President Obama, Candidate Obama, Blackwater and Black Ops

Dear Friends,

Who really reports the news today?  Who really breaks the stories long before the mainstream media picks them up if they ever do?  I suggest that Amy Goodman on Democracy Now and Rachel Maddow on The Rachel Maddow show are often one to two weeks ahead of the mainstream media.  This week, I would add Jon Stewart on The Daily Show to that list.

I cited many times from The Rachel Maddow Show which has been particularly effective at making clear the ineffectiveness of the clean up effort by BP.  Actually, I should note that Rachel did her own version of what President Obama should have said in his Oval Office address the other night.  It was very good but not any better than my own post on that subject.  Here is her speech that President Obama should have given.

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But I am not writing about that the devastating environmental catastrophe resulting from the oil spewing from BP's Deepwater Horizon well, this post is about the way that President Obama is making candidate Obama look like a liar and a con artist.  Candidate Obama was all about reversing the terrible things that President George W. Bush had done concerning black operations, rendition, secret prisons, Guantanamo Bay, etc.  Unfortunately for the United States and the world, President Obama is turning out to be worse than President George W. Bush.  Here are a couple of examples.

The first example is taken from Democracy Now today where Jeremy Scahill was interviewed about Blackwater CEO Erik Prince moving to the UAE (a country with no extradition treaty with the United States) to avoid prosecution and most likely to continue to provide contractors to the United States.  I should note that the story of Erik Prince's move to the UAE was covered by a variety of media outlets that would not be considered mainstream, but not by the mainstream media.  If you search on The New York Times website for the story, you will find links to the non-mainstream media coverage but not to any direct coverage by The New York Times.  But I digress.

Jeremy Scahill is reporting that President Obama has expanded the use of secret special forces operations abroad, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but in places like Mexico.  Here is a link to the interview and here is a portion of that interview:

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. Well, I mean, what you have to understand about this is that the premier counterterrorism strike force that the US has is the Joint Special Operations Command, which is sort of an all-star team of US special forces where they pull personnel from the Navy SEALs, DEVGRU, from the Army Rangers, from the Delta Force. They have their own aviation division, which is the 160th Aviation; the Night Stalkers is their nickname.

And under the Bush administration and after 9/11, they took this force that traditionally was supposed to be deployed in countries throughout Latin America, for instance, where the US wanted to either change the leadership in those countries, overthrow governments, or wanted to support a repressive regime. And they would send in special forces to upfit their military, in other words, to improve the capability of those countries’ special forces. And it was a way of the US waging proxy wars. What happened is that Bush, in the early stages after 9/11, shifted JSOC’s focus from a training mission to direct action missions, and they formed what are called special mission units, SMUs, that would go around the world and would essentially abduct or assassinate individuals that were believed to be al-Qaeda leaders or terrorists or opponents of the United States.

And so, what the Obama administration has done is taken the lead character who facilitated that transformation, General Stanley McChrystal, and appointed him the theater commander for the entire US front line war now in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That, combined with the fact that you have Petraeus also exerting his own influence in the special forces world and issuing execute orders to operate in countries that his forces previously had not—Yemen, Somalia, elsewhere. The air strikes, for instance, that you reported on recently on Democracy Now! in Yemen that killed, I think it was, fifteen civilians or more was likely not a JSOC mission, but rather Petraeus’s sort of parallel special forces mission.

The United States special forces are now in Mexico, for instance, and in Colombia, where they are attaching themselves to the Drug Enforcement Agency. That’s what they—they go in, and they can basically become what they want to become. If it’s attaching with the FBI, they’ll do that. If it’s passing themselves off in some kind of a diplomatic capacity, they’ll do that. In those countries—in Mexico and in Colombia—my understanding is that they’re working with Colombian special forces and with Mexican special forces to give them an expertise that they maybe don’t have or to advise them on certain operations. But the lines are blurred. And oftentimes when you have these highly trained US forces in these countries and they come under some kind of fire, are they not going to shoot back?

