Invasion of Iraq Trumps War on Terror

The struggle against terrorism was substantially weakened because the Bush administration decided to redirect to the Persian Gulf many intelligence units that had been focused on Al Qaeda and other terrorists in Afghanistan. To this day, there is no certain knowledge about why the US decided to invade Iraq.


The the drive for war with Iraq brought to an end day-to-day intelligence cooperation with Syria, which had strong reasons to work with Washington against Al Qaeda. The US demanded Syrian help with the preparations for war and threatened that country after the successful Second Gulf War. Syria possessed vital information about how Saudi Arabia used the Muslim Brotherhood to assist terrorists. European intelligence experts acknowledged that the US was successful in rounding up many Al Qaeda leaders, but they suggested that US policy had increased the number of Al Qaeda recruits: “There are fewer leaders but more followers.” Al Qaeda and other Muslim terrorist groups were clearly gaining much more support throughout the Islamic world. In a memo leaked in 2003, even Donald Rumsfeld admitted that the US war on terrorism was producing more terrorists than it was killing or rounding up.

The Bush administration did almost nothing to stop the terrorists from “distorting Islam into a new ideology of hate.” The attack on Muslim Iraq fueled the argument that America was launching a crusade against Islam, making Bush and the US effective recruiters for Al Qaeda. In return for Russian support of the American attack on Afghanistan, George W. Bush supported the Russian efforts in Chechnya, calling the Chechens “the killers who came to America.” This pronouncement strengthened Al Qaeda’s case that the US consistently pursued anti-Islamic policies. The US also endorsed China’s long campaign to reduce in numbers the Islamic Uighur ethnic group in western China. Moreover, the US essentially gave Israel a free hand in dealing with Palestinians, particularly in Jenin, Bethlehem, and Rafah. A 2003 Pew poll showed that Moslem hostility to the US was based on US policies rather than on disapproval of US values. Yet the Administration continually insisted that Islamic opposition was based on hatred for the way we live, which discouraged a mature reconsideration of our foreign policies. Hostility to the US became so great in the Islamic world that President Pervez Musharraf, an American ally, told the UN on September 23, 2004, “Action has to be taken before an iron curtain finally descends between the West and the Islamic world.” A pro-Taliban Pakistani senator explained, “The hatred has increased because of the continued anti-Muslim policies of the US leadership.” He claimed, “The basic reason for this growing gap is US policies. The US wants to grab natural resources of the Muslim world by brute power, and the Muslims have become aware of its design.”

First Steps in Going After Saddam
Early in the morning of September 12, 2001, NSC counter terrorism expert Richard Clarke returned to the White House after showering and changing clothes at home. He was surprised to walk “into a series of discussions about Iraq.” He had expected to hear talk about retaliating against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld saw the attack as an excuse to attack Iraq. Secretary Rumsfeld was ready to go against Iraq, saying, “Sweep it all up. Things related, things not.” Wolfowitz did not believe such an act of terror could be without a state sponsor and had previously stated that he adhered to the discredited conspiracy theory that Iraq was behind the first attack on the World Trade Center. Laurie Mylroie of the American Enterprise Institute, who wrote Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein’s Unfinished War Against America, propounded it. The author noted that Wolfowitz and his then wife “provided crucial support.” It was claimed that Iraq was behind almost all the attacks on America in the 90s, and held that the crash of flight 800 in 1996 was the work of Iraqi agents. Likewise, the 1998 attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa were “the work of Bin Laden and Iraq.” After the attacks on 9/11, which involved skilled Iraqi pilots, the remaining Iraqi plotters left the United States. Richard Perle, an important architect of Neo Conservative foreign policy, said the book was “splendid and wholly convincing.” Acceptance of this book by Neo Conservative advisors might explain why President Bush told assistants after 9/11, “I believe that Iraq was involved, but I’m not going to strike them now.” Dr.Mylroie, a Middle East expert, insisted that the real Ramzi Yousef was not being held by federal authorities but was with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. She charged that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the acknowledged designer of the terrorist attacks, was also a secret Iraqi agent. Yousef was really the mastermind of the Muhabarat, Iraqi intelligence, which was considered as competent as the Keystone Cops. His real name was Abdul Rahman Yasin. James Woolsey, former head of the CIA, was dispatched by Wolfowitz to Great Britain where he was to obtain proof that Mohammed Atta, the lead terrorist on 9/11, was working with Iraqi intelligence and involved in the mailing of anthrax to journalists and politicians. To prove his theory, Wolfowitz tried to get Ramzi Ahmed Yousef declared retroactively an “enemy combatant” as late as February 2003. He wanted the prisoner removed to someplace where he could be persuaded to reveal how Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were linked. In 2004, Mylroie complained that Bush was unable to get any intelligence people to investigate the validity of her claims “because of bureaucratic obstructionism.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was proclaiming that he had “bullet proof” evidence that Al Quada was linked to Iraq in the 9/11 attacks.

