What should Wikileaks leak NEXT?

Assuming they had access to everything, what would be most vital to the public interest and cutting through the lies and crap from DC?

My top three:

1. every shred of paper from the Cheney Energy Task Force in early 2000. One of the few documents that was released in response to a FOIA request was a map of Iraq's oil fields divided up and a list of foreign suitors for those fields. What role did this play not only in our Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but seeking bases and political machinations in Central Asia, where we are trying to wrestle the Caspian pipeline business away from Russia. Did they do this solely for the benefit of oil and energy companies, or out of a misguided sense of seeking energy security? Were there dissenting voices in the military and foreign policy establishment that said this would make a LESS secure world since Russia and China might not like us having that degree of hegemony?
   
   
2. The Saudi pages Bush classified in a panic in the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 Report. It is already a matter of public record that we were attacked by terrorists given logistical help by an agent of our ally Saudi Arabia, who also funneled money to the terrorist and was in constant phone contact with their embassy and consulate before the attack. The piece that is missing is why they would do that and why the Bush administration didn't even skip a heartbeat before defending and embracing them.
   
   
3. Likewise, why did our government initially ignore the documented financial help and direction Pakistan gave to al Qaeda and the Taliban, including evacuating key leaders from Tora Bora? In the last couple of years, they seem to be noticing, though the most damning evidence was available immediately after 9/11. What was the reason for the selective outrage? or more importantly, why the long delay before the outrage? What other issues did we have with Pakistan then and now that would explain it?
   
   OK, I lied. A fourth I'd like to see:
   
   
4. Has the Pentagon done an assessment of the security threat Wall Street's shorting of other countries economies and/or how the gutting of our industrial base have created? Are they monitoring the threat and have they prepared contingency plans to neutralize it?

There's probably a whole lot that could be asked on the domestic front as well, but I'm curious to hear what other's want leaked.

100,000 troops to chase 100 al Qaeda members in Afghanistan and 300 in Pakistan?

The Washington Post reported that there are 100 members of al Qaeda left in Afghanistan and about 300 in Pakistan. With Obama's troop increase to about 100,000, that will be 1,000 troops per terrorist in Afghanistan or 250 per terrorist in all of the ''AfPak'' theater.

I don't think Obama is stupid enough to believe Fox News that these guys are supermen who could punch through the concrete walls or eat the steel bars of a supermax prison like licorice or take over an airplane while handcuffed so they have to be blindfolded, stripped naked and sodomized during flights to keep them under control.

Does someone want to tell me with a straight face that we are occupying Afghanistan to prevent or punish terrorism? The Taliban are a bunch of illiterate hillbillies that have no capability to harm our troops if we don't go to them, and the rump of al Qaeda would probably need at most special forces and some predator drones to clean up--or simply tell the Saudis to stop giving them money and it won't matter how many are left. They wouldn't be able to buy a bus ticket, let alone a plane ticket to get over here.

Wouldn't it be nice if Obama told us the truth?

Afghanistan sits on a historic trade route from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean and the rest of the world. A few hundred years ago, that route carried spices, cloth, and opium. Today in addition to the income from heroin, oil and natural gas pipelines could flow through those same passes from the Caspian Sea basin as even Colin Powell's former chief of staff confirms. If we can pacify and stabilize Afghanistan, American and European companies could profit from that flow. Would the petroleum that went to the end of that pipeline end up in Europe and America? Maybe some. Most would go the emerging markets of China and India.

Would the income from those pipelines make it to the pockets of average Americans?

Sure. Didn't you get your thank you check from ExxonMobil for their new contracts in Iraq?

If we fail in Afghanistan, the oil & gas will still make it to market through a competing Iranian pipeline project which will end in Pakistan just like the US planned one through Afghanistan. Pakistan's initial agreement on the Iran pipeline is probably why we suddenly noticed terrorists there after years of ignoring their presence and their governments support of them, including Pakistan helping top al Qaeda leaders out of Tora Bora in 2001.