So I’ve been given specific examples, for instance, of US forces operating in the Republic of Georgia and where they are fighting against and targeting Chechen rebel leaders. And this is happening all around the world now.

And so, Obama has opened a direct line of communication with commanders of these task forces that are doing these hits. And I’ve heard from people that are involved with planning of these missions that there’s far greater access for these sort of dark forces with the Obama White House than there was under the Bush administration, which is really extraordinary, because Bush and Cheney would often pluck people from out of the chain of command and directly order them to do something, McChrystal chief among them.

On Tuesday night's The Daily Show, Jon Stewart put together a great segment contrasting what candidate Obama said about secret special operations, rendition, habeas corpus, etc. and what President Obama has actually done on those subjects.  Of course when Jon Stewart does it, it sounds funny but if you think about it, you should be scared and really upset that the candidate of hope and change is continuing if not extending many of the worst things that President George W. Bush did.  Unfortunately, I am not able to put the clip in the post but here is the link.  The applicable part starts at minute 1:45 and ends at minute 9:09.


Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

The speech that President Obama should have given

Dear Friends,

Last night while my wife and I were watching President Obama's address to the American people from the Oval Office, and I was constantly bemoaning how bad it was, my wife made two really good points.  The first was that I need to cut President Obama a little slack since he inherited an almost unending list of problems from President George W. Bush.  She is, of course, right.  Even without the current disaster caused by BP, President Obama has had more problems on his desk than could possibly be handled by anybody.  It took years for President George W. Bush and the Republicans to create these problems, so I guess I should not expect President Obama to solve them all instantaneously.

The second point my wife made came in the form of a simple question, "What would you do?".  I was raised, and I believe properly so, to believe that you cannot just bitch about things, you need to come up with a solution and act to cause change. 

So as I was trying to get to sleep last night, I started to think about the speech that I think President Obama should have given last night.  It is far more productive for me to propose an alternative than it is to simply say that his speech last night was very disappointing.  Unfortunately, I do not have a research staff, nor do I have all day and night to write this speech.  Nevertheless, here is a very rough draft of the speech President Obama should have given last night.  President Obama's staff will have to fill in and check some facts and figures, but I hope that you get the point.

My fellow Americans,

We are facing by far the worst environmental disaster that we have ever faced, and it is getting worse every day.  This disaster occurred suddenly, but it has also been a long time in the making.

It occurred suddenly as a result of the negligence of BP and its contractors who cut costs at the expense of safety and demonstrated a complete disregard for the impact that their single-minded focus on profits could have on human life and the environment.  As a result, today scientists are estimating that BP's Deepwater Horizon well is spewing between 2 million and 2.5 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico each day.  It is wrong to call this an oil spill.  This well is spewing oil into the environment and causing a human and environmental disaster of a scale never seen before.

As soon as the accident occurred on the drilling rig, my Administration started to take action.  We were hampered by the fact that BP controlled the well site and was suppose to have the technology and equipment to control the spewing of oil.  But as the CEO of Exxon Mobil testified today in Congress, the oil companies are not well equipped to deal with this kind of problem.  We have deployed over 5,000 vessels, 30,000 workers, and millions of miles of booms.  We have also brought together the best minds both inside the oil industry and from other areas to seek ways to stop the spewing of oil and to clean up the environmental disaster it is causing. [Note:  add other things that we have done and be sure we have pictures]

But we must, and we will do more.  It is clear that the most innovative efforts to stop the oil from reaching our shores and cleaning it up once it gets to the shores are being done by local governments that know their shores the best.  But they need help.  Since the oil industry has not invested any significant amount of money in spill prevention or cleanup technology, we are still using the same techniques we used 30 years ago.  Those techniques can be more effective than they have been, but they require more manpower and local control of the efforts. 

I have authorized the use of 17,000 National Guard troops to help the local governments in any way that they can.  In addition, we will be providing local governments with the funds they need to hire workers locally to fight the oil coming ashore in any way that they can think of.  We are also establishing a clearinghouse so that the best ideas from people all over the Gulf coast can be disseminated to all the communities fighting the oil.  Initially, I am authorizing $10 billion for this effort and will work with Congress to authorize more in the days ahead.  BP will reimburse us for these expenditures. This effort will have the added benefit of employing the workers who are currently unemployed because of the impact of the terrible general economic conditions and the impact that this disaster is having on the Gulf coast.

