Wikileaks: US Ambdassador Called Pakistani Military Instructors "Naive" And "Biased"

Anne Patterson, former US Ambassador to Pakistan

The following is old news at best, possibly fictional, and from sources of dubious, if any, integrity. But it is still of some interest to a cold blogger who begs your forebearance as we explore...  

The Pakistani daily Dawn says that according to Wikileaks, in 2008, Anne Patterson, who was then US Ambassador to Pakistan, wrote a memo in which she described instructors at Pakistan's National Defence University (NDU) as "naive" about and "biased" against the USA.

Dawn says Ambassador Patterson attributed this "bias" to the "distance" that had crept in between Pakistani and US military officers following "the discontinuation of the IMET (International Military Education and Training) programmes" during the years when Pakistan was under sanctions because of having developed nuclear weapons.

Dawn quotes the memo which quotes a US army officer, Col. Michael Schleicher, who attended a course at NDU, and who, according to the cable, told Ambassador Patterson:

"One guest lecturer – who is a Pakistani one-star general – claimed the US National Security Agency actively trains correspondents for media organisations. Others thought the CIA was in charge of US media (and that MI-5 was in charge of the BBC)."

And not only that, but:

Students in the junior course ... shared "many of the biases prevalent in the Muslim world, including a belief the US invaded Iraq for its oil and that 9/11 was a staged 'Jewish conspiracy,'"

You can see the bias right away, can't you? Everybody who has done honest research has found that the staged conspiracy of 9/11 was not entirely "Jewish." It contained "Christian" elements as well. And so, of course, does the continuing torrent of nonsense about it.

The problem, according to Dawn, according to Wikileaks, according to Ambassador Patterson, was that the Pakistani military had been been insufficiently propagandized, although she would never think to express herself in such terms. But clearly this is her understanding, and clearly this is why she wrote:

"We need, in particular, to target the 'lost generation' of Pakistan military who missed IMET opportunities..."

The word 'target' is particularly apt in this context.

Ambassador Patterson also wrote, according to Wikileaks:

"Given the bias of the instructors, we also believe it would be beneficial to initiate an exchange program for instructors..."

An exchange program would double the propaganda benefit, of course, because the Pakistani instructors would be whisked off to be indoctrinated in the US, leaving their students to be indoctrinated by visiting Americans.

It goes without saying that if and when all this indoctrination came to pass, the Pakistani military would be even more naive with respect to the United States, and even more biased -- but for rather than against, which after all is the only thing that matters to the masters of the American Empire.

And then, diplomatic tensions would be eased, because future ambassadors would write cables in which Pakistani military officers were all well-informed about American actions and motives, and loyal and keen supporters of the American Imperial Project as well.

The properly trained Pakistanis would have been instructed never to admit that the NSA would be negligent if it failed to actively train correspondents for media organisations; that the CIA would be aghast if it lost charge of the US media; that the Bush-Cheney administration would have lost the support of its "base" had it failed to invade Iraq for its oil; and that MI5 would go ballistic if the BBC ever admitted the obvious truths about these things, or explained to its viewers exactly why Britain came along for the ride.

And then, if the IMET programmes could continue for long enough, eventually nobody in the Pakistani military would ever again be "naive" or "biased" enough to give voice to any of this, or any of the other truths about America which are, shall we say, politically inconvenient to acknowledge.

This is what we would call "winning hearts and minds." And it's a shame that the US neglected to keep the propaganda machine running on the Pakistani military during the sanctions, because had it done so, hoaxes such as the big one nine and a half years ago, and the almost-as-big one earlier this month, would have been a good deal easier to sell.

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WSJ Spins Hunt Oil Deal, But Can't Fool Jason Leopold

The spin is almost invisible when the Wall Street Journal describes Henry Waxman's reaction to recent news pertaining to the Hunt Oil deal with Kurdistan:

House baron Henry Waxman [...] is upset with a separate contract that the Kurdistan Regional Government has signed with Texas's Hunt Oil. Mr. Waxman thinks the Bush Administration didn't do enough to stop the deal. Then again, this is old news, as the contract was signed last year. And while the Baghdad central government wasn't pleased the Kurds had moved on a contract without national approval, the deal hasn't impeded Iraq's broader progress.