When Obama makes his pitch for more troops in Afghanistan, he could come clean with the American about why we are there, but if he doesn't it will be further proof that he doesn't work for us, but instead works for at least defers to the same handful of business interests that got our economy and foreign policy into its current mess.

War on Terror shift to Pakistan over Iran Pipeline

I was puzzled why, after years of doing our bidding in the War on Terror, Pakistan suddenly was recognized as a haven of terrorists that must be dealt with--even though the same extremist groups had been there all along, often acting with the blessing and support of Pakistani intelligence, and tacitly the US.

I had a fleeting hope that Obama was actually going to end the War on Terror by extinguishing the relatively small terrorist groups that might be motivated to launch 9/11 type attacks against us, dig up the body of bin Laden, do the DNA tests, declare him dead, and thereby end the remaining public support for the War on Terror.

I should have known that was too much to hope for since Obama never addressed the real reasons for our invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan.

Iraq has tens of trillions of dollars worth of easy extracted oil, but no contracts with American companies before the war. One of our goals in the Iraq War was to force them to give up 88% of their oil income to oil companies as stated in a Bush sponsored Hydrocarbon Law. For comparison, the Saudis, only give up about half. Despite Bush and members of both parties in Washington strong-arming Iraqis to pass it, they could only get the Iraqi cabinet to pass it, never the whole parliament--even when the oil companies offered millions in bribes to each member.

Similarly, energy companies courted the Taliban for a pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to take natural gas to India but gave up in frustration shortly before 9/11. In 2006, India was concerned about continuing the project until America gave assurances that we would protect the pipeline. Those assurances were repeated in 2008. (Thanks to chill_wind at DU, who provided another good background link on the pipeline)

The Pakistan link of the pipeline route seemed to be in place--until IRAN proposed an alternative to the Afghanistan route that ran from Iran to Pakistan to India instead. And Pakistan accepted the offer:

Perhaps the most convenient distraction of the entire War on Terror has been the fact that war makes privatization easier. Energy economist John Foster notes how the focus on national security masks a critical motive of the AfPak war: “Rivalry for pipeline routes and energy resources reflects competition for power and control in the region.”

One such route is the massive Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-India-Pakistan pipeline, which would transport 30 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year. Meanwhile, Iran is planning an alternative pipeline through Pakistan and India, to which Pakistan has agreed to in principle.

(from Vancouver, BC's Straight.com)

What is the US response to losing this game of geopolitical chess? Patrick Clawson, Deputy Director for Research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said:

Washington fears the pipeline will reduce the West's economic leverage over Tehran - economic leverage that is necessary to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

(from Voice of America)

The only thing I disagree with in that quote is that Washington probably doesn't want the economic leverage to make Iran drop their nuclear program, but instead wants Iran to drop their nuclear program so that the US has the full range of options to coerce Iran to conform to our oil & gas companies business interests.

The real decision-makers in Washington have no concern about nuclear proliferation. If they did, they would bomb or invade North Korea every time they did a nuclear test or launched a missile over Japan.

The real decision-makers in Washington have no concern about terrorism. If they did, they would have gone after the country that the FBI found sent one of their intelligence agents to pick up two of the hijackers at the Los Angeles airport, set them up in an apartment, and then funneled money to them from the their ambassador's wife until 9/11. The Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 also found this country same country involved in the attack: Saudi Arabia.

Business interests dictate foreign policy. If you want to find out how much, read the Pulitzer Prize winning history of oil, THE PRIZE by Daniel Yergin. When oil companies want something, they don't ask senators and presidents for favors, they give orders. You might also read OVERTHROW by Steven Kinzer on why the US overthrew various other countries governments, including the secular, democratically elected one in Iran in 1953.

Business uses our state department and military to coerce deals with other countries because it costs them next nothing. They make a tens of million dollars of political donations and reap hundreds of billions in profit when the politicians follow their orders and cook up a war. And we don't present them with a bill for the military action or get a cut of the profits from the oil or land we stole for them.