Later, on September 12, President Bush instructed Clarke to Ago back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked in any way....” He added AI want to know any shred....” During the campaign of 2000, George W. Bush criticized Clinton’s efforts at “nation building “ and said his foreign policy would show considerable humility. He repeatedly talked about removing Saddam Hussein from power, but his words did not convince many that he would soon want to go to war against However, former Secretary of Treasury Paul O’Neill, who had also been a member of the National Security Council, noted that from the first days of the Bush administration, it was clear that the president and his inner circle were determined to bring about regime change in Iraq. In January 2001, the Bush administration was discussing the postwar occupation of Iraq and looking over very specific proposals for dividing up Iraq’s fields. The U.S. had become dangerously dependent upon Saudi oil, and it was necessary to find a suitable counterweight. The Saudis faced serious opposition from Shia opposition in their Eastern Province, and it was suspected that many in its their government were not loyal. Another reason was that America’s allies had become disenchanted with sanctions against Iraq. They were less and less effective, and the time was coming when they would collapse altogether. Invasion made unnecessary a losing fight to prop them up.

Days after 9/11, the Defense Policy Board was convened to consider attacking Iraq. Notice of the meeting was not given to the NSC, CIA, or State Department. James Woolsey’s trip to London was undertaken as part of his responsibilities as a member of the DPB, and the other agencies were not informed about the nature of his mission. Even the Defense Intelligence Agency was left out in the cold, perhaps due to its close ties to the CIA. This would be the beginning of a circle of Neo Conservatives and their allies in the Bush government to see that their policies were followed. It is likely that it was this group that was behind efforts to persuade Chinese military brass to engineer a coup against Kim Jong II. John Bolton, a NeoCon in the Pentagon, openly ridiculed the two Koreas peace process even though his department supported it. Michael Ledeen, friend of NSC chair Richard Perle, renewed ties with Manichur Ghorbanifer to drive a wedge between Iran and Syria even though other elements in the US government wanted to encourage those ties in part because both were working together against Al Qaeda. Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy appears to have been behind these moves. Feith and Wolfowitz worked closely with the Vice President’s office, which was filled with Neo Conservatives who shared their views. Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowsky noted that she witnessed several incidents in which officers were told not to work with their counterparts in other departments and agencies. It is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility, that this tight circle of people shaped policy and brought along President Bush through his ties with Dick Cheney. There is no way to know what role Condoleezza Rice had, other than as an apologist for Bush policies. After the second Iraq war was won, soon became obvious that the Shiites would control the South and that it would be necessary for the US to deal with their sponsor Iran. However, that door had been largely closed.

Oil
There is no certain information about why the United States went to war. One important fact is that there was general agreement that Saddam Hussein could not be relied upon to produce predictable flows of oil. The State Department, interested in controlling Iraq’s OPEC seat, proposed to remedy that with its Walnut Creek strategy. It proposed briefly inserting troops and using force to produce a coup and install a different government under a General Nazir Khazraji then living in Denmark. The Neo Conservatives, centered in the Vice President’s office and the Pentagon insisted on occupying Iraq so that they could privatize Iraqi oil and other business interests. They thought privatization would drive down oil prices, and they expected the new owners to pump far more oil. Their working plan was a document entitled, “Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Sustainable Growth.” In the end they privatized much of the Iraqi economy, but US petroleum interests insisted that the new Iraqi government nominally control the oil. Their rationale was that this would keep OPEC prices high. It was also their intention to curtail Iraqi production in order to boost oil prices.

