In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
Latest Move in Bloody Fallujah Reeks
A Post at The Daily Kos that really works as a great followup to B's post of a few days back.
Well before Winston Churchill made his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in Missouri after World War II, men at the CIA’s predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, decided to recruit General Reinhard Gehlen to help them in the war on communism. They persuaded themselves that Gehlen wasn’t a Nazi, or even if he had been, he wasn’t one of the bad ones. After all, Gehlen had conspired with Claus von Stauffenburg in the 1944 plot to assassinate Herr Hitler.
On the other hand, maybe they knew the truth: Gehlen joined the conspiracy because he wanted Germany to win. He felt the skills of generals who could make it happen were being ignored while the soldiers they commanded were being sacrificed on the altar of Der Führer’s megalomania. You might call Gehlen a no-nonsense Nazi.
He had something the OSS men very much wanted … a network of spies on the Soviet side of the Yalta line - and 53 drums of microfilmed files about the spy apparatus he had put together in the USSR. The general had been the chief of Army Intelligence for the entire Eastern Front. Who cared if he had participated in some of the worst atrocities against Jews, Slavs and Russian prisoners, who were systematically starved in order to extract information?
...
I couldn’t help but think of General Gehlen when I read today’s news about Fallujah militia men cheering and honking and firing their weapons skyward upon learning of the pullback of the U.S. Marines assigned to the siege. It appears they’ll soon be fighting someone from the home turf whom they understand and may well have a grudge against. Cause for celebration by anyone eager not to forget the past.
Negotiations and force short of obliteration having failed to achieve their goal in Fallujah, the U.S. has chosen to deploy a version of the Gehlen model: fight the new war with a warrior from the old regime.The new “Fallujah Brigade,” put together by Iraqi generals from Saddam Hussein’s ousted regime, likely will include some former army soldiers who fought American forces over the past month, Marine Lt. Gen. James Conway said.
Good to hear, General. But it seems you’ve been doing a rather poor job of looking under their nails.
He promised, however, that anyone who has “blood on their hands” would not be allowed to stay in the force.
Good to hear, General. But it seems you’ve been doing a rather poor job of looking under their nails.
...
I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that a year after “Mission Accomplished,” our top military leaders ought to have access to some pretty good intelligence regarding every general and most of the colonels of the disbanded enemy army, particularly its elite units. No access? Surely in the tens of billions of our tax dollars being spent in Iraq, there’s a budget for running background checks on generals chosen to Iraqify the war.
Or maybe – like their who-cares-how-many-atrocities-he’s-committed OSS predecessors - General Kimmitt and his subordinates know but don’t care what’s on General Saleh’s résumé. Especially not when the White House goal is to keep the number of transfer tubes being sent home in May well below April’s potentially election-shifting total.
- rob 1:22 PM - [PermaLink] -
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