October 21, 2015
"General in charge of failed $500 million Syrian rebel program to be promoted to more senior countertenor position."
A damn-you-autocorrect at Instapundit is amusing commenters there (including me).
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47 comments:
Better than contraltoterror.
This fiasco is so spectacular that here must be more to the story. Let us not jump on thegeneral "in charge" just yet. If nothing else, there is no way he could have spent so much money (just that which was actually spent) without a number of other high-ranking officials knowing about it.
Apparently the Syrian Rebel program was a musical.
ha.. what does he know that will end up in a book?
The Left views the military with hostility. They want flunkies like this guy; they don't want warriors like McChrystal, Petraeus, and Mattis.
Better than castrato.
It's not like he can be fired: That would call into question the people who approved the failed mission in the first place.
Did you ever wonder how do they spot a potential tenor at the airport?
With this simple, yet elegant technique.
One agent watches a meter while another sneaks up behind the suspected tenor and grabs 'em between the legs, eliciting an unguarded vocal response in their natural range.
Secretary in charge of arranging weapons transfers to Syrian rebel program to be promoted to more senior elected office.
This is why we can't have nice things.
Didn't Obama want this $500 Mil plan to fail? He now feels vindicated that it did. He was never all in. This guy that failed his way into a promotion delivered Obama what he wanted.
Putin goes in and is immediately having an effect propping up Assad, and damaging ISIS and the Rebels. He doesn't seem to be pussyfooting around. The two leaders couldn't be more opposite, and no matter what the sinister motive on the part of Putin, he's making Obama look like as ass.
At this point it looks like Obama and Kerry are afraid and baffled at how to engage ISIS. Putin's not.
Russell Oberlin is the perfect replacement.
Let the student council try it.
"Didn't Obama want this $500 Mil plan to fail? He now feels vindicated that it did. He was never all in. This guy that failed his way into a promotion delivered Obama what he wanted."
Obama seems to want to do just enough to say he did something, and if things work out (due to his actions or otherwise) he can take credit, and if they don't then he can say he tried. It's about as half-assed a foreign policy as anyone can imagine.
And who exactly are we training over there, and how are we ensuring that we don't provide weapons or other help to the sort of people that will turn on us or our allies next? Bad enough we have enemies, we don't need to spend our tax dollars making them stronger.
Better than castrato.
Tank wins!!
This puts me in mind of Handel's opera Xerxes, based on the career of the would-be conqueror who slaughtered the Spartans at Thermoployae and razed Athens. The title role was written for a soprano castrato, and is today usually sung by a countertenor.
Personally, as much as I admire Handel and the High Baroque generally, I can barely listen to a countertenor, and I cannot stand to watch one.
And who exactly are we training over there, and how are we ensuring that we don't provide weapons or other help to the sort of people that will turn on us or our allies next? Bad enough we have enemies, we don't need to spend our tax dollars making them stronger.
Shhhh! Not so loud, Brando! Do you want to torpedo Hillary's campaign with you idle speculations?
Government: Safe Haven for people who fail upwards.
Mike Nagata's career has a lot more depth than this most recent assignment- he's a career SOF guy who has commanded numerous Special Mission Units everywhere from Somalia to Iraq, and tussled with both Sy Hersh and Jeremy Scahill while he was in Pakistan. Granted, this last mission did not go well, but given the constraints that were on him, it's difficult to put the blame on him.
If the head coach makes Tom Brady run a wishbone offense, he can't later complain that Brady's passing numbers are down- that's just ignorant (to quote Mr. Jefferson).
Auto correct has gone mad. It is like HAL9000 inserting unimaginable word substitutes the moment you dare hit a publishes button. Could this be a Trump effect aimed at humor???
Seriously, this sounds like a Hillary Clinton job. Total waste intentionally.
Bobby,
What if Belichick didn't like football all that much, and maybe wanted everyone to play a new game?
He would call plays piecemeal, invite fans and opposing players to wear his headset, ignore many of his coaches, huddle on the sidelines with a group of young 'experts' and give them inspiring speeches with his megaphone etc.
One of those speeches involved gathering at the 50 yard line, the whole league together, holding hands, trying to come up with fair and equal system for coin flips and turf management.
I still can't believe this arms program cost half a billion dollars.
I mean, somebody besides the terrorists got paid in this deal.
Chris N said...
What if Belichick didn't like football all that much, and maybe wanted everyone to play a new game?