A Republican columnist remarked that Bush’s circle is " more inbred, secretive, and vindictive than the Mafia.” The testimony of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and Richard Clarke makes it clear the administration was talking about grabbing Iraq’s oil long before 9/11. The so-called Downing Street Memo could also be seen as making this case. It did eventually become clear that either intelligence was misused to sell the war or the intelligence the administration had was just plain wrong. Almost three years after the invasion, a high-ranking CIA official went on the record. Soon after retiring, Paul L. Pilar, formerly national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, said the administration misused the intelligence it had been given. The whole body of intelligence suggested there would be a “messy aftermath” and that going to war was not in the national interest. He dismissed the findings of the Silverman-Robb Commission on whether intelligence had been cooked and the interim report of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Those documents only were concerned with whether there had been the crudest attempts at politicization. There were many subtle pressures, and the administration continually framed questions to get answers it wanted to confirm a policy already decided upon.

The CIA was estimating then that by 2015, 75% of Middle Eastern oil would go to Asia, mainly China. However, Donald Rumsfeld later said, that the war had “nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil.” Even before the war, the Neo Conservatives had a plan in place to sell off Iraq’s oil fields, but that plan ran into problems, including the fears of American firms that it could damage the OPEC price structure. Vice President Cheney’s office came up with a 323-page plan B on behalf of the big oil interests, which is now being implemented. However, in 2003, the American-dominated oil ministry said that almost none of its previous contracts with foreign firms would be honored. In 2005 and 2006, the Iraqis worked out Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) with American firms. Most oil countries avoid PSAs because they hold down the producer’s share of the profits.
Selling the Second Iraq War


Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum

What Next in Bush's Iraq War

There has been at least as much attention focused on Move On’s disrespect for General David Petraeus as upon the consequences of the Republicans recent decision to keep 130,000 troops in Iraq until next July. Now the debate has expanded to The New York Times’s decision to air the Move On advertisement and sell the page at a discount.
So now the chief topic on the public agenda is disrespect for our fighting men plus the old and false tale that the national media has a liberal bias. One thing is clear. Folks on the left have been reminded once more how powerful and efficient the conservative noise machine is, and they should take care not to make foolish mistakes.

But human lives are at stake here, and the nation has just been forced into extending its deadly commitment to policing a raging civil war. Because of t his and the damage the war is doing to the military, more than twenty retired generals have spoken out against Bush’s Iraq policy. They are largely died in the wool Republicans who put country over party. It is likely that cushy consulting jobs and board seats will become less available to them as a result of their honesty.

The truth is that David Petraeus saved Bush’s bacon in the short term. The brainy general, oozing integrity and sincerity, spun limited successes into a picture of progress and bought nine months more for Bush’s war. His PhD. Dissertation was on the lessons of Vietnam, and he concluded that Colin Powell’s “all or nothing approach was wrong. Petraeus is focused on counterinsurgency, and Iraq has become his laboratory. One hopes he does not confuse civil war for insurgency. He has said that the level of violence the Brits faced in Northern Ireland two decades ago would be an acceptable goal in Iraq. Even that would not be acceptable as Iraq in the long term should not be our problem. Republicans tout him as Bush’s Grant, but they should examine his thinking very carefully. He is contemplating a long-term, actively involved presence in Iraq.

It would be helpful if the talking heads and scribes would recall that General Petraeus’s efforts to stabilize Mosul were not long-lasting. He left there in February, 2004, and it was completely in insurgent hands by November. In May 2004, he began training the Iraqi army; it is still ineffective. The most recent Pentagon report says that only 40% of the Iraqi police trained by the coalition are still in place. The report also demonstrated that there was no significant drop in civilian casualties this summer. There was a decline in civilian deaths in Iraq, but most of it became before the surge. About 150 are now wounded or killed each day. Among the casualties are five aids to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani who have been murdered since late August. A member of the parliament reports that violence has escalated in Basra with 100 being shot in the previous week. If this is true, it seems that violence is sharply increasing since the surge. It is reported that several Shiites are about to resign from the Interior ministry because of the breakdown of security in Basra.

