Al Martin: The War-On-Terrorism Scam

The Department of Defense has announced that the US is now going to begin arming and supplying the so-called “anti-Taliban factions.” And I had to laugh because this is the same policy that’s gotten us into trouble before – arming today’s “freedom fighters” who become tomorrow’s “terrorists.” That’s how we created “Osama bin Laden” and now we’re doing it again. We consistently do this under some vain hope that we can control these factions. It never happens. Every faction we have ever armed in the days when they were the “freedom fighters,” later turned around and fought us. The United States fails to appreciate the fact that this is an area with over two hundred factions, all of whom are hostile to each other, none of whom have been able to make an alliance stick for more than three minutes. We’re now arming the same groups of people we had formerly declared to be “terrorists,” those who had been fighting with Russia in Chechnya. But now they’re our “friends,” so we’re going to arm them. Then when they become a problem (next week), we’ll spend another billion dollars of American taxpayers’ money to go after them -- after we’ve equipped them with our weapons.

The agenda is to keep the whole “intelligence game” and the whole Military-Industrial Complex going. You arm today’s “friends,” knowing full well that they’re going to be tomorrow’s “enemies.” So you’re going to have to spend billions more in defense expenditures to go after the very same people the American taxpayers have already paid for. It’s a never-ending cycle. Attorney General John Ashcroft has finally admitted that the Department of Justice is not maintaining any centralized records of the people that the United States is currently detaining. (See previous column on “detainees” http://www.almartinraw.com/column43.html After the ACLU filed a lawsuit to try to force the Bush Administration to disclose the names and whereabouts of the people that are being held, Ashcroft admitted that the Department of Justice was purposely not maintaining any centralized records, and that in fact he didn’t know how many people were being held or how they were being held. Senator Patrick Leahy told him that “You’re the attorney general and you are supposed to know where detainees are being held.” At that point, Ashcroft admitted, “I have no idea.”

Then Ashcroft held up a notebook in a zip-locked baggy that was supposedly seized from Osama bin Laden’s hideout. He held it up and said. “Here is further proof of Osama bin Laden’s involvement.” And Senator Leahy asked him, “How do we know this is further proof, since you won’t allow any members of Congress to look at it?”

Leahy then pointed out that when the Department of Justice first started to leak information to the British about Osama bin Laden’s capability. The British put it out, but then they couldn’t back it up because they weren’t given enough information. Then Leahy accused Ashcroft, the new Gauleiter of the Beltway, of not presenting the American people one shred of evidence linking Osama bin Laden and all his supposed confederates to the World Trade Center bombing. It got his gander up, and Ashcroft said that “the United States Government isn’t going to compromise any potential prosecution.” That was after Leahy got his anthrax envelope, of course. They irradiated it and decided not to open it.

Isn’t it funny to note that Leahy got his anthrax envelope and Senator Daschle got one too? All of the most powerful Democrats, the committee chairmen, are the only ones who seem to be getting these things. There aren’t any Republicans that get them. (After his comments, however, Dan Burton might be the first one.)

By the way, the Republicans have stated that they will be taking weekends off until the end of the congressional session -- despite the hearings and legislation that they want to get passed. Congressman Charles Rangel pointed out that they want to force the Democrats to chair these committees. Later on, the Bush Administration can say that during these investigations, of course, they were conducted by Democrats. And that is the aim of the administration -- to be able to blame it on “Democratically controlled committees,” despite the fact that the committees are actually Republican controlled.

Blackhawk Down Again… For the Umpteenth Time

Another Blackhawk helicopter has crashed in Afghanistan, the third crash in recent months. Eighteen people were killed, including very senior members and commanders of the Northern Alliance. The general who’s in charge said that from now on that he has informed Secretary Rumsfeld that henceforth he will only use Russian helicopters for his own transportation. He also pointed out that the only American casualties in this war thus far have been due to the crashes of three Blackhawk helicopters, as well as the mistaken “friendly fire” bombing.