At the same time, I am issuing an order that all workers involved in this clean up effort must be provided appropriate hazardous material protection including respirators.  The toxic environment of crude oil and chemical dispersant that these people work in requires that their health be protected. 

But we are not stopping there, we will continue to find new and innovative ways of dealing with the oil and restoring the Gulf coast to its beautiful and productive condition.

Tonight I am also announcing that I am withdrawing my proposal to open more offshore areas to drilling, and that I am ordering that all currently operating offshore wells suspend operations until Federal regulators can inspect each of them to be certain that they are operating within their permits and that they have real disaster response plans in place.  It is clear that big oil simply photocopies disaster response plans without giving them any thought.  They have the same plan for all the big oil companies and for all the areas.   It is also clear that Federal safety regulators have not been doing their job.  So there will be no more off shore operations until real safety inspections are completed and real disaster response plans are in place and tested.

It is also clear that the Minerals Management Service, the Interior Department and other parts of the Federal government have not been doing their job of protecting the American people and environment.  That stops now.  I have fired Secretary Salazar, and I have appointed Michael R. Bromwich, a former federal prosecutor and inspector general for the Justice Department to take over the Minerals Management Service. I have also asked Vice President Biden to take on the additional task of overseeing the Interior Department until I can appoint a new Secretary of the Interior.  The Department of the Interior will stop being a place that employs people from the industries that it deals with.  We will employ professionals that know how to regulate.

As I said at the beginning of this address, this disaster occurred suddenly, but it also has been a long time in the making.  While the immediate cause of this disaster is the negligence and greed of BP and its contractors, the major systemic problem that lead to this disaster is our dependence on fossil fuels.  We use 25% of the petroleum that the world uses each year, but we are less than 5% of the world population.  Our thirst for oil has lead to drilling that is inherently too risky to both people and the environment.  As leaders of this country have said for decades, we must break our dependence on fossil fuels.  This environmental disaster makes it clear that we need to break that dependence now.

We all - government, private industry, non-government organization and individuals - need to work together to break this dependence.  We can do it, and we can start right now.

Tonight, I am proposing that the government's budget for energy efficiency initiatives and green technology be increased from its current level of less than $2 billion to $20 billion.  These funds will be used to provide support for private and public research and development as well as funds to permit private businesses to commercialize green technologies across our entire economy.  As a result, the United States will not be dependent upon China to lead in green technology.  We will lead, and we will create millions of good paying jobs here and be able to export our technology abroad.

These efforts will require some time to have an impact.  In the meantime, there is a lot that we can do together.  All of us can conserve energy.  The Republicans made fun of me for suggesting that people should properly inflate their tires because it saves gasoline.  In fact, proper tire inflation can improve mileage by 3% and proper maintenance can improve mileage by another 4% and not speeding and accelerating gently can improve mileage by another 20%.  In addition, we can all set the temperature on our thermostats higher by a degree or two in the summer and lower by a degree or two in the winter.  These steps could save __% from an average heating and cooling bill.  We can seal our windows, turn off lights and other electrical devices we are not using, use less water, walk or bike or take public transportation and the list goes on.  No single one of these efforts will break our dependence on fossil fuels, but they all help and in the aggregate they will make a substantial difference.

Another significant systemic problem that lead to this disaster is the Republican's unrelenting push for deregulation.  The meltdown of the financial system combined with this environmental disaster should make it clear to even the most rabid anti-government conservative that industries do not and cannot regulate themselves.  For profit corporations are just that.  They exist to make profits, and they are responsible to their shareholders to maximize profits.  Unless forced by government regulation, they do not take into account the secondary costs of their operations, those costs which society bears but the individual business does not.  Unbridled, uncontrolled capitalism does not work.  Government has a critical role to play in regulating businesses so that the public does not bear the indirect costs that the individual companies do not bear.  Insuring safety of the people, the economy and the environment is a role that government must play.