More Iraqis than before are telling pollsters that security has worsened in their neighborhoods since the surge began, and 63% of them say the invasion was wrong. So much for the learned general’s testimony--

The slightly improved situation General Petraeus pointed to was based largely on some pretty dicey diplomacy, rather than a consequence of the “surge” in troop strength. In Anbar province, the US bought off Sunni warlords. True, they had come to oppose foreign terrorists because, in the words of David Ignatius, the “al-Qaeda thugs …were marrying their women and blocking their smuggling routes.” Recently Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, architect of the “Anbar Model” was murdered. How long his Anbar Salvation Council’s warlords will stay bought off is anyone’s guess. They must be strongly tempted to use their new weapons to improve their bargaining position visa vis the Shiites, some of whom the US is also busy buying off.

At this moment, the US is dealing with the Supreme [Shiite] Islamic Council and this has made it possible for the Badr Organization militia to at least temporarily check Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, which is now taking 6 months off to reorganize. U.S. involvement in intra-Shiite rivalries will not yield a permanent solution any more than involvement with the Sunni warlords will bring permanent peace to Anbar.

The cholera outbreak in northern Iraq is now spreading to Baghdad, and it may buy the US some time. The US military is reportedly delaying chlorine shipments from Jordan, and the Sunnis are bombing chlorine trucks. Without chlorine, water will not be purified and the outbreak will spread. This could help dampen the civil war for a time

Diplomacy and the spread of cholera have bought some time, we can only hope it is used to extricate US soldiers from the daily policing of Iraq and involvement in the civil war set off by Bush’s invasion. By any accounting, there is not a great deal of time left to adopt a policy that will protect American lives, deal with common concerns about our national interest in the region.

Four factors suggest that the U.S. must change course long before July, 2008.

(1) There are signs of even greater political instability in Iraq. Tariq al-Hashimi, the Sunni vice president of Iraq, says there is a growing movement for a vote of no confidence in the al-Maliki government. As much as the U.S. is dissatisfied with al-Maliki, his fall might well bring greater intra-Iraqi hostility. A few days ago, two members of the Allawi coalition have withdrawn. The ruling coalition has lost the support of the Al-Sadr Trend. That bloc was created in 2004 by Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Efforts are being made to bring Al-Sadr into a new fundamentalist Shiite bloc, but he would have to be offered more to gain his cooperation. That does not bode well for U.S. policy. There were reports that al-Maiiki was quietly negotiating for support from the Baathist. Prospects for political stability are not improving.


(2) There is growing evidence that Iranian arms are getting into the Iraqi black market via Peshmerga, the Kurdish paramilitary. If the firmer is true, look for a higher level of hostilities between Shiites and Sunnis, which can only help the Kurds gain even more independence. This also suggests that the U.S. authorities either lack a good handle on how Iranian arms are getting into Iraq or that they have been lying to us. Maybe it is both. US authorities are now investigating Blackwater mercenaries accused of selling weapons on the Iraqi black market. If Mitt Romney becomes president, the US will probably look the other way on Blackwater abuses. His antiterrorism advisor and national security advisor is Cofer Black of Blackwater.

(3) It is only a matter of months before the Pentagon cannot sustain anything approaching current troop levels much longer. The Pentagon is now paying Special Forces troops an annual $20,000 bonus for reenlisting for four years. There are reports that some airmen and sailors have been given weapons and duties as troops on the ground. The number of mercenaries such as Blackwater operatives is close to the number of troops there. However, Blackwater operatives have been denounced by the Iraqi government for reckless shooting of civilians. The Iraqi Interior Ministry is investigating seven incidents involving Blackwater in as many months. Heavy reliance upon these mercenaries may prove to have been a great mistake. What happens if the Iraqis get serious about removing Blackwater troops from their country?