The general of the Northern Alliancealsopointed out that though the American media has said that the US has taken 24 casualties in this campaign so far, none of them have been due to the Taliban. These casualties have not been in the field. They have taken place either due to American bombing mistakes or faulty equipment that caused the helicopters to crash (See previous column on US military spare parts scam http://www.almartinraw.com.column37.html)

The media called the previous mistake “an errant bomb,” as if it didn’t know where to fall. The bomb in question was not truly a “smart bomb.” It was a two thousand pound old conventional iron bomb that had been fitted with a JDM-31 guidance device, which is a laser guidance device to make old munitions “smart.” The problem with them is that they don’t work. This isn’t the first time that the media has reported the failure of a JDM-31 conversion kit. They’re supposedly made by Honeywell, but they’re actually made by some shadowy offshore company controlled by the Chinese Army.

And what nobody is pointing out in all this (and this is what gets me) is that the problem with the spare parts for the helicopters which keeps them grounded or crashing is that the spare parts are made by offshore companies often controlled by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

What vested interest would China (a country which maintains an openly hostile military posture toward the United States) have to make spare parts, which actually work for a potential enemy? Why isn’t anyone pointing this out?

From the “Terrorist” Front

Last week it was reported that one of the huge food shipments full of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), weighing 1200 pounds, was dropped on some poor Afghan villager’s adobe hut – and killed two people inside. Then I thought to myself – we’re even killing the people we’re trying to feed.

What they do is they eat the little biscuits, then they try to feed the rest of them to their animals -- but the camels and the goats refuse to eat them.

Then when the children of the American soldiers ask, “What did you do in the war, daddy?” they can read the Al Martin Raw columns and find out that they dropped 1200 pounds of mush on adobe shacks and killed people, trying to feed them. That’s called trying to ram the food down their throats. We’ll feed you, even if we have to smash your houses. The Afghans don’t even know what saltine crackers are.

Rumsfeld also admitted that the problem they’ve been having in dropping all these MRE’s. Only half of them are actually getting to hungry Afghans. The other half are being collected by these tribal chieftains, then being sold on the black market in Afghanistan. Also the State Department has announced that, because of our incursion in Afghanistan, we have created another two million Afghan refugees -- in addition to the million that already existed. The State Department has issued an urgent alert that one and a half million of them are close to starvation because we have no mechanism to feed them and all the food we give them is being siphoned off by “sympathetic tribal chieftains.” These are the ones who have huge flows of money going into their Swiss bank accounts, and we never even bother to touch it. The State Department actually said it will require “fresh billions” of the American taxpayers’ money to prevent massive starvation in Afghanistan this winter.

In the meantime, half of all the food we’ve shipped over there has been stolen, and we’ve allowed the theft to happen because it’s being stolen by tribal chieftains who are “anti-Taliban” and “pro-American,” but they’re really not. The only thing they’re interested in is getting as much American materiel that they can resell on the black market.

This policy is so ludicrous. We spend billions trying to get Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Then we spend billions more surreptitiously in arming these various factions, then billions more in bringing in food supplies, half of which are stolen and we don’t do anything about it because it’s being stolen by our “friends.” Then we’ll spend billions more trying to keep alive the refugees our original policy created. And it’s all to keep “the game” going.

The Latest ABM Scam

Now that they have the ABM (Anti Ballistic Missile) System up to a 40% operating success rate, the Bush Administration feels fully justified into going into a full, $200 billion production scheme. That is the average for all the missiles that we have in our inventory. Insofar as 40% is the average successful operational rate is 40%, then 40% becomes 100%.

We have already wasted over a trillion dollars in the last 26 years in research and development on this ABM system – and still can’t get it to work.

Imagine – a trillion dollars to build a missile system up to a 40% success rate –and now were going to spend another 200 billion.

As General Downing said, if 40% of the systems work, we only have to fire two and a half times as many missiles to do the job that one missile is supposed to do. That‘s the Department of Defense’s mathematics.