Fortunately for the cause of truth and justice (not to mention personal sanity), Jason Leopold wasn't fooled; here he explains what Waxman is really upset about:

Ray Hunt, the Texas oil man who landed a controversial oil production deal with Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government, has enjoyed close political and business ties with Vice President Dick Cheney dating back a decade – and to the Bush family since the 1970s.

Despite those longstanding connections -– and Hunt’s work for George W. Bush as a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board [PFIAB] -– the Bush administration expressed surprise when Hunt Oil signed the agreement last September.

At that time, administration officials said Hunt Oil’s deal with the Kurds jeopardized delicate negotiations among competing Iraqi sects and regions for sharing oil revenues, talks seen as vital for achieving national reconciliation.

“I know nothing about the deal,” President Bush said. “To the extent that it does undermine the ability for the government to come up with an oil revenue sharing plan that unifies the country, obviously if it undermines it I’m concerned.”

However, on July 2, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released documents showing that senior administration officials were aware that Hunt was negotiating with the Kurdistan government and even offered him encouragement.

Hunt also personally alerted Bush’s PFIAB about his oil company’s confidential contacts with Kurdish representatives.

In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, committee chairman, complained that the administration’s comments last year were “misleading.”

“Documents obtained by the Committee indicate that contrary to the denials of Administration officials, advisors to the President and officials in the State and Commerce Departments knew about Hunt Oil’s interest in the Kurdish region months before the contract was executed,” Waxman wrote.

Waxman said the Hunt-Kurdish case also raised questions about the veracity of similar administration denials about its role in arranging more recent contracts between Iraq and major U.S. and multinational oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Chevron.

Plus, there’s the longstanding suspicion that oil was a principal, though unstated, motive behind the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, which sits on the world’s second-largest oil reserves.

Administration officials -– and much of the mainstream U.S. media –- have ridiculed the oil motive charge as a conspiracy theory.

It's a conspiracy, that's for sure. But it's no theory. And the connections with Hunt go way, way, back.

Many of the oil companies now stepping forward to benefit from Iraqi oil were instrumental in both supporting Bush’s political career and giving advice to Cheney’s secretive energy task force in 2001.

For instance, Ray Hunt’s personal relationship with the Bush family dates back to the 1970s as Hunt, the chief of Dallas-based Hunt Oil, helped build the Texas Republican Party as it served as a power base for the Bushes rise to national prominence.

The Hunt family donated more than $500,000 to Republican campaigns in Texas, while Hunt Oil employees and their spouses gave more than $1 million to Republican causes since 1995, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Ray Hunt also had strong ties to Dick Cheney during his years at the helm of Halliburton, the Houston-based oil-services giant. In 1998, Cheney tapped Hunt to serve on Halliburton’s board of directors, where Hunt became a compensation committee member setting Cheney’s salary and stock options.

In 1999, when Texas Gov. George W. Bush was running for the Republican presidential nomination, Bush turned to Hunt to help fund his presidential campaign efforts in Iowa, according to Robert Bryce’s book, Cronies: Oil, The Bushes, And The Rise Of Texas, America's Superstate.

“By the summer of 1999, Bush had already raised $37 million but he wanted to conserve his campaign cash so he turned to a Texas crony, Ray Hunt, to help fund the Iowa effort,” Bryce wrote. “In July of 1999, Hunt was among a handful of Bush supporters who each donated $10,000 to the Iowa Republican party.”

In May 2000, Bush appointed Hunt finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. Hunt also donated $5,000 to the Florida recount battle and spent $100,000 on Bush’s inaugural party.

Leopold fills in some more background on Hunt Oil and its Bush connections, before describing the newly released evidence in this case (which the WSJ calls old news):

The new evidence suggests that Hunt Oil at least benefited from the administration’s wink and nod in striking the Kurdish oil deal.

