THE PETRAEUS CONSPIRACY - Bushcovite generals are making a power grab.

[kpete]

The Petraeus Conspiracy

by Steven D
Fri Dec 19th, 2008 at 12:10:29 PM EST

Did you honestly believe that the generals George Bush hand picked to carry out his strategery in Iraq would treat their new Democratic President (starting January 20, 2009), Barrack Obama, as their legitimate Commander in Chief? That they would set aside all the power and influence they had gained during the Bush years and accede to a diminution of their authority to make policy choices in the Global War on Terror (i.e., our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan)? If so, please kindly disabuse yourself of any such foolish notions. All generals who held high positions in the Clinton era are long gone, and so is anyone who did not get on board with Bush's shoot first and never ask questions policy (remember Generals Shinseki, Casey, et alia).

Those who hold senior positions in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and those who command troops in the field, owe their positions to Bush and Cheney. They will not go quietly into the night when it comes to complying with the terms of the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq (SOFA) and withdraw US forces within 16 months, which Obama has promised to do. Quite the contrary. They fully intend to subvert Obama's stated policy goals in Iraq, as Gareth Porter of the Asia Times makes clear:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JL20Ak01.html

United States military leaders and Pentagon officials have made it clear through public statements and deliberately leaked stories in recent weeks that they plan to violate a central provision of the US-Iraq withdrawal agreement requiring the complete pullout of all US combat troops from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 by reclassifying combat troops as support troops. <...>

General David Petraeus, now commander of CENTCOM, and General Ray Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq, who opposed Obama's 16-month withdrawal plan during the election campaign, have drawn up their own alternative plan rejecting that timeline, as the New York Times reported on Thursday. That plan was communicated to Obama in general terms by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen when he met with his national security team in Chicago on December 15, according to the Times.

The determination of the military leadership to ignore the US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and to pressure Obama on his withdrawal policy was clear from remarks made by Mullen in a news conference on November 17 - after US ambassador Ryan Crocker had signed the agreement in Baghdad.

Mullen declared he considered it "important" that withdrawal of US forces from Iraq "be conditions-based". That position directly contradicted the terms of the agreement, and Mullen was asked whether the agreement required all US troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2011, regardless of the security conditions. He answered "Yes," but then added, "Three years is a long time. Conditions could change in that period of time ... "

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It seems that Obama's first foreign policy crisis will come from within the ranks of our own military. These generals will try to railroad Obama into the same occupation strategy which has been such a disaster for America in terms of lives lost, money wasted, terrorist recruitment enhanced and our international reputation sullied. They still dream of their 100 year war against Islamofascism, as much, if not more than our good friends, the righty warbloggers.

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In short, these Bushcovite generals are making a power grab. It may not be a coup d'etat in the classic sense, but in the sense that they wish to impose their foreign policy goals and strategies on the Obama administration, they are effectively seeking to decapitate Obama as the nation's Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces, and in his place raise up a shadow junta dedicated to preserving America's overseas empire (and the Pentagon expenditures that go with it).

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more at:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2008/12/19/74038/452

[jody]

1. That is utter BS. Obama will be the Commander in Chief and all commanders can either obey his orders

or Obama can fire them just as Truman fired MacArthur.

The choice is Obama's and his alone.

[HereSince1628]

2. January 22 may bring a lot of retirements.

If they move to overthrow the president I'll worry.

[Octafish]

3. Gareth Porter is a top-notch scholar.

Thank you for the heads-up, KPete. The idea that the Pentagon would do an end-around on the President is nothing new. It happened to JFK during Vietnam.

[loudsue]

5. And we all know how that ended.

Obama is surrounded by the danger that the neocons have put every citizen of this country in since their take-over. Talk about the military industrial complex owning our government.

Obama needs to put all of them in jail for treason. Right after taking the oath.

[snot]

4. k&r'd

Dem spinelessness in the face of flagrant crimes has taught them all the only rule of law that matters is "might is right": just grab enough power, and you get to keep it.

[BeFree]

6. Now THIS is important

On Inauguration day the people need to be stoking the Anti-war flames and let all those smirk ass generals know that they are going to have to deal with all of us, besides Obama, when he decides to get the fuck out of Iraq. The world will be watching.

[bigtree]

7. no shit

. . . taking advantage of the 'continuity' argument and frantically lobbying to maintain and continue the Bush doctrine.

[seafan]

8. President-Elect Obama, we hope you're scrutinizing this. This does not bode well.

Gareth Porter: US military 'to defy' Iraqi pact, December 20, 2008

.....

The determination of the military leadership to ignore the US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and to pressure Obama on his withdrawal policy was clear from remarks made by Mullen in a news conference on November 17 - after US ambassador Ryan Crocker had signed the agreement in Baghdad.