Worst of all though is that our elected leaders don't talk honestly about any of this with the public and instead misplace blame for events like 9/11 and make up embarrassingly juvenile fairy tales about an "Islamofascist" menace from countries that have no ability invade or hold territory in the United States, and no technology equal to ours unless we sell it to them. To the extent that we are not let in on the real debate, we do not have a real democracy.

Our Afghan War for Pipeline & Poppy Fields

"There is only one thing in this world, and that is to keep acquiring money and more money, power and more power. All the rest is meaningless."

Napoleon Bonaparte

Former Senator Fritz Hollings wrote a piece for the Huffington Post asking why we are still in Afghanistan since our wars are producing more terrorists than they kill. He started off well, but sidestepped the geopolitic grown up talk that America never had about why we killed a million Iraqis and why we are still in Afghanistan.

It certainly has nothing to do with threats to our security. If that was the case, we would have invaded North Korea after they fired missiles over Japan.

And it has nothing to do with 9/11 since al Qaeda was financed and given logistical support by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the latter going as far as evacuating top al Qaeda leaders from Tora Bora when we had them cornered there.

If we didn't go after those two nations, it's hard to believe that having our troops in Afghanistan has anything to do with 9/11.

Instead, it is more likely we are in Afghanistan because someone thinks they can make a lot of money there, from the Trans Afghanistan Pipeline and so Wall Street can continue to collect the income from the Heroin poppies, just as the British did when they tried to force Afghan opium on the Chinese way back in the Opium War, and just as Bush was trying to force oil laws favorable to oil companies on Iraq, so they could collect up to 88% of the income from Iraq's tens of trillion of dollars worth of oil.

Energy companies courted the Taliban for a pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to take natural gas to India but gave up in frustration shortly before 9/11. In 2006, India was concerned about continuing the project until America gave assurances that we would protect the pipeline.

UPDATE: Those assurances were repeated in 2008.
(Thanks to chill_wind at DU, who provided another good background link on pipeline)

The drug story is even less well-known, though the New York Times did cover the story of the Afghan president's brother being one of the largest drug smugglers in the country.

When Britain controlled Afghanistan, they owned the poppy trade. When the French owned Indochina, they owned the poppy trade there. Once we allied with the fundamentalists in Afghanistan in the 80's, drugs started flowing out of there, through Pakistan, and to the US. Do you suppose our leaders and business people are so pure they aren't getting a cut of that?

Wall Street has a bad habit of covering up their incompetence as businessmen with drug money.
The BCCI money laundering scandal involved some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country, profiting from drug trafficking and handling money for terrorists. The New York Times and even PBS has even covered this drug money laundering business, and if you googled the name of your favorite big bank, you would more likely than not find they have been involved.

UPDATE: UN says drug money keeping banks afloat in financial crisis.
(Thanks to RubyGal at DailyKos for link)

John Kerry has documented CIA drug dealing, confirming the work of San Jose Mercury News Reporter, Gary Webb's uncovering of the Contras selling cocaine that flooded America's inner cities. The CIA itself has an odd history of picking a fair number of directors who came not from the intelligence community but from Wall Street or corporations. Like corporate lawyer John Foster Dulles or oil man George HW Bush. So it would make sense that the agency is looking after business more than our security.

It is about money. I appreciate Hollings asking the question, but he should have provided part of the real answer too.

And I guess it would be too much to ask that our new president set aside the propaganda bullshit about our various military operations, tell us who profits from them, and what if anything the average American gets out of them, so we could make an informed decision about whether to support killing people in dirt huts with our troops and our tax dollars, and nineteen and twenty year old American kids coming home in aluminum coffins.

UPDATES:

confirmation in Toronto Star

Iran out-manuevers US on pipeline through Pakistan

November 2009 updates:

Recently, Ron Reagan had a former CIA agent on his show who said the CIA controls 90% of the heroin trade.