In a July 12, 2007, letter to PFIAB, Hunt disclosed that Hunt Oil was “approached a month or so ago by representatives of a private group in Kurdistan as to the possibility of our becoming interested in that region.”

Hunt described a visit of a Hunt Oil survey team and stated, “we were encouraged by what we saw. We have a larger team going back to Kurdistan this week.”

In a second letter to PFIAB, dated Aug. 30, 2007, Hunt revealed that he would travel to Kurdistan in early September for meetings with the Kurdistan regional government, including its president, prime minister and oil minister.

Those meetings led to the oil agreement between Hunt Oil and the Kurdish leaders -- and now have raised questions about Bush’s denial that he had any advanced knowledge about the deal.

“State Department officials similarly disavowed involvement in the contract,” Waxman said in the letter to Rice. “Department officials claimed that to the extent they were aware of any negotiations, they actively warned Hunt Oil not to enter into a contract because it was contrary to U.S. national security interests.

“Documents obtained by the Committee indicate that contrary to the denials of Administration officials, advisors to the President and officials in the State and Commerce Departments knew about Hunt Oil’s interest in the Kurdish region months before the contract was executed.”

See? Wall Street Journal readers may believe that Henry Waxman is upset because he "thinks the Bush Administration didn't do enough to stop the deal".

But now you know better.

Mission Accomplished: Western Oil Companies Set To Return To Iraq

Andrew Kramer in the New York Times:

Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.

Weapons of mass destruction? Complicity in the attacks of 9/11? Central front in the Global War on Terror? Or just the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production?

Oh well, what's the difference? Or, as Andrew Kramer puts it:

There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract.

Yeah, that's it. There was suspicion. But there's no suspicion anymore, right?

Well, it doesn't matter. Or it soon won't.

While small, the deals hold great promise for the companies.

“The bigger prize everybody is waiting for is development of the giant new fields,” Leila Benali, an authority on Middle East oil at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said in a telephone interview from the firm’s Paris office. The current contracts, she said, are a “foothold” in Iraq for companies striving for these longer-term deals.

And so it goes. Business is business, and oil is oil, and we have to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here.

It's not that you'll believe anything; it's just that your neighbors do.

[i]n a twist of corporate history for some of the world’s largest companies, all four oil majors that had lost their concessions in Iraq are now back.
...

In an interview with Newsweek last fall, the former chief executive of Exxon, Lee Raymond, praised Iraq’s potential as an oil-producing country and added that Exxon was in a position to know. “There is an enormous amount of oil in Iraq,” Mr. Raymond said. “We were part of the consortium, the four companies that were there when Saddam Hussein threw us out, and we basically had the whole country.”

They'll have the whole country again, from the look of things. No matter how many Americans -- and no matter how many Iraqis -- have to die.

Winter Soldier: Bitter Truths From Those Who Know

This weekend, as we approach the fifth anniversary of the American invasion of a defenseless oil-rich country which never threatened us, Iraq Veterans Against the War are presenting the testimonies of soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of civilians who have lived through the invasion and occupation of their country.

The event is called "Winter Soldier", and you can watch it happen (or watch archived video) here.

Apparently it isn't worth a mention in our allegedly liberal "paper of record".

Your search - site:nytimes.com "winter soldier" - did not match any documents.

But Saturday's Washington Post has a piece on page B1, the web version of which (much to the WaPo's credit) actually links to the IVAW website!

The WaPo piece, by Steve Vogel, gives the Pentagon a chance to speak, and cleverly leaves no doubt as to the value of the verbiage.

A Defense Department spokesman said he had not seen the allegations raised yesterday but added that such incidents are not representative of U.S. conduct.

"When isolated allegations of misconduct have been reported, commanders have conducted comprehensive investigations to determine the facts and held individuals accountable when appropriate," Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros said.

How laughable this would be if it were not so tragic. Mark Ballesteros hasn't even seen the allegations but he can already assure us that they're false!