(4) According to analyst Barnett Rubin, “ The Bush-Cheney administration has surrendered much of Afghanistan to the Taliban and much of Pakistan to al-Qaida.” NATO countries are not meeting their troop quotas there and Al Qaeda is gaining ground. The adventure in Iraq has damaged US efforts in Afghanistan almost from the outset.

If those who set the agenda for national discussion can divert their attention from the Move On debate, they might also begin a serious discussion of what our national interest is in the area.

That national interest is largely about oil, but don’t expect the word “oil” to pass the lips of politicians. The need to control the level of Iraqi oil production and flow of oil is very important. Alan Greenspan has mentioned this, but then found it necessary to back-peddle. In discussing the possible attack on Iran, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in The Washington Post:

An Iran that practices subversion and seeks regional hegemony - which appears to be the current trend - must be faced with lines it will not be permitted to cross. The industrial nations cannot accept radical forces dominating a region on which their economies depend.

Americans should not expect to benefit from this ability to control the flow of oil in the short term. In the long term, this might be more important as China and India seek more oil. But the price will be very high gas prices. Big oil wanted the invasion to reduce Iraqi production and jack up prices. Iraqi production still has not returned to pre-invasion levels

Much will be said on all sides about the need to retain a powerful presence in the region to checkmate Iran. It will be said that a US withdrawal would be viewed as a clear sign of lack of resolve and weakness leading to the Iranization of some states in the Middle East. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is advancing in years, and his wife has found it necessary to insist that he is in good health. It is unclear that his son and heir “Jimmy” will retain the loyalty of Egypt’s huge military or that he will be able to contain the growing Islamic radicalism there. In Syria, Bashar al Assad, pressured by US policies, has strengthened ties to Iran and seems to be abandoning his late father’s devotion to secularism. Now it appears that Syria may have been working with North Korea to start a nuclear program. Israel recently bombed what was rumored to be a nuclear facility there.

Is Israel’s recent bombing of an alleged North Korean facility in Syria a prelude to the US bombing nuclear and military facilities in Iran? If this is a possibility, there is all the more reason for a serious assessment of our prospects in Iraq and our interests in the region. The fuss about whether Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be permitted to speak at Columbia University is part of the NeoCon effort to build support for an attack. He has been refused access to Ground Zero, where he would probably have reminded listeners that Iran too has suffered at the hands of Al Qaeda. The consequences of attacking Iran deserve thorough investigation and discussion.

Victor Bout:and the Russian Mafia: America’s Business Associates

Some CIA officials have voiced concern about American involvement with illegal arms dealer Victor Bout,and Senator Russell Feingold has expressed deep frustration over continued ties to Bout. It took undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz eight months to answer Feingold’s May 18, 2004 questions about dealings with Bout. It is unclear whether the US really needs his services in Iraq. In the past the CIA has been a major mover of licit and illicit arms and has often worked with private contractors in doing this. Major political figures have been raked off large commissions from these deals. However, there is growing evidence of ties Bout and the Russian Mafia on the part of the US government people close to it in other parts of the world. It may relate to the scramble of western banks to get their share of the vast wealth that has been pillaged from the former Soviet Union. One important function of the intelligence community is assisting American business. The current black economy is so large that these banks believe they must compete for their share of the money laundering business by dealing with intelligence agencies and organized crime. .It was also important to national security that as much of the Russian loot as possible be in banks that supported the dollar rather than the euro. The Russian mob , known also for extortion and the trade, accommodated western bankers with prostitutes, and later produced embarrassing video tapes . The Russian mob has been good enough to deposit 80% of its drug profits in western banks and it has used these deposits to play on the greed of Western capitalists. In 1997-1998, Mobil Oil entered a deal with Atlas Oil, a Russian mob firm, for oil and advanced $45,000,000 before realizing it had been taken. It received not one barrel for its investment. Seymour Hersh covered the scam in a July 9, 2001 article, but Mobil induced other journalists to make the story go away. One internal memo advised doing nothing as Russian mobsters were far more ruthless than members of American organized crime.