Starting today, we will fight for professional regulators and appropriate regulations that will protect the American people from corporations' single-minded focus on profits even at the expense of human safety, the economy and the environment.  We will fight to institute reforms in the current revolving door between the regulators and the regulated, and we will once again make government work for all the people not just for the big corporations.

Our country faces serious systemic problems that we must address now.  I am asking for your help in dealing with these problems - not with 30 second sound bites or overheated rhetoric, but with thoughtful, fact based solutions.  Congress will need to act with foresight and courage, something that they have not historically been willing to do.  But with your help, we can force them to act.  I plan to spend more time visiting with you, the American people, talking about the problems that we face and the solutions that I have to offer.  I will also ask you to talk to your elected representatives and remind them that they were elected by you, that they are responsible to you and not to the big corporations and that they need to have the courage to do what is right for the people of this country not for the big corporations that fund their campaigns.

Throughout history, whenever Americans have come together to solve problems, they have been successful.  We can solve the problems that we face today by working together and engaging in thoughtful discussions of the problems and their potential solutions. 

Thank you for listening tonight, and I look forward to having many conversations with you in the days and years ahead.

Good night.

Please feel free to suggest edits.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

What is going well?

Dear Friends,

From time to time I am criticized for not talking about all the good things that President Obama has done and for focusing too much on all the problems.  I have tried to point out good things that President Obama has done, but lately I have been hard pressed to find any.

So if there is something good that President Obama has done lately that you want me to write about, please leave a comment.  I would be delighted if I have to spend the next several days composing posts of all the good things that President Obama has done lately.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

The War in Afghanistan, President Obama and The New York Times

Dear Friends,

Yesterday, I wrote a post about President Obama using some old mineral information to try to garner or maintain support for his strategy for the war in Afghanistan.  In that post I noted that The New York Times ran the optimistic article on the front page above the fold.  Well, this morning I note that The New York Times ran an article on the front page below the fold entitled "Setbacks Cloud Plans to Get Out of Afghanistan".  The online version is here.  There is no particularly new news in this article.  Certainly nothing that wasn't known yesterday when they published the optimistic article. 

So what is the deal?  Is the Obama Administration using The New York Times the way that President George W. Bush did to put its spin on a situation?  Is The New York Times falling into the same bad habit of just reporting what the current Administration tells it?  How can I as a reader know that I am getting factual reporting with as little spin as possible or just a regurgitation of White House spin?

I certainly didn't think that I would have to ask those questions when I supported candidate Obama.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Fire Secretary Salazar

Dear Friends,

If President Obama is serious about changing the way that Washington works, he will do what any normal executive will do, he will fire the person who is in charge of the division that permitted the BP environmental disaster to occur.  Secretary Salazar was a disaster from the beginning, and it is clear that he is too sympathetic and close to big oil.  The Interior Department and particularly the Minerals Management Service continue to be too close to big oil.  Here is a statement from Food and Water Watch (here):

Washington, D.C.—“The first official response to Food & Water Watch’s request for a federal court order to halt the operation of BP’s Atlantis oil drilling facility until critical safety documents are produced paints a telling picture of how the U.S. Minerals Management Service MMS will operate under U.S. Interior Secretary Salazar’s leadership: More of the same.
“In its response last week, the MMS stated that it has the sole discretion to decide whether to shut down Atlantis, and that a court can not make it do so. It also stated that it expects the investigation into Atlantis will take three months. In reality, this is a simple examination that requires the agency to review BP’s document databases. It should take mere days, not months.
“Significantly, the response does not deny that regulations require as-built documents for subsea components, nor does it deny that that the absence of engineer-approved, as-built drawings make this rig unsafe and a threat to the Gulf.
“Furthermore, the response admits that here has been no meaningful investigation in over a year since they were first notified of safety deficiencies.
“The agency is simply dragging its feet.
“Their inability to close a rig that is operating without any evidence of safety, especially in light of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, has led us to conclude that Secretary Salazar is serving oil interests, not the public interest. The MMS will not be substantively different under his leadership than under his predecessor in the Bush administration, despite heavy handed rhetoric to the contrary.”
“President Obama should demand his resignation and find someone who will regulate the industry—starting with the shut-in of Atlantis until it is proven to operate safely.”
Contact: Kate Fried, Food & Water Watch: (202) 683-2500, kfried(at)foodandwaterwatch(dot)org