This is an unprovoked war of aggression -- the invasion and occupation of a defenseless, non-threatening country -- the ultimate crime against humanity. That's not an isolated allegation of misconduct; that's a fact!

The so-called "War on Terror" is in fact a barbaric assault on several foreign countries simultaneously (Afghanistan and Iraq directly, and Somalia and Pakistan by proxy, with even more countries in the cross-hairs). It has killed at least a million people and ruined the lives of millions and millions of others. And all the reasons officially given for it have turned out to be not just false but ludicrous!

It's a crime of monstrous proportions, and the individuals who ought to be held accountable are still at large. But instead we get this ... so let's wait a while and see whether Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros can stuff his head all the way up into his small intestine. Oh, my mistake! There was no need to wait!

Vogel's piece bends over backwards to go the "fair and balanced" route, giving plenty of space to obvious liars of all types. But that seems to be the price of admission in post-democratic America, so it's not surprising.

And yet, the article also includes some nuggets of truth.

Former Marine Jon Turner began his presentation by ripping his service medals off his shirt and tossing them into the first row. He then narrated a series of graphic photographs showing bloody victims and destruction, bringing gasps from the audience. In a matter-of-fact voice, he described episodes in which he and fellow Marines shot people out of fear or retribution.

"I'm sorry for the hate and destruction I've inflicted upon innocent people," Turner said. "Until people hear about what is happening in this war, it will continue."

I couldn't agree more, and in fact this is the key reason why the government and the "news" media don't want us to know what is happening in this war.

Not just this war, of course: they don't want us to know what happens in any war. If everybody thought Rambo was realistic, the warmongers would be very happy. They do their best to control what we see, and it works very well for them, unless we go looking.

So we can't just sit passively and watch TV, or go to Hollywood movies for our worldly education. If we want the truth about what our country does in the world, we have to pay attention to the people who have done it, and listen carefully to the people to whom it was done.

Two former soldiers who served with the 1st Armored Division described an attack by an AC-130 "Spectre" gunship [photo] on an apartment building in southern Baghdad that they said took place Nov. 13, 2003.

"It was the most destructive thing I've seen, before or since," said [Cliff] Hicks, one of the soldiers.
...

"These are not bad people, not criminals and not monsters," said [Hicks]. "They are people being put in horrible situations, and they reacted horribly."

Horrible is right! And the most horrible aspect is that there is no reason for any of these horrible situations -- unless you count the part where we lost control of our electoral system, or the part where the real news vanished from our "news" media, or the fear generated by obvious false-flag terror, or the stupidity that somehow in modern America acts like a gas and fills all the available space.

Other than these relevant yet unrelated issues, there's no good reason for any of our soldiers to be in any horrible positions.

Unless you count the oil.

Adam Kokesh, a student at George Washington University who served with the Marine Corps in Iraq, said Marines were often forced to make snap decisions about whether to fire on civilians.

"During the siege of Fallujah, we changed our rules of engagement more often than we changed our underwear," he said.

On the screen, a photograph showed him posing next to a burned-out car in which an Iraqi man was killed after approaching a Marine checkpoint.

"At the first Winter Soldier in 1971, one of the testifiers showed a picture like this and said, 'Don't ever let your government to do this to you,' " Kokesh said. "And still the government is doing this."

The people of Iraq and Afghanistan are not the only ones suffering, and they're not the only ones whose suffering has been mostly hidden from us:

At a session on shortcomings in veterans' health care, audience members sobbed as Joyce and Kevin Lucey described the suicide of their son, Marine Cpl. Jeffrey Lucey, a death they blamed on his inability to get treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Mental health specialists were on hand to help speakers and audience members, and a workshop was offered on PTSD.

The veterans who participate in Winter Soldier will undoubtedly be smeared forever for having told a few minutes of truth.

Such is life in post-democratic America.

Those who spoke yesterday described the experience as intimidating.