A couple of respectable investigative reporters have followed up on this, Chris Hedges and David Lindorff.

McClellan tells one last lie for Bush: Iraq War for Democracy

Although Scott McClellan's book is unflattering toward the Bush administration in general and Bush in particular, he does Bush a gigantic favor by still telling a crucial lie: that the Iraq War was at least in part to spread democracy in the Middle East.

This would make Bush at worst an impractical idealist.

In reality, his actions and those of his administration show he had no intentions of spreading democracy to the Middle East--or even to Iraq.

As little as 1% of Iraqis feel safer because we are there and overwhelming majorities want us to leave.

But Bush stays.

He did eventually have elections in Iraq, but not until after his appointed colonial ruler, Paul Bremer privatized their economy and made other sweeping changes that the Iraqis are not allowed to tamper with.

When the Iraqi parliament chose a prime minister Bush didn't like, he told them to pick again.

When Iraqis wouldn't pass an oil law that gives up to 88% of their oil wealth to American big oil companies, Bush threatened to fire their prime minister if it didn't pass. Since that didn't do the trick, the oil companies offered each legislator up to $5 million to pass the law, they refused, choosing to represent the will of their people, but I don't remember reading about Bush protesting that attempt at corrupting their fledgling democracy.

Bush also continues to blame Iran and Syria for the violence in Iraq, ignoring statements from Iraq's prime minister to the contrary.

Bush has made even less effort to act on his democratic statements elsewhere in the Middle East.

He supported democracy in Lebanon and the occupied territories of Palestine, but only until he didn't like the outcome--it isn't democracy if the government doesn't obey Bush.

Before the Iraq War, when bribes wouldn't work on our democratic ally Turkey, neocon gargoyle Paul Wolfowitz said the military should have played a "strong leadership role" to make them join us. This not only offended the Turkish legislature, it offended the Turkish military, who had more respect for democracy than the Bushie Wolfowitz. In fairness, Wolfowitz showed a similar disregard for American democracy when he admitted on two separate occasion that the Iraq War was about oil and the talk of WMD was for "bureaucratic reasons." The only reason to lie was to keep the public from making a knowledgeable decision, which castrates democracy.

It's an understandable mistake on the Bushies part given how cozy they are with Pakistan's military dictator, Pervez Musharaf, who overthrew his country's democratically-elected civilian government. The Bushies didn't mind his cozy relationship with the Taliban and al Qaeda either. He helped both escape from Tora Bora, and Pakistani intelligence helped Daniel Pearl make his appointment with the terrorists who eventually beheaded him. One of the kidnappers' demands was for the delivery of several F-16 fighter jets bought by Pakistan from the US. That sounds like someone trying to do Musharaf a favor, rather than undermine him.

Bush's closest ally in the region Saudi Arabia, doesn't even make a pretense of democracy. It is a kingdom with no freedom of speech, assembly, or elected government. It also supported the 9/11 hijackers and sends more foreign fighters into Iraq than any other country. None of which seems to bother Bush.

In all, Bush's lies about spreading democracy should be considered as discredited as thoroughly as the ones about Saddam having WMD and planning to give them to bin Laden.

The press and Democrats in Congress fail to knock down this last lie because it might make citizens finally demand a discussion of the real reason for the war, control of tens of trillions of dollars worth of Iraq's oil, not for the good of the average American, but to pad the bottom lines of a handful of corporations, by letting them control the flow to set the price HIGH.

OIL THEFT MOTIVE FOR IRAQ WAR RESOURCES

Biden's pathetically small nod to reality won't end the war

Many anti-war blogs and websites are praising Sen. Joe Biden for asking the ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, whether there was more al Qaeda in Iraq or Afghanistan, and therefore which location is it more important to eliminate them. Crocker was forced to acknowledge that 2+2=4, that al Qaeda is more concentrated on the Afghan Pakistan border.

Big fucking deal.

What a pathetic, pyrrhic victory.

