaded German ports preventing supplies from their small empire and outmaneuvered and out-gunned the Kriegsmarine. The Tank broke through the trench defenses, forcing German retreat. The British Army was able to deploy troops from all over the empire (and the Irish served in large numbers and with distinction) and the US provided a very useful replenishment.

Thanks to the blockade the greatest priority was given to the military; the civilian Germans lost fuel, transportation and eventually food to the war effort, and began to starve whilst inflation took hold. The war was simply unsustainable.

But rather than blame the policy that had created the war, the generals blamed the policy that ended it—focusing particularly on liberal intellectuals (which included many Jews of course). Hitler made much use of the “stab-n-the-back” myth to rise to and maintain his power.
This same argument is being used by Bush now in his nonsensical comparison of the “lessons” of Vietnam with the current state of Iraq; and by the Republican and neocon cheerleaders insisting on yet more Friedman units else America will lose--thanks to the liberal intellectuals defeatist policies, not the original flawed policy and gross mismanagement that has led us to this pass.

I’m not sure George Will really meant to compare Bush and his “advisers” and the GOP to the warmongering, racist, authoritarian, militaristic, intolerant and vainglorious Nazis (otherwise I'm sure he'd have included 'Nazi in the title), but when you try to draw parallels, sometimes you end up with a "equals" sign.

Our Surge Robots WIll Be Greeted With Nuts and Bolts!

"The demand for our forces exceeds the sustainable supply," said Army chief of staff, Gen. George Casey last week, referring to Bush’s “surge”.



Shit-for-brains Bush butt-buddy AEI “analyst" and “Surge-On! General” Fred Kagan insists “the longer that you keep American forces there, the longer you give this process to solidify and to make sure that it's not going to slide back."


So how is the Pentagon going to keep the surge going when they don’t have any troops left?







Robots!





It turns out that the Pentagon is about to award a contract for 1,000 reconnaissance robots (on August 24) to be delivered by the end of the year.



And how is the Pentagon going to decide which company’s robot has the right heavy-metal poly-alloy stuff to serve in what is rapidly really becoming the "Army of Whoever W've Got Left"?


Sadly, the decision will not be made by 'hot' metal-on-metal death-match action, but by whichever company promises to deliver 1,000 robots the fastest by year's end, using the most most convincing PowerPoint presentation.





It seems the hot favorite is iRobot--best known for its cat-terrifying, housemaid-unemploying Roomba autonomous vacuum cleaner (the company does however already supply the Army with “Packbot” recon and bomb-disposal robots).





And though the company is doing pretty well these days, no doubt they’ll be very happy to rack up around $160 million in sales for four months of work (assuming of course that they aren’t lying about their production capacity).

Now the troops know damn well they aren’t leaving anytime soon, so the delivery of more robots will be at least somewhat welcome news for the extra-dangerous jobs of recon and bomb disposal.

On the other hand the order that suggests they’ll be doing more close-quarter house-to-house reconnaissance in the upcoming months and encountering more IEDs. The robots will provide a valuable assist in tactical operations, but it’s not going to make a blind bit of difference to the strategic, political situation.

Maybe the Pentagon should invest in a few protocol droids as well?

Guns And Money

NOTE: This post is is rather ad-hoc as the subject sources are still quite confusing.

(All following emphases added)

According to the AP this week

“The U.S. training command had already reported it would arm all Interior Ministry police by the end of 2006 through its own three-year-old program, which as of July 26 has bought 701,000 weapons for the Iraqi army and police with $237 million in U.S. government funds.”

According to the Washington Post last week

“The GAO reached the estimate of 190,000 missing arms -- 110,000 AK-47s and 80,000 pistols -- by comparing the property records of the Multi-National Security Transition Command for Iraq [MNSCT-I] against records Petraeus maintained of the arms and equipment he had ordered. Petraeus's figures were compared with classified data and other records to ensure that they were accurate enough to compare against the property books.

Petraeus reported that about 185,000 AK-47 rifles, 170,000 pistols, 215,000 pieces of body armor and 140,000 helmets were issued to Iraqi security forces from June 2004 through September 2005.
But the property books contained records for 75,000 AK-47 rifles, 90,000 pistols, 80,000 pieces of body armor and 25,000 helmets.”

Add the rifles and pistols together and we get 350,000 weapons “issued” over 15 months, according to Petraeus. That leaves another 351,000 weapons purchased over the last 22 months to reach 701,000.

According to the US DoD the Iraqi Army will in the end state be an approximately 137,500-person force based around an Army with 9 infantry divisions and 1 mechanized infantry division consisting of 36 brigades and 112 battalions.

Battalions consist of approximately 800 soldiers; 112 battalions would equal 89,600 troops. Now let’s assume spare weaponry at 50% and another 50% for possible reserve units. That gives us 179,200 assorted AK-47s and pistols.

According to Global Security there are intended to be 65,000 police.
It seems up to 91,000 have applied and received some training, possibly uniforms and pay, but its functional size appears to be anyone’s guess—perhaps 10,000 of inconsistent quality and allegiance.
Even so given the intended gross figures for police (65,000) and army (137,500) we arrive at a total of 202,000 requiring weapons.

Assuming all are armed with either AK-47 or pistol and doubling the figure for spares, attrition and contingencies we arrive at 404,000---still 297,000 weapons short of the 701,000 the US has supposedly bought and distributed: If we subtract the 190,000 “missing weapons” that still leaves 107,000 presumably unnecessary weapons unaccounted-for (a $36 million value!).

But wait...there’s more!