"It was terrifying for me," said Steven Casey, a former 1st Armored Division specialist from Missouri who also described the AC-130 attack. "I knew somebody needed to hear it. All I wanted to do is say what I saw. I'm not accusing anyone of a crime."

From the look of the IVAW site at the moment, a lot of people need to hear it.

How High's The Oil, Mama?

One oh eight and climbin'.

... the fifth new high price for oil in the last six sessions ...

One analyst [...] said of the runup in oil prices: "It's not over."

In early 2003 I sent an alarmed email to a friend, including Josh Marshall's excellent "Practice To Deceive", which discussed the neocon plans to embroil not only Iraq but all of the Middle East in the "transformative process" of modern warfare.

He wrote back and said "I guess I need to start buying cowboy hats and oil stocks."

I've often wondered whether he did.

If so, he's making good money, and on his way to Hell.

Stream Of Unconscious

If you turn off your mind, relax and float downstream ... and just read for a while ... the Wall Street Journal can explain how the Democratic primary in South Carolina just might change the face of racial politics in the South forever, since Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are trying such different strategies.

Clinton is using an old-style political machine, trying to scoop as many endorsements as possible from political leaders and media types and preachers; Obama is using a grass-roots campaign to mobilize an entirely different group of people, or so the WSJ wants me to believe.

They may be right. But they lost me when they started talking about poor blacks looking to their preachers for "both spiritual and political guidance". White people don't do that, of course. Not since 2004, anyway.

Meanwhile, in an effort destined to earn even more ... um ... credibility ... said Journal carries a piece from Norman Podhoretz called "Stopping Iran", in which he argues -- quite falsely -- that hardly anybody disputed the 2005 NIE which said Iran was racing to build nuclear weapons.

Podhoretz also asserts that Iran has no need for nuclear power since it has all that oil.

Let's see, now: If I had all that oil, and it was selling for $100 a barrel, with no sign of a price decrease ever ... Would I rather sell it ... or burn it? Hmm, that's a tough one. Podhoretz would burn it, obviously. Apparently he doesn't understand the value of money. So he argues that Iran must be stopped from obtaining nuclear technology.

And it seems to me I've heard that one before. Have you? It's funny how Podhoretz doesn't seem too concerned about the entirely credible allegations made by Sibel Edmonds, who says US government insiders were selling nuclear secrets to the highest bidder on the black market, and much more.

Actually, no one in the US media seems much concerned about that; they're more interested in a hypothetical threat than evidence of any actual crimes, especially with crimes as serious as these -- crimes committed by powerful people who could ruin your reputation!

Naturally, the Democratically controlled Congress can't find time to look into it either, since their feckless leader, Henry Waxman, is so busy chasing down a chump who last played in the big leagues five years ago so he can find out what the chump knows about some illegal injections of steroids.

Illegal injections of cash are far less interesting to our bought-and-sold friends in the political/media circus, who don't give a damn about a million dead Iraqis but can't stop writing about one dead Marine.

So this is post-democratic America in its embryonic form: stupid; distracted; cut adrift from reality; corrupt to the bone; fighting a one-sided war of choice and bragging about it; and torturing people until they get mad at us.

And then, if they get mad enough to want to hurt us, we're morally obliged to torture them again, aren't we?

What Took You So Long? Osama bin Laden Says The US Wants Iraq's Oil

If Osama bin Laden claims the United States wants to exploit Iraq's oil, does that mean it's not true?

I'm just kidding about that; I suspect the real import of the story is that now those of us -- conspiracy theorists -- who have been saying the same thing all along can be branded as "terrorists".

That part was easy. My real question is more difficult: What's with Osama bin Laden?

He's supposed to be this great geopolitical genius, capable of drawing the USA into battle on his terms, and keeping us there against our will, and so on...

Do you mean to say it's taken him all these years to figure out America wants Iraq's oil?

He may be a terrorist mastermind, but he's no conspiracy theorist.

Now, wait a minute ... the conspiracy theorists are terrorists, but the terrorists are not conspiracy theorists?

Oh well. I guess it makes as much sense as anything else about the GWOT.