January 26, 2005


Now that the Strategic Support Branch (SSB) is out in the open and its existence more or less admitted by the Pentagon, we are told that it was not Rumsfeld’s intention to usurp the functions of the CIA—most notoriously rigging elections, overthrowing democratically elected governments, assassinating foreign leaders, and supporting thugs and fascists around the world—but instead SSB "was developed in cooperation with the CIA," officials told Voice of America, "not in competition with it." ( http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-01-25-voa77.cfm ). Arizona Republican John McCain told CBS’s "Face the Nation" that the creation of the SSB is "a product of the frustration with the CIA of a failure to have decent human intelligence."

I don’t know about you, but I feel so much better after this clarification.

Sarcasm aside, this declaration is almost less than useless. As we now know, or should if we pay attention, Porter Goss, the first partisan head of the CIA since Dubya’s father ran the agency, was specifically tasked with making sure CIA employees are loyal Bush and Strausscon apparatchiks, ferreting out malcontents who spilled the beans on Rumsfeld’s Office of Special Plans, a lie factory set up by the Strausscons to invent all manner of pretexts in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Rumsfeld’s Office of Special Plans, according to Karen Kwiatkowski, a specialist on the Middle East who worked in the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy in the Pentagon, was a "subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress."

Expect likewise, or worse, with Rummy’s SSB, an idea signed off on by the 9/11 Commission, otherwise known as Bush’s 9/11 Whitewash Commission. In fact, we should expect the SSB to actually create terrorism, as opposed to simply lying about it. In addition to the standard humdrum HUMINT functions, the SSB will (or has and is) engage in "anti-terrorism and counter-terrorism missions," that it say covertly sneak inside countries and kill or kidnap people Bush and Rumsfeld deem terrorists. B.Raman, and excellent source on these sort of shadowy doings, elaborates for the South Asia Analysis Group ( http://www.saag.org/papers13/paper1230.html ):

In Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), the Northern Areas (NA), the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province, Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, and Karachi, the capital of Sindh, the ISI has set up a chain of communication monitoring stations with American money, equipment and technology. Experts from the CIA and the NSA and a small number of SSB personnel of the DIA are attached to these monitoring stations for studying and analyzing their intercepts. Their focus is mainly on bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. If they notice any intelligence on their likely location, the SSB groups are authorised to immediately nab them and fly them out to the US naval base in Diego Garcia. To enable them to do so, helicopters supplied by the US to Pakistan have been kept at key places such as Gilgit, Skardu in Baltistan, Peshawar etc. They are ostensibly under the control of the Pakistan Army, but meant for use by the SSB personnel.

Obviously, so far, they have done a poor job, since both bin Laden and al-Zawahiri remain at large—in fact, Osama is dead, and there is no need to monitor his corpse. On the other hand, this is a perfect example of people spending billions of dollars to create a terrorist menace—as what we now call al-Qaeda was created by the CIA in Afghanistan—and then spend billions more to track down the terrorists and send them off to Diego Garcia, presumably for the cattle prod treatment. Call it job security.

However, as we are now told the CIA and the SSB will be a melding of minds, so to speak—or maybe a Borg assimilation—we can expect the illustrious history of the CIA, supposedly in remission all these years, to continue under the aegis of new contingencies, namely Bush’s Strausscon war on Islam, earmarked to last generations. In fact, the possibilities are nearly limitless, considering the history of CIA covert activities. Imagine an "Armee Clandestine," sort of the type the CIA created in Laos to attack the Pathet Lao, in Iraq and, coming soon (or maybe already arrived) in Iran. Of course, after this failed miserably in Laos, the Pentagon simply resorted to its standard form of brute force—bombing the hell out of the place. Or maybe the new CIA-SSB hybrid will put together an Iraqi version of the "Tonton Macoutes," the Pentagon created thugs in Haiti that eventually killed around 100,000 during the Duvalier family reign. In fact, rumor has it they already have. Then, of course, there was the CIA’s Operation Phoenix, responsible for assassinating around 20,000 Vietnamese for the crime of wanting to run their own country. Once again, there is a rumor Iraq has its own Operation Phoenix, well under way.

Okay, enough is enough. I have spent the last few blog entries writing about the SSB, Rumsfeld’s own personalized version of the CIA. Now we can rest assured that the CIA and the SSB will be one in the same, soon as Porter Goss has finished his job exorcising heretics at the CIA, and the "war on terrorism" will continue unabated with new frightening (although hidden an unaccountable) mechanisms.

Everything is turning up roses for the Strausscons.