Obama Intent on Keeping His Word - Again ( Archived) (125)

These Forums prove that every day!

By Barack Obama
Thursday, February 5, 2009; Page A17

By now, it's clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression. Millions of jobs that Americans relied on just a year ago are gone; millions more of the nest eggs families worked so hard to build have vanished. People everywhere are worried about what tomorrow will bring.

What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives -- action that's swift, bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis.

Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.

That's why I feel such a sense of urgency about the recovery plan before Congress. With it, we will create or save more than 3 million jobs over the next two years, provide immediate tax relief to 95 percent of American workers, ignite spending by businesses and consumers alike, and take steps to strengthen our country for years to come.

This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending -- it's a strategy for America's long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, health care and education. And it's a strategy that will be implemented with unprecedented transparency and accountability, so Americans know where their tax dollars are going and how they are being spent.

In recent days, there have been misguided criticisms of this plan that echo the failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis -- the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can meet our enormous tests with half-steps and piecemeal measures; that we can ignore fundamental challenges such as energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.

I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change. They know that we have tried it those ways for too long. And because we have, our health-care costs still rise faster than inflation. Our dependence on foreign oil still threatens our economy and our security. Our children still study in schools that put them at a disadvantage. We've seen the tragic consequences when our bridges crumble and our levees fail.

Every day, our economy gets sicker -- and the time for a remedy that puts Americans back to work, jump-starts our economy and invests in lasting growth is now....

Secret report recommends military shift in Afghanistan
Posted on Wednesday, February 04, 2009 11:12 AM ET
Filed Under: Terrorism, Politics

By Jim Miklaszewski, NBC News Chief Pentagon Correspondent, and Courtney Kube, NBC News Producer

The Pentagon is prepared to announce the deployment of 17,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan as early as this week even as President Barack Obama is searching for his own strategy for the war. According to military officials during last week's meeting with Defense Secretary Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon's "tank," the president specifically asked, "What is the end game?" in the U.S. military's strategy for Afghanistan. When asked what the answer was, one military official told NBC News, "Frankly, we don't have one." But they're working on it.

Senior military officials confirm to NBC News that a secret report from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to President Obama recommends a shift in the military mission in Afghanistan to concentrate solely on combatting the Taliban and al-Qaida and leave the "hearts and minds" aspect of the war to other U.S. agencies and NATO.

The officials stress this strategy would NOT abandon the so-called "soft-side" of the war, to establish good governance, law enforcement, economics, education, etc., but instead hand those responsbilitities over to the State Justice, Agriculture departments and others. "This is a classic counnterinsurgency strategy, but the military can not do it alone."

According to the officials, the Taliban "has definitely gained the upper hand" in some areas of Afghanistan, particularly the South, because there's just too much territory and too few American forces to "clear and hold" an area. "The Taliban is no match" for U.S. forces, but once the Americans drive the Taliban from a region, then leave, the Taliban immediately filter back in and regain control. "In many remote areas, the Taliban have established 'shadow governments' and in some cases gained the confidence and support of the locals.

"We need a strategy that will convince the Afghan people (in the remote areas) that the Taliban's extemism is no longer attractive as a government or a career." To do that, the strategy must first make the Afghans feel secure, then establish good governance, local security, jobs and education. "But that is not the miltiary's job." according to one official. "We can build the schools, we can build the courthouses, but we (the military) can not help them establish the good goverernance, justice and educations sytems" that are needed. In a speech earlier this week, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen empasized that ultimately to win the war, "the center of gravity (in Afghanistan) is the Afghan people."

The new strategy also includes more aggressive efforts by U.S. and NATO military forces to target the drug trade, specifically drug lords, opium labs and traffickers. Previously there had to be proof that such activity was contributing drug money directly to the support of the Taliban and or al-Qaida, but new broader rules of engagement assume any drug activities ultimately contribute to insurgents and therefore are "fair game."

The military officials stress that even while President Obama works on putting his stamp on the Afghanistan strategy, the deployment of the additional 17,000 troops, up to 30,000 more by the end of the year, will proceed. "Those additional forces are badly needed and the plans are already in place" according to one official. It's what comes next that is squarely in President Obama's court.

sorry ..for the double - here part 2 -

The Afghan drug shambles is a world problem for which the US must bear responsibility, as it is the prime international player in Afghanistan. If it wasn't for American policy, there would be no other foreign troops in the country.

According to US official figures, over the past year there has been an increase of 26 percent in drug production, up to a total of 5,644 metric tons. The land area involved in poppy growing has "increased by 61 percent. Cultivation in the two main production provinces, Helmand in the southwest and Oruzgan in central Afghanistan, was up by 132 percent."

And Mr John Walters of the White House calls this "disappointing". How one envies his ability to describe a world catastrophe in such a trite and emollient fashion.

There is no point in tens of thousands of foreign troops chasing round the country after so-called Taliban when the biggest problem of all is that of drug production. And the reference to "so-called Taliban" is apposite, as NATO's commander, the US General Jones, has stated bluntly that "There is a tendency to characterize all of the violence in Afghanistan as the resurgence of the Taliban. This is inaccurate.