Then he would probably call the sort of trick play that the Colts tried on Sunday.
"Alto!" cried the Spanish border guard. "I don't like the tenor of that," said Tony Soprano. "I just came here for the bass fishing."
The reports are falsetto.
How much of that money went via Benghazi ? I suspect quite a bit. If the ambassador's e-mails ever surface, we might find out.
I suspect that he was put in a "no way could this possibly work" position with this.
A better use for the $500mm would have been as an inducement for Obama bin Biden and all of the senior Obama Administration people to resign and never hold office again. Raise it to $1bn and include all Democrats in Congress as well. Cheap money for the good it would do.
At this point it looks like Obama and Kerry are afraid and baffled at how to engage ISIS.
I don't think they care. And one of many signs they don't, was the flushing of this $500M. Who wound up with that money? The same terrorists they were arming?
Michael K,
Technically speaking, probably none of that $500-million went via Benghazi. STEP (the Syria Train and Equip Program), the DOD program that MG Nagata oversaw, was authorized in 2013 and funded with $500-million for FY15 alone -- long after the Benghazi assassination. Contemporary to Benghazi, any train and equip program for the Syrian rebels (which Amb Chris Stevens may or may not have been involved in, per Internet rumors) would have been funded not under DOD's overt umbrella, but rather covertly, under the umbrella of the intelligence community, and not as part of DOD's $500-million STEP.
The $500-million that everyone is talking about is only a specific (and relatively small) part of the overall assistance being provided to the Syrian rebels- anything that Ground Branch is doing in or for the Syrian rebels is coming out of a completely different pot of money.
Most Generals in the military today are political, not technical experts. It doesn't matter if they can/can't win.
We haven't won anything militarily since we nuked Japan.
Why not just offer up the money to mercenaries and low-level ISIS functionaries, telling them $1 million will be given for each severed head of the most wanted ISIS leaders? It has a better chance of working than training some rebels who claim they are totally just secular freedom fighters who love America and would never, ever install a religious dictatorship and launch terror attacks against us or our allies.
Coupe, 10:43:
I'd disagree on the second count. We've won lots of military victories since we nuked Japan. Translating those victories into won wars has been a recurring problem, but I'm not sure that's properly laid at the feet of generals.
As for the generals, I won't argue that fools never pin on stars, or that there aren't generals who were better politicians than leaders. But there are some very impressive colonels out there, highly accomplished experts with genuinely inspiring leadership qualities, many more than can ever make general. Of course politics is going to be a selection factor.
Brando,
For legal, political and professional reasons, those kinds of activities are undertaken not by the Department of Defense, but by the CIA's Special Activities Division. But covert activities, by definition, are not usually used for domestic political purposes, so when you're relying upon the clandestine service alone- as with, say, 1960 Cuba or Cold War-era sub-Saharan Africa- then it allows the political opposition to denounce you for "not doing enough"... As JFK did to Eisenhower's Nixon in 1960 and numerous Republicans did to President Obama in 2011-12.
"by the CIA's Special Activities Division"
Oh, I agree. I just think that Benghazi was connected with the Syria policy, probably clandestine.
The question in my mind is "What was it ?"
Obama is a very suspicious person around anything to do with the middle east. Assad is now in Moscow, "Unexpectedly !"
Coupe said...
"Most Generals in the military today are political, not technical experts. It doesn't matter if they can/can't win.
We haven't won anything militarily since we nuked Japan."
A lot of people don't understand how political our current Generals are or what General even means. It used to be near on impossible to become a general without being MOS 11B which is infantry. Not so much now and it shows.
Obama has also been carrying out a purge under the radar. He has been using forced retirements and investigations into mishandled TS/SCI information to get generals removed. The rules for handling Secret/Top Secret information are near on impossible to follow and allow much latitude in prosecution. If you want to prosecute them that is.
Brando said...
"Why not just offer up the money to mercenaries and low-level ISIS functionaries, telling them $1 million will be given for each severed head of the most wanted ISIS leaders? It has a better chance of working than training some rebels who claim they are totally just secular freedom fighters who love America and would never, ever install a religious dictatorship and launch terror attacks against us or our allies."
Two reasons. First because it would work, though not because the locals did it. Vets would be forming up companies to take advantage of it.
Second and most importantly this program was a 500,000,000 gift to some political contributor. The Democrat party will get a big chunk of it back in political donations.