Italian officials are now pursuing arms dealers who apparently had illegally struck a ‘back-channel’ deal with the Iraqi Interior Ministry:

“Investigators say the prospect of an Iraq deal was raised last November[2006], when an Iraqi-owned trading firm e-mailed Massimo Bettinotti, 39, owner of the Malta-based MIR Ltd., about whether MIR could supply 100,000 AK-47 assault rifles and 10,000 machine guns “ to the Iraqi Interior Ministry,'' adding that "this deal is approved by America and Iraq.''

“… 'most' of the 105,000 weapons were meant for police in Iraq's western province of Anbar. That statement raised questions, however, since Pentagon reports list only 161,000 trained police across all 18 of Iraq's provinces, and say the ministry has been issued 169,280 AK-47s, 167,789 pistols and 16,398 machine guns for them and 28,000 border police.”

161,000 police now? These figures are getting crazy. There are supposed to be as many trained police in Iraq as there are US troops? And they are all supposed to be armed? None of this makes any sense. Well, anyway…

The Iraqis had already (supposedly) been provided with at least 350,000 weapons in addition to whatever the ex-army and ex-police already personally held (which the US never bothered, and was incapable of, accounting-for.

“Iraqi officials did not make MNSTC-I aware that they were making purchases,'' Lt. Col. Daniel Williams of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I), which oversees arming and training of the Iraqi police and army, told the AP.

That’s a very circumspect choice of words. Anywhoo, we still aren’t done yet:

“In a report last year, Amnesty International said that in 2004 and 2005 more than 350,000 AK-47 rifles and similar weapons were taken out of Bosnia and Serbia, for use in Iraq, by private contractors working for the Pentagon and with the approval of NATO and European security forces in Bosnia.”

Now that would match Petraeus’s reported “issuing” of arms for Iraqi forces between 2004 and 2005. But there are just a few teeny multi-million dollar problems here:

At best, by my rough calculations, assuming an army of 137,000 and a police force of 160,000, all armed, we arrive at 297,000 personnel and 297,000 guns. Doubling that figure for contingencies, wear and tear etc we get 594,000 guns needed in total.

That still leaves 105,000 guns “missing”—and the GAO reports 190,000 “missing” which makes sense because there is no way the Iraq police or the Army are at their supposed full strengths, and they obviously haven’t all been issued all the guns apparently purchased.
Interestingly though the figures for the police are greater now by close to 100,000 compared to my previous calculation we still end up with a kind of magic number—297,000 (or 295,000), with an estimated value of $103 million.

Oh and one other thing; the Bosnian-sourced weapons “were taken out of Bosnia and Serbia, for use in Iraq, by private contractors working for the Pentagon”.

Does that mean that contractors simply supervised the process, or does it mean that contractors were the recipients, or both? Why would they be subsidized by US taxpayer money? And would they then also be additionally billing for this “service” and then keeping the weapons?

It appears to me then that either far too-many weapons have been bought (suggesting unnecessary profits for the suppliers and the possibility of kickbacks to the purchaser), or that far fewer weapons were actually bought than were paid-for (providing a $36- to $100-million bonus to the purchaser), or that anywhere from 105,000 to 297,000 weapons are now available on the black market, perhaps at more than $338 per gun (thus providing even greater potential profit), or finally, that anywhere from 105,000 to 297,000 weapons have simply been stolen and/or distributed.

All of these guns would require bullets, of course. I’ve seen nothing yet to indicate whether these arms deals included bullets or not, but 100 million rounds at 18-cents each would cost $18 million and equip 300,000 guns with over 300 bullets each (or 900-plus bullets each for 100,000 guns) and from a $36 million profit that still leaves $18-million to fool around with.

What the precise figures are and who exactly is profiting in money or equipment is as yet unclear, but US citizens at least are obviously getting rooked, US troops are obviously being endangered for profit and/or twisted policy, ordinary Iraqis certainly aren’t benefiting and certain Iraqi and US officials and their friends are benefiting from a collective conspiracy or at least a larger collective incompetence.

Bear in mind this is all US taxpayer money being spent and siphoned here. Note also that during the Bosnian conflict, the United States provided about $100 million in defense equipment to the Bosnian Federation Army, and the GAO found no problems in accounting for those weapons.

I intend to revisit this subject and hopefully make more explcit sense of it. But meantime, even though Bremer "lost" over $8-billion in just one year and a possible $100-million having been mislaid seems small by comparison, this isn't just about mere graft, but lethal corruption and what's more it is just a fraction of the larger Iraqi arms bazaar and boom.

David Petraeus and the Prisoners of the Goblet of Shit of Iraqistan

Hardcore fans of G. W. Bush will be lined-up around the Capitol this September when David Petraeus reads excerpts of the latest episode in this seemingly unstoppable fantasy of a boy who accidentally discovers his magical powers and with the help of newly-found and instantly loyal friends, embarks on a seminal quest to combat evil---a story which has captured the imaginations of whole nations.

Unlike J.K. Rowling however, the security surrounding Bush’s fiction has been by comparison remarkably lax. Indeed it is almost as though the ‘actors’ are somehow being paid to reveal the story before official publication!

SPOILER ALERT!!!!

If you’d prefer to be totally ignorant until the official publication READ NO FURTHER!
But if you just can’t stand the excitement, read-on.

Ready?

Hundreds die, but nothing else happens…until the next episode, due out in about six months when… hundreds more die and still nothing happens.

Obviously there isn’t much point in buying the book now, is there? Well there’s one more spoiler—you already paid for it.