We have previously discussed reports of billions disappearing in Afghanistan and the long record of corruption surrounding the family and friends of President Hamid Karzai. Now a new report details how for more than a decade, the CIA has been dropping off monthly suitcases, backpacks and even shopping bags filled with cash to Karzai at his office. Despite these reports of grotesque corruption, the money continues to flow into Karzai’s pockets even as he attacks the U.S. and Americans as “demons”, and moves to shift alliances to Iran and China.
It appears that the CIA has dropped off “tens of millions” in cash to Karzai personally according to the report below. His former chief staffer, Khalil Roman says that they called it Karzai’s “ghost money” and that it simply disappeared with the president.
Officials are quoted as saying that it was the CIA and the Americans who were “the biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan.”
The cash deliveries to Karzai were viewed as necessary to keep access to him as if the thousands of killed and wounded Americans (and hundreds of billions in aid) was not enough to keep the door open.
Because no one (including Obama) wants to be blamed for the disaster in Afghanistan, we continue to pour billions into the country and sacrifice military personnel to prop up this corrupt government and maintain a country that is increasingly denying basic rights to women and religious minorities. The bags of cash however truly sum out the lunacy of American policy in Afghanistan.
Source: NYTimes
Nerve gas is for pussies. Look for the really threatening stuff
They got Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) – aka Boston pressure cookers – fer chrissakes – which is a whole lot more WMD than Iraq ever had.
It’s simple logic
Population of Iraq – 20 Million
Population of Syria – 34 Million.
Ergo on a probability basis – more pressure cookers in Syria!
It must be pressure cookers because there were no viable real WMD in Iraq ( apart from RPGs )- which is what Intelligence stated before it got attitude-adjusted.
They also currently got some elements connected to AQ – which is a whole lot more AQ that Iraq ever had pre-invasion.
Invade baby!
Think of the contracts!
It’s like Dr Strangelove.
Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.
They should parachute him into the mountains of Afghanistan and see how he relates to the Taliban.
WHAT’S FUNNY IS ALL THE PEOPLE WHO THINK THAT WHAT WE HAVE NOW IS ANY DIFFERENT THAN BEFORE.
PEOPLE SHOULD BE GOING TO PRISON FOR FOR THIS. NOT BS SENATE HEARINGS THAT ARE JUST A SHOW
Mike Spindell’s comment about the Harvard and Yale guys above. If you are the “scion” of a gangster who went to Harvard or Yale then you can get admitted over other people as a Legacy. Rockefellers, Kennedys, Bush 41 and 43. Then later the historians who work for all of those families’ foundations give good service to FDR, Jack Kennedy, Brother Bobby, Bush 41, Bush 43. But if those historians from the Ivy League deal with Truman then he is the “failed haberdasher” and LBJ is just some Texan who dont know nuthin bout birthin babies. These Ivy League historians will give JFK credit for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when it was all Johnson’s arm twisting a year after Johnboy got shot.
Some fat lady was on CNN last night or Fox arguing that we have to go into the war in Syria because they have nerve gas. She was a Bushie acolyte.
CIA Bags O’ Cash Total Tens of Millions of Dollars, But Over $4.5 Billion Left Afghanistan in 2011
Posted on April 29, 2013 by Jim White
Excerpt:
“The US has been providing over $5 billion a year to fund Afghan security forces every year since 2009. Given that SIGAR has also shown that the Afghans are in charge of certifying to us the level at which their forces are staffed and that the mythical 352,000 ANSF force size is not validated, I would think that ASFF funds may be a major (but undoubtedly not the only) source for the cash that is leaving the country. Because ASFF dollars seem so particularly ripe for corrupt officials to embezzle, I saw the NATO push to extend the number of years at which ANSF force size will be supported at the 352,000 level as a blatant move to wave an additional $22 billion in US funds under the noses of these thieves.