"I still can't believe this arms program cost half a billion dollars."
Why not? War is the primary justification and sole means by which military contractors (and related "services") funnel money from the public sphere into the private sphere, from the people's treasure into murderers' treasuries. It's a big con, the longest-running game in Washington. We would have far fewer wars if the few and the loathsome were not enriched by them with wealth and power.
"For legal, political and professional reasons, those kinds of activities are undertaken not by the Department of Defense, but by the CIA's Special Activities Division. But covert activities, by definition, are not usually used for domestic political purposes, so when you're relying upon the clandestine service alone- as with, say, 1960 Cuba or Cold War-era sub-Saharan Africa- then it allows the political opposition to denounce you for "not doing enough"... As JFK did to Eisenhower's Nixon in 1960 and numerous Republicans did to President Obama in 2011-12."
"Two reasons. First because it would work, though not because the locals did it. Vets would be forming up companies to take advantage of it."
So maybe we're already doing this. It certainly sounds more effective than what we're doing publicly. If the problem though is that we cannot have the CIA arrange this due to their covert nature, and this sort of thing had to be public so the mercenaries know about the deal (and know it will be honored) then it shouldn't be too difficult to set up a new agency to handle such things. The Feds use contractors to do almost anything else, they may as well bid out eliminations.
Subject to congressional oversight, of course.
Nagata is a class act. His work with the Stockade crowd and the Orange guys would amaze anyone if it could be talked about.
Cook: "....funnel money from the public sphere into the private sphere, from the people's treasure into murderers' treasuries."
Dude, enough about Planned Parenthood. We're talking about Obama's purposeful failed Syrian policies.
I say purposeful because obama is the smartest, dreamiest president ever (with nice slack creases to boot) and if his policy failed it's because "I meant that!".
Brando,
Well, so there's legal issues involved- for DOD to hire mercenaries, federal law pursuant to Article 47 of Protocol I to the Third Geneva Conventions specifically denies mercenaries the right to be lawful combatants (or, consequently, to be prisoners of war -- not that it would protect anyone captured by ISIS). With respect to hiring locals to assassinate ISIS leadership, it's also against federal law for a US lawful combatant to employ a non-combatant (or unlawful combatant) to fight on the battlefield. So, legally, you're best leaving this to covert operatives over whom the nation has plausible deniability if they're ever exposed.
In terms of professional expertise, with the exception of some elements of the Special Operations community, US military officials are simply not well-versed in the skills that would be required to successfully execute these missions- they're trained to lead US troops to fight and win on the battlefield, and some do so in very specialized ways from processing and shooting artillery to piloting aircraft and dropping bombs, etc. But very few develop the kind of skillset you're talking about, even in the SOF community who do unconventional warfare. On the other hand, the Special Activities Division's Special Operations Group and Political Action Group- whatever you think of their actual abilities- at least train to do this and have individual, institutional and doctrinal experience in carrying it out. Again, better left to the IC than the DOD.
The US is seriously constrained in all this semi-colonial warfare.
It is unable, anymore, to set up a proper colonial army as it did, once, in the Philippines from 1902-1942 - the Philippine Scouts. By 1941 they were the best troops the US Army had, and were used up by mid 1942 as the mainstay of the defense, called on, every time, for every counterattack to restore the line. I figure maybe 20% of them survived the campaign, the Death March and their imprisonment.
And then the Scouts will form to be reviewed
Each scattered unit now once more complete
Each weapon and each bright crisp flag renewed
And high above the cadence of their feet
Will come the load clear virile welcoming shout
From many throats, before the feasts begin.
The badge of honor, midst their comrades rout -
"Make way, make way, the Scouts are moving in."
"To the Philippine Scouts"
Henry G. Lee - Nothing but Praise
No can do, these days. I expect that the skill and talent to create a force such as the Philippine Scouts is still there, somewhere, but the will and confidence aren't. For what its worth, if the US wanted a force of foreign mercenaries it has merely to send a man to Manila and he would find a dozen divisions of volunteers in a week.
The British and French used to do this all all over the place, with great success. Their empires were mainly won and held by native soldiers.
"Obama has also been carrying out a purge under the radar."
Yes, Kennedy and Johnson did much the same. Read "Dereliction of Duty."
And with everything swilling around SOS Clinton will the professor still vote for her?
Maybe?
"... will the professor still vote for her?"
Who knows? Which way will the wind be blowing that day?
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