Until he and other Democratic "leaders" in Congress hits big oil’s role in pushing for war & Iraq Oil Theft Law, he is just another worthless hack, pointing out an internal flaw in the Bush propaganda that any fifth grader with decent short term memory could have identified.

Biden is pushing for the division of Iraq on ethnic lines, something the vast majority of Iraqis don’t want, and when given a chance to attack the hydrocarbon law Bush is forcing on the Iraqis that gives 88% of their oil income to big oil companies, Biden either feigned ignorance or actually believed the talking points of the Bushies about the oil law that he mindlessly repeated, about the oil law dividing revenue between ethnic groups, which in reality is only a scant few lines in a document tens of pages long.

Iraqis are not fooled by this bullshit. Even the Bush-approved Iraqi parliament is afraid to pass the Hydrocarbon Law because they know they could never walk freely among Iraqis if they did. Big oil has gone to the extent of trying to BRIBE Iraqi PMs to pass the law and they still won't do it.

Despite the news blackout of how big oil lobbied for and plans to profit from the Iraq war, most Americans know the war is about oil. Our elected representatives insult our intelligence when they keep debating the war in terms of fighting terrorism and spreading democracy, neither of which are helped by killing a million Iraqis and thousands of our troops.

To their credit, the British parliament has had an open debate about the role big oil has played and is playing in the Iraq War.

It is a stain on our democracy that no such debate has occurred here, and that we are left applauding when a piece of moral filth like Joe Biden points out a mistake the equivalent of saying Santa Claus lives at the South Pole instead of the North.

By making token efforts at criticizing the war without pulling the pants down on the true motives, Democrats allow the war costing so many of our tax dollars and lives will continue.

Bush's Saudi coddling blocked loose nuke probe

Just as Bush went after Saddam on a drip of evidence of supporting of Al Qaeda while blocking the investigation of a fire hose of Saudi support, he did the same thing with nuclear proliferation. We had to invade Iraq because Saddam MIGHT make nukes that he MIGHT give or sell to terrorists or rogue nations. By contrast, Pakistan was already doing both. And Bush's protection of the Saudis blocked the investigation of their funding of the Pakistani nuke program, as BBC reporter Greg Palast points out. Palast deserves a place in American history for his reporting on the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of black voters in Florida that our media ignored. He performs an equally important service for us here.

At some point, it has to become clear that these guys have no interest in fighting terrorism, but rather in keeping it an open wound that they can use to justify their hostile takeovers (wars) of oil producing countries.

KEY EXCERPTS:

SEPTEMBER 11: WHAT YOU "OUGHT NOT TO KNOW"
DOCUMENT 199-I AND THE FBI'S WORDS TO CHILL THE SOUL

Thursday, September 9, 2004
by Greg Palast

On November 9, 2001, when you could still choke on the dust in the air near Ground Zero, BBC Television received a call in London from a top-level US intelligence agent. He was not happy. Shortly after George W. Bush took office, he told us reluctantly, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the FBI, "were told to back off the Saudis."

We knew that. In the newsroom, we had a document already in hand, marked, "SECRET" across the top and "199-I" - meaning this was a national security matter.

The secret memo released agents to hunt down two member of the bin Laden family operating a "suspected terrorist organization" in the USA. It was dated September 13, 2001 -- two days too late for too many. What the memo indicates, corroborated by other sources, was that the agents had long wanted to question these characters ... but could not until after the attack. By that time, these bin Laden birds had flown their American nest.

Back to the high-level agent. I pressed him to tell me exactly which investigations were spiked. None of this interview dance was easy, requiring switching to untraceable phones. Ultimately, the insider said, "Khan Labs." At the time, our intelligence agencies were on the trail of Pakistan's Dr. Strangelove, A.Q. Khan, who built Pakistan's bomb and was selling its secrets to the Libyans. But once Bush and Condoleeza Rice's team took over, the source told us, agents were forced to let a hot trail go cold. Specifically, there were limits on tracing the Saudi money behind this "Islamic bomb."


FULL TEXT