Scams Make the World Go Round

The new special agent in charge of the Huntsville, Alabama FBI satellite office is a guy named Red. He’s 5 feet 8 inches tall and 5 feet 8 inches around. He weighs about 320 pounds. And he’s as chrome dome as you can get. He wears all kinds of hats all the time to hide the fact that he’s a chrome dome. Every morning he goes out to Denny’s for breakfast. He has two Grand Slams. Evidently the Huntsville satellite office is becoming the new FBI punishment field office. If you screw up somewhere else, you get sent to Huntsville. It’s becoming what the Provo, Utah office used to be. Red evidently mouthed off to the wrong people in Washington -- and he can’t wait to get out. He says he doesn’t care if they put him at the North Pole, because anything’s better than being assigned to the Huntsville office.

Every incident like the World Trade Center bombing brings out the scamscateers. One of the scams is a group of ex-Navy Seal retired guys and ex-Special Forces commando types who have formed some sort of company in Huntsville seeking investors to go after Osama bin Laden. It’s $2,500 per unit to get your piece of the $25 million reward. These guys are saying they have the expertise, but we have to buy the “right sophisticated electronics” and to bribe the right people in Afghanistan, so it’s almost like an illegal limited partnership in a way - or like a “bounty syndicate.” Of course, these guys have no intention of going to get Osama bin Laden. It’s a complete scam, but they’re targeting retired veterans in Florida, Alabama, and Georgia. Not only are you in an investment for a shot at a hundred to one return, but you’re being “patriotic” at the same time. The FBI figures they’ve probably taken in at least a half a million dollars already. So far the FBI has identified 110 victims of this scam, but they suspect there are many more.

The FBI guy’s attitude, however, is that anybody who gets suckered into this deal deserves to lose their money.

The second scam relates to the food dropped in Afghanistan. Only half has gotten to the people. The tribal chieftains take the other half and since they maintain their own websites under fraudulent corporate names, they’ve been selling the MRE’s back to survivalist food outlets in the United States for twenty-five cents on the dollar. All you have to do is wire the money to their Swiss bank accounts and they’ll make delivery. They’re also letting their customers know that as soon as they sucker weapons out of the US armed forces under the guise of being their allies, all that stuff will also be coming on the market.

The FBI evidently saw some of these websites from Afghanistan with pictures of sophisticated weapons systems. These are pictures of weapons that the tribal chieftains expect to be given to them in exchange for their “loyalty” and support. It’s a pre-sale promotion in anticipation of a scam. The scam hasn’t even taken place yet.

These Afghans are very sharp and adroit businessmen. They walk around in rags, but most of them are every well educated. They hold masters degrees in business and they know how to commit a good scam. They’re just looking at the US Government as a mark.

This entire “war on terrorism” is such a scam. Of course, the Department of Defense is going to be arming these groups. Then billions more will be used to prop up a government we know can’t possibly stay in existence for very long. It’s depending on the military support of so-called “friendly” terrorist groups, who will be taking the weapons we’re giving them and selling them out the back door. And they’ve already scammed us out of at least $20 million in food.

For every billion dollars spent, we create a future contingent liability of two billion dollars that American taxpayers will have to pay. But this is just FAU. That’s Fraud as Usual.

AL MARTIN FOR PRAVDA.RU

AL MARTIN is America’s foremost whistle-blower on government fraud and corruption. A retired US Navy Lt. Commander and former officer in the Office of Naval Intelligence, he has testified before Congress (the Kerry Committee and the Alexander Committee) regarding Iran-Contra. Al Martin is the author of “The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran Contra Insider” (2001, National Liberty Press, $19.95; order line: 1-866-317-1390) He lives at an undisclosed location, since the criminals named in his book have been returned to national power and prominence. His column “Behind the Scenes in the Beltway” is published regularly on Al Martin Raw: Criminal Govt. Conspiracy (: http://www.almartinraw.com)