Also note that DoD itself is at least $7 billion over budget this year (mostly due to withdrawal costs), but our commander, General Dunford, professes ignorance of this minor detail of accounting, so there are huge sums of money being handled in Afghanistan with little to no real oversight.
One last caveat should be pointed out on the relatively small size of the CIA bags o’ cash plan. As Barry Eisler would note, the CIA is notorious for admitting to problems first by broaching the subject through admitting a small transgression and then later admitting the full scale of the problem. The best example of that behavior was the disclosure in 2007 that the CIA had destroyed “two” videotapes of CIA torture sessions and then finally admitting in 2009 that the number of tapes destroyed was actually 92. We should not be surprised then, if the CIA bags o’ cash program turns out to be hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars instead of the tens of millions currently admitted.”
On Ignorance and Opium
I think that in the US, “The War on Terror” has become the opiate. It promotes ignorance.
I sometimes comment on another blog that is of GOP/NRA leanings. It is interesting to engage with minds there.
The genial host there recently opined that the detainees in GITMO are “Hard core killers who daily attack our troops responsible for their welfare and swear to kill them, their families, and every other American when they get out”.
Another way of describing many of the detainees would be this lawyer who tries to represent some of them.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/apr/29/guantanamo-hunger-strikers-animals-lawyer-video
he says.
.
In the link I posted above re civillian casualties in Afghanistan, there are (pre)echoes of this from Karsai (back on topic – my bad 🙂 )
.
Boston: World event on main and social media – city in lockdown and Robocop shouting “come out with your hands where we can see them while we search without warrant” to ordinary citizens who afterwards cheer Robocop (1984 model).
Without in any way attempting to diminish the outrage and pain felt arising from a relativly tiny number of deaths and injuries, it seems clear that only massive doses of Ignorance and WoT opium could possibly divorce peoples’ imaginations from incredibly more awful things that happen in other countries — at the behest of US economic interests.
It is long past time to shut down the CIA and transfer their assets to the FBI and get rid of most of the so called special ops types. The military can do that and better.
Blouise 1, April 29, 2013 at 1:38 pm
Stop giving the CIA money!
=====
A good start.
Stop giving the CIA money!
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/461085781
The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade
by Alfred W. McCoy
Nov 21, 2012
Read in January, 1999
I was a Teaching Assistant for Dr. McCoy while in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We taught his highly regarded class on “The Vietnam Wars” together, with him as lecturer and me and another graduate assistant as teachers of the breakout sessions. These were some of my fondest memories of my college career.
Dr. McCoy is an outstanding and rigorous scholar, though this work walks the fine line between journalism and history in a similar way to how Michel Foucault walks the line between philosophy and history. I can vouch for McCoy’s authenticity. I’ve seen his HEAVILY redacted CIA and FBI files. While a graduate student, when he began this research, he had an FBI agent assigned to watch him, even going so far as to follow McCoy for hours at a time and investigate the work that he was doing at the library. Creepy stuff, but not altogether surprising to me. I was raised in the military by a father who had classified clearance and who told me some fairly scary stuff after his clearance ran out post-retirement (though there are still many things that Dad will take to the grave with him, things that I will never know). I’ve also seen OSI (Office of Special Investigations) in action tracking the comings and goings of high school students, GIs, and their families. So, while McCoy’s work might seem a bit paranoid, at first blush, don’t blow this work off as the work of some crazed conspiracy theorist or paranoid anarchist. You’ll find the book thoroughly researched and well-reasoned.
If half of what Dr. McCoy says is true (and I believe much more than half of it is true), then the CIA has a lot to hide and much to answer for. One cannot blame the CIA entirely for their complacency in the Southest Asian, Middle Eastern, and Central American drug trade. To be fair, federal funding maneuvers and congressional budget cuts might have pushed the agency to raise money in whatever way possible (c.f. Iran/Contra scandal). But McCoy’s research into the degree to which the CIA was/is involved in the worldwide drug trade is fairly damning of the agency itself.