You can suggest that President Obama fire Secretary Salazar by contacting President Obama here.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Why Americans distrust their government, part 8

Dear Friends,

While most of the news has focused on the environmental disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, a lot of bad news has been coming from Afghanistan.  According to iCasualties.org (here),  168 American soldiers have died in Afghanistan this year, including 39 already in June.  At the current June rate, June will be the deadliest month for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in this very long war.

In addition, recent reports from Helmand province indicate that the initial success reported there is not being sustained.  The Washington Post published an article by Rajiv Chandrasekaran on June 10th (here).  The first paragraph reads as follows:

Residents of this onetime Taliban sanctuary see signs that the insurgents have regained momentum in recent weeks, despite early claims of success by U.S. Marines. The longer-than-expected effort to secure Marja is prompting alarm among top American commanders that they will not be able to change the course of the war in the time President Obama has given them.

Firefights between insurgents and security forces occur daily, resulting in more Marine fatalities and casualties over the past month than in the first month of the operation, which began in mid-February.

On top of all that and probably because of all that General McChrystal has done his best to reduce expectations for the Kandahar operation, which was modeled on the operation in Helmand province which as indicated above is not doing as well as initially reported.  Here are some excerpts from an article by  Anne Gearan published by the Huffington Post on June 10th (here):

Afghans have not yet rallied behind a U.S. military-led effort to push the Taliban out of the city where the insurgency began, and the top commander conceded Thursday that he needs more time to win them over.The struggle for control of Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city, is considered the crucial test of President Barack Obama's revamped strategy for a war that is increasingly unpopular in the United States and Europe.
The Kandahar operation will unfold more slowly and last longer than the military had planned, Gen. Stanley McChrystal told reporters at a NATO meeting here.
"I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing," McChrystal said. "I think it's more important that we get it right than we get it fast."
The operation is proceeding more slowly than expected because the Taliban is not regarded as a hated occupier in the city, and not all of its residents welcome NATO's help.
McChrystal also said the nearly nine-year-old war is turning away from stalemate, but the Taliban is fighting hard.
"There are going to be tough days ahead," McChrystal said. "Violence is up, and I think violence is going to continue to rise, particularly over the summer months."
U.S. and other military commanders previously had said the operation would ramp up in June and largely conclude by August. Now military officials say the operation will last far into the fall.

So what does our government do to try to keep or gain support for a war strategy that is failing?  They say that suddenly a trillion dollars of mineral reserves have been found in Afghanistan and that will give great prosperity to Afghanistan.  The New York Times report on this topic today was on the front page with the headline "U.S. Discovers Mineral Riches in Afghanistan"  and the online edition headline was "U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan" (here).   Unfortunately, the implication from our government as set forth in the article is that this potential wealth for Afghanistan was just discovered.  But it has been known for years.  Even a careful reading of The New York Times article illustrates that there is no recent discovery.  Rachel Maddow did a great job of pointing out that the timing of this "news" was really meant to shore up support for the Afghan war.  Here is the segment from the Rachel Maddow Show tonight.

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Candidate Obama promised to change the way that things are done in Washington, but he is not being truthful with the American people when he permits the dissemination of a story that implies that something new has happened that is good when there is really nothing new.  I expect more from President Obama than politics as usual.  He was wrong to escalate the war in Afghanistan.  If he wants to continue a failing war that cannot be won, he should state his case to the American people and try to convince us.  He should use truth and logic, not half truths and innuendo.  When President Obama acts like this, it is no wonder that the American people don't trust their government.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal