The Manhunter and the CEO

I. In the past week, Washington’s great game strategy has become just a little bit clearer.  First, President Obama "ended the military career” of Army General David McKiernan, the commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and signed his fate away to a new man, Army Lt. General Stanley McChrystal, a man being described by the mainstream media as a “manhunter.”  McChrystal, who was a close friend of Donald Rumsfeld, headed the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) from 2003 to August 2008.  The JSOC is part of the military “deep state,” preferred as secret-policemen to the intelligence “deep state” by former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.  As a key operator in the “deep state,” McChrystal was part of the secret war waged against Middle Eastern political opponents over the past eight years.

The idea of covert U.S. military operations is not a novel concept, as David Kilcullen, one of the leading advisors to CENTCOM commander David Patreus, has been hoping to rebuild the Phoenix program used in South Vietnam for political assassinations.  In fact, Richard Armitage, an extremely influential voice on regional policy, was heavily involved in the Phoenix program during his military tours in South Vietnam. 

As McChrystal had to go through an extensive Congressional Approval process, grisly details have surfaced of various special-forces missions that have taken place over the past eight years.  Operating in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, the military commando’s have performed nighttime raids and brutal interrogations of political prisoners at Camp Nama in Iraq.  Seymour Hersh is actually sitting on a story right now of special operation troops serving as a global “executive assassination ring” for President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney.  In a world of “extraordinary renditions” and “enhanced interrogation techniques,” none of this should come as a surprise.

McChrystal’s appointment may also be aimed as a political punch, as the Marines Special Operation Command (MarSoc) has been found responsible for much of the recent civilian carnage that has taken place in Afghanistan. They were responsible for calling in the recent devastating air strikes in Bala Baluk, which killed 147 people, most of them civilians.  This massacre caused large-scale protests, and forced puppet Karzai to “demand” that the U.S. military end air strikes, a demand that was promptly not granted by James Jones, who called it “imprudent.”  And now, a special forces expert is directing all military operations in the country, making the air strikes a virtual guarantee.     

Part II to follow.