Not a book for those who like to live with their head in the sand, but too-well documented, researched, and verified to be dismissed as the lunacy of some crackpot. And aren’t accusations of insanity a historically-proven way of discrediting one’s detractors? Read the book (brace yourself – it’s going to take a while) and decide whether or not Dr. McCoy is raving or revealing.
AP,
Right about Dr. McCoy. It has been established that the CIA in return for the armed assistance of the drug producers in Viet Nam’s “Golden Triangle” started flying heroin shipments out of Viet Nam and into the U.S. for distribution in 1968. That these shipments coincided with the death of MLK and were loosed on the Black community derailing the Civil Rights Movement is not lost on me. At the time I was a minor member of the Movement and also worked in Black areas as a Welfare worker. Being a hippie and part of the drug culture back then I was amazed that heroin had suddenly become available again. I would never try it since I remember the scourge it was in the 50’s as my older brother tried to help wean a good friend from heroin. I don’t believe in coincidences when they supply such good fortune for the powers that be.
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/16051-international-intervention-in-afghanistan-has-led-to-heroin-resurgence
International Intervention in Afghanistan Has Led to Heroin Resurgence
Monday, 29 April 2013 09:36 By Julien Mercille, Truthout | Op-Ed
A new United Nations report on the state of opium cultivation in Afghanistan reveals a worsening situation, after more than a decade of US and NATO occupation. It confirms the failure of counternarcotics missions in the country.
In 2012, poppy cultivation rose for a third year in a row and now extends over 154,000 hectares, an 18% increase over 2011. The last time cultivation had spread to such a large area was in 2008. Production is concentrated in the south and west of the country, particularly in the provinces of Helmand, Kandahar and Farah. Jean-Luc Lemahieu, of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime representative in Afghanistan, said that “opium cultivation is heading toward record levels.” The country is the global leader in heroin production, accounting for 75% to 90% of the raw materials needed to make the drug.
One important reason poor Afghan farmers choose to produce opium is that it fetches high prices and helps them survive. One kilogram of opium sells for $248, whereas the same quantity of wheat is valued at only $0.44. It is not difficult to understand why – even after considering the risk of seeing their crops eradicated by counternarcotics agents – many Afghans choose to grow poppies.
Once again, the mainstream media blamed the Taliban for the increase in cultivation, asserting that drugs constitute “an important form of income for their operations.” However, the Taliban play a more minor role in the opium economy than such claims would have us believe, and drug money is probably a secondary source of funding for them. Indeed, it is estimated that only 10% to 15% of Taliban funding is drawn from drugs and 85% comes from other sources.
Moreover, although the Taliban are often identified as the culprits behind the drug industry, the fact is that they capture only about 5% of total drug revenues in Afghanistan, while farmers take 20%. And the remaining 75%? It is shared among police officers, warlords, government officials and traffickers – in short, many of the groups supported and tolerated by the US and NATO. The latter thus hold a large share of responsibility for the skyrocketing of opium production in the country from 185 tons in 2001 to over 8,000 tons in 2007 (today it is about 3,700 tons).
The United States attacked Afghanistan in 2001 in collaboration with Northern Alliance warlords and drug lords whom they showered with weapons, millions of dollars, and diplomatic support. The empowerment and enrichment of those warlords enabled them to tax and protect opium traffickers, leading to the quick resumption of narcotics production after the hiatus of the 2000-2001 Taliban ban. Impunity and support for drug lords and warlords has been the norm since 2001. NATO’s mission is to support the Afghan government, but at one point you could count seventeen drug traffickers in the Afghan parliament.