.....

Obama's decision to keep Gates, who was known to be opposed to Obama's withdrawal timetable, as defense secretary confirmed the belief of the Pentagon leadership that Obama would not resist the military effort to push back against his Iraq withdrawal plan.
A source close to the Obama transition team has told Inter Press Service that Obama had made the decision for a frankly political reason. Obama and his advisers believed the administration would be politically vulnerable on national security and viewed the Gates nomination as a way of blunting political criticism of its policies.

The Gates decision was followed immediately by the leak of a major element in the military plan to push back against a 16-month withdrawal plan - a scheme to keep US combat troops in Iraqi cities after mid-2009, in defiance of the terms of the withdrawal agreement.

The New York Times first revealed that "Pentagon planners" were proposing the "relabeling" of US combat units as "training and support" units in a December 4 story. The Times story also revealed that Pentagon planners were projecting that as many as 70,000 US troops would be maintained in Iraq "for a substantial time even beyond 2011", despite the agreement's explicit requirement that all US troops would have to be withdrawn by then.

.....

US commanders have not bothered to claim that this is anything but a semantic trick, since the redesignated units would continue to participate in combat patrols, as confirmed by New York Times reporters Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker on Thursday. ..... The signals from Odierno of US military defiance of the withdrawal agreement suggest that the Pentagon and military leadership still do not take seriously the views of the Iraqi public as having any role in determining the matter of foreign troops in their country. Nevertheless, the withdrawal agreement is still subject to a popular referendum next July, and Iraqi politicians have already warned that evidence of a US refusal to abide by its terms would affect the outcome of that vote.

.....

Beyond the aim of getting Obama to abandon his 16-month plan, the military and Pentagon group still hopes to pressure Obama to agree to a long-term US military presence in Iraq.

Further evidence emerged last week that Gates is a central figure in that effort. In a Washington Post column on December 11, George Will quoted Gates as saying there was bipartisan congressional support for "a long-term residual presence" of as many as 40,000 US troops in Iraq, and such a presence for "decades" had been the standard practice following "major US military operations" since the beginning of the Cold War.

Those statements evidently represent part of the case Gates, Mullen and the military commanders are already making behind the scenes to get Obama to acquiesce in the subversion of the intent of the US-Iraq agreement.

The Danger of Keeping Robert Gates, Robert Parry, November 13, 2008

.....

Goodman was not alone in identifying Gates as the chief culprit in the politicization of the CIA’s intelligence product. Indeed, Gates’s 1991 confirmation hearing to be George H.W. Bush’s CIA director marked an extraordinary outpouring of career CIA officers going public with inside stories about how Gates had corrupted the intelligence product.

There also were concerns about Gates’s role in misleading Congress regarding the secret Iran-Contra operations in the mid-1980s, an obstacle that had prevented Gates from getting the top CIA job when Casey died in 1987.

Plus, in 1991, Gates faced accusations that he had greased his rapid bureaucratic rise by participating in illicit or dubious clandestine operations, including helping Republicans sabotage President Jimmy Carter’s Iran hostage negotiations in 1980 (the so-called October Surprise case) and collaborating on a secret plan to aid Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein (the Iraqgate scandal).

Despite significant evidence implicating Gates in these scandals, he always managed to slip past relying on his personal charm and Boy Scout looks. For his 1991 confirmation, influential friends like Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman David Boren, D-Oklahoma, and Boren’s chief of staff George Tenet made sure Gates got the votes he needed.

.....

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During the Clinton years, documents surfaced implicating Gates in questionable actions from the 1980s, but the new evidence got little notice.

For instance, the Russian government sent an extraordinary intelligence report to a House investigative task force in early 1993 stating that Gates had participated in secret contacts with Iranian officials in 1980 to delay release of 52 U.S. hostages then held in Iran, a move that undercut President Carter.

“R Gates, at that time a staffer of the National Security Council in the administration of Jimmy Carter, and former CIA Director George Bush also took part” in a meeting in Paris in October 1980, the classified Russian report said.

.....

Obama, Ask the Kremlin about Gates, Robert Parry, November 25, 2008




And this news, from yesterday, may be serving as a convenient cover for Gates and his generals' intentions toward Iraq:


Pentagon staff writing plan to empty Guantánamo camps, December 18, 2008




Gates is a chameleon, and should be be denied entry into the Obama Administration.




President-Elect Obama, I hope to God that you are paying attention to this. These generals do not have the America's safety and the defense of the US Constitution in mind. And for that, they should be removed.

[judasdisney]

9. Cheney Sleeper Cells

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1118-23.htm