It doesn't capture the nature of the problem."
He indicated that the violence had other causes, including "the strong presence of the drug cartels which have their own infrastructure, their own export system, their own security system . . . "
The insurgents in Afghanistan are rapidly developing from fragmented and marginalised opposition figures into nationalists with widening popular appeal (it takes me back to Vietnam in 1970-71), and are making propaganda during the winter while the fields are barren. Come the first days of spring 2007 and the seeds will be sown : both poppy seeds and those for an increasingly barbaric war again foreign troops. Both will prosper, because the war in Afghanistan is being waged in entirely the wrong way and with the wrong priorities.
Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, appealed in September 2006 for "NATO forces to destroy the heroin labs, disband the open opium bazaars, attack the opium convoys and bring to justice the big traders.

I invite coalition countries to give NATO the mandate and resources required."

As yet, nobody has accepted his invitation. Because nobody has the guts. It's downhill all the way from now on.

And mind you ..the date here is December 2006

Archive for Friday, April 29, 2005
Official Pariah Sudan Valuable to America’s War on Terrorism

By Ken Silverstein
April 29, 2005 in print edition A-1

The Bush administration has forged a close intelligence partnership with the Islamic regime that once welcomed Osama bin Laden here, even though Sudan continues to come under harsh U.S. and international criticism for human rights violations.

The Sudanese government, an unlikely ally in the U.S. fight against terror, remains on the most recent U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. At the same time, however, it has been providing access to terrorism suspects and sharing intelligence data with the United States.

Last week, the CIA sent an executive jet here to ferry the chief of Sudan’s intelligence agency to Washington for secret meetings sealing Khartoum’s sensitive and previously veiled partnership with the administration, U.S. government officials confirmed.

A decade ago Bin Laden and his fledgling Al Qaeda network were based in Khartoum. After they left for Afghanistan, the regime of Sudanese strongman Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir retained ties with other groups the U.S. accuses of terrorism.

As recently as September, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell accused Sudan of committing genocide in putting down an armed rebellion in the western province of Darfur. And the administration warned that the African country’s conduct posed “an extraordinary threat to the national security” of the United States.

Behind the scenes, however, Sudan was emerging as a surprisingly valuable ally of the CIA....

During an interview at the presidential palace, Babiker said Sudan had achieved “a complete normalization of our relations with the CIA.”

Intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Salah Abdallah Gosh, who otherwise declined comment for this article, told The Times: “We have a strong partnership with the CIA. The information we have provided has been very useful to the United States.”

The paradox of a U.S.-Sudanese intelligence partnership is personified by Gosh.

Members of Congress accused him and other senior Sudanese officials of directing military attacks against civilians in Darfur. During the 1990s, the Mukhabarat assigned Gosh to be its Al Qaeda minder. In that role he had regular contacts with Bin Laden, a former Mukhabarat official confirmed.

(Gosh is almost certainly among the scores of Khartoum officials named in a sealed United Nations file as being responsible for “crimes against humanity” in Darfur provinces, in western Sudan. The UN Security Council voted on March 31 to refer the file to the International Criminal Court (ICC).)

Today, Gosh is keeping in contact with the office of CIA Director Porter J. Goss and senior agency officials.

In exchange for the collaboration, which has been largely unpublicized, Khartoum wants to be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. It is also pressing Washington to lift long-standing economic sanctions barring most trade between the two countries....

Babiker, a former deputy director of the Mukhabarat, said the CIA was seeking to smooth the broader political relationship between the Bush administration and the Bashir regime....

Official acknowledgment of the relationship by Washington could also create a political backlash in the U.S....

Bin Laden moved his business and operations base to Khartoum in 1991 due to increasing conflict with Saudi Arabia, which revoked his citizenship three years later. His construction company built roads around the Sudanese capital. Al Qaeda expanded ties and offered financial support to a variety of radical Islamic groups....

Oil discovery adds new twist to Darfur tragedy
15 Jun 2005
Source: AlertNet
By Ruth Gidley

LONDON (AlertNet) - The existence of big oilfields in Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur region has added a new twist to a bloody, two-year-old conflict, potentially turning the quest for peace into tussle over resources.

Sudan announced in April that its ABCO corporation - which is 37 percent owned by Swiss company Clivenden - had begun drilling for oil in Darfur, where preliminary studies showed there were "abundant" quantities of oil.

The news has prompted some humanitarian experts to wonder whether oil could be guiding Khartoum's actions in Darfur, where a scorched-earth policy against rebels' communities has left tens of thousands dead and forced at least 2 million from their homes.

"There's some speculation that one of the reasons that these land grabs are going on is to get the African tribes off the ground so they can be controlled by the government in Khartoum," Ken Bacon, president of U.S. advocacy organisation Refugees International, told AlertNet.

Sudan's main oilfields are in the south and disputes over oil prolonged negotiations to end 20 years of civil war there. In contrast, the presence of oil in Darfur comes as a surprise to many in the humanitarian community.

The big question now is whether oil will give a motive for warring parties to speed up moves towards peace or make the conflict even harder to solve.

"The issue of oil in Darfur isn't very different from the issue of oil anywhere else," said Mike Aaronson, director general of British NGO Save the Children. "It's potentially a tremendous blessing, and potentially a tremendous handicap.

"It's not without reason that people talk about the oil curse. The reality is that many countries that have the greatest mineral wealth are also the ones with the conflicts."....