Ahmed Wali Karzai, President Karzai’s brother, assassinated in 2011, had been receiving regular payments from the CIA since 2001, even though his involvement in narcotics was widely suspected. A Wikileaks cable recounting American officials’ recent meetings with him stated that “While we must deal with AWK [Ahmed Wali Karzai] as the head of the Provincial Council, he is widely understood to be corrupt and a narcotics trafficker.” But in public, the ties are denied, as when John Kerry said that “We should not condemn Ahmed Wali Karzai or damage our critical relations with his brother, President Karzai, on the basis of newspaper articles or rumors.”
A New York University report documented the widespread use by NATO and US forces of private security companies and militias that are often run by strongmen responsible for human rights abuses or involved in narcotics. For example, the report noted that in Badakhshan Province, General Nazri Mahmad, a warlord who “control[s] a significant portion of the province’s lucrative opium industry,” had the contract to provide security for the German Provincial Reconstruction Team.
In short, not only have counternarcotics missions failed to contain drug trafficking, let alone reduce it, but the international intervention in Afghanistan has led to its resurgence. The withdrawal of international troops could lead to two scenarios. Either opium production will decrease because key traffickers will be weakened by losing US support. Conversely, trafficking could increase if the country becomes more chaotic and Afghans have no choice but to rely to an even greater degree on poppies to survive.
In any case, Washington won’t assume any responsibility, as noted in a report issued earlier in 2013 by the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, which stated that the “issue of illicit drug production has largely fallen off the policy agenda in Afghanistan” and that “the uptick in cultivation continues to be of little immediate concern to Western policymakers and politicians.”
Afghanistan
Opium Risk Assessment 2013
http://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Afghanistan/ORAS_report_2013_phase12.pdf
I have read several credible sources that said no one in the Bush administration wanted Osama bin Laden caught because he was a cash cow for both the Pakistan and Afghanistan governments. Remember when Bush the Lesser said he no longer thought about bin Laden? The most wanted man on the planet? He did not think about bin Laden, but he did think about killing mountain tribesmen and their families. As long as there is conflict, there will be orders for tanks, airplanes, and other hardware to keep the money flowing to preferred congressional districts.
I am beyond disgusted. I recommend a couple of books: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and Shock Doctrine.
And raff, I’m not just talking about paying the employer end of payroll taxes. I’m talking about paying the income taxes monthly.
raff, I know you are self employed, and since you are an attorney, I’m sure you were aware of the taxes you paid as an employee. Money is something attorneys are very attuned to. Just a good natured ballbust there, raff. However, many folks are not as critical thinkers as you. I was intellectually aware of all the taxes I paid as an employee in the public and private sector. However, it was an epihany for me when I became self employed. And numerous converstions w/ other folks who followed yours and my career path tells me I am not unique.
nick,
Those of us who are also self employed know what it means to pay the employer and employee share of FICA taxes, but just because someone doesn’t pay the employers portion of the taxes, it doesn’t mean that they don’t understand how much is being paid. Even when I was an employee, I understood the full amount that was being paid by me and on my behalf. People already know it is too much, but for some reasons the corporations don’t seem to have to worry about paying too much tax.
“The best enemy money can buy.”
~+~
That summed Karzai up perfectly.
Since Halibuton is a fairly good source for government contracts…. Why doesn’t Cheney himself deliver the graft….. Oh yeah…. Something illegal about trying to bribe a foreign official….. I forgot….
The distinction between ignorance and stupidity is often ignored. Thus if one has a pedigree from Yale, Harvard or some such degree we take them to be intellectually superior. What is true is that unless you’re a Bush, you can’t be stupid to get into those schools. However, you can get in if you are ignorant. Ignorance is the lack of ability to be open to ideas that differ from your own. It prevents one from examining their own actions and modifying their behavior from what they’ve observed to be their own errors. In the case of the CIA from their beginnings as the OSS they recruited Ivy League graduates that represented the elite social class. They developed a culture of denial and a mindset of protecting the elite. It is an agency comprised of very smart, yet surprisingly ignorant people, whose ignorance borders on insanity. That is if insanity is to be defined as: “Doing the same thing over and over again even though it is proven not to work”.