Bout has worked with some American security consulting firms since 1994 and was instrumental in placing the Russian mafia in working relationships with some of them. In the Caucuses, , which has had a history of involvement in the drug traffic, has been working with Far West , Ltd. He added that Far West indirectly cooperates with the US government, and these ties to Far West, Ltd in recent years seem to have the apparent approval of the CIA.

Far West is a major Russian mafia operation that provides security consulting and transportation services. It also moves arms and drugs. From 1991 to 2003, Far West is said to have moved 300 tons of heroin into Western Europe. Vladimir Filin, head of Far West, told a Russian interviewer that his firm was co-founded by an important American corporation. He added that Far West indirectly cooperates with the US government.

We cooperate with the American side in the sphere of commercial transportation not on the basis of direct commercial contracts between our agency [Far West, Ltd.] and the U. S. government, but through the intermediary company co-founded by the agency and a private U.S. company, which in its turn also interacts with the U.S. government.

It is difficult to decipher what that means, but the name Halliburton comes to mind. In 2005, he and two other co-founders,Anton Surikov, and Alexei Likhvintsev, visited President Bush in the White House. Thereafter he and his partners relocated to Dubai and Europe to escape possible arrest. Surikov is considered a retired officer of the Russian GRU as well as a political scientist who opposes Boris Yeltsin and President Vladimir Putin. He admits a connection to CIA agent Fritz Ermarth, who served on the National Security Council twice and retired in 1998. At a 2003 conference in Geneva, Surikov was accused of being a CIA man. As late as 1999, Ermarth was arranging for guns and money to reach a Chechen group that also sold drugs in Europe. OneRuslan Saidov ( sometimes Yasenev) , also part of the Russian mafia, also works various sides of the street including Saudi Arabia, and was paid by the CIA in 2004 to eliminate an Arab leader in Chechnyua who was likely to move from Chehnya to Iraq. The Russian mafia often works through Alpha Bank, which is probably its subsidiary. That bank has business relationships with Halliburton. In 1995 a huge drug warehouse controlled by the bank was burglarized in Siberia and the burglary was investigated by Russian security police..

In the Middle East, Far West cooperates with Diligence ,LCC, a private military corporation founded by William Webster, former head of both the FBI and CIA. These firm also work with recently founded New Bridge Strategies, which is headed by Joseph Allbaugh. He was a campaign manager for Governor Bush as well as his chief-of-staff and he later became head of FEMA. Other partners are George H.W. Bush aids Ed Rogers and Lanny Griffith. The firm has close ties to Neil Bush.

The killing of two American Special Forces soldiers and the kidnaping of Russian diplomats in 2006 was involved with a Bout-related black operation that seems to have gone rogue. Team 121 was comprised of Russian, Israeli, and British mercenaries and was supposed to be used combating private militias in Iraq and turning them against one another. The team was created through the combined efforts of Bout, the Olive Group ( a subsidiary of Blackwater in the United Kingdom, and the Bosnian Defense Fund, of Douglas Feith and Richard Perle. That entity works largely through the Riggs Bank and dates back to the days of the first President Bush. It has had clear links to Al Qasser and Bout .Both of these dealers were involved in the drug trade and moving arms to the Muslim rebels. It has been estimated that at one point, the Kosovo Liberation Front controlled almost 70% of the heroin moving into Europe.


Wayne Madsen, a usually reliable reporter, has been strongly hinting that Bout and the Russian-Ukranian-Israeli weapons-smuggling Mafia has ties to Richard Cheney and other people in the White House. Madsen states flatly that Richard Armitage, undersecretary of State, had been involved in shady dealings in Azerbaijan. The former NSA employee also notes that US Special Forces in Afghanistan are heavily involved in the opium trade and are moving shipments through Turkey and the Balkans with the help of the Russian Mafia and Greek criminals. Madsen notes elsewhere that the Turkish Army is also a major drug trader, so it can be assumed that they participate in this trade. Victor Bout is reportedly a major player in this trade. Two of Bout’s big planes have been spotted frrequently in Kabul and also at the US military base in Frankfurt.

It is not clear that the US moved into the Afghan drug trade immediately after its war there. Prior to the war, the US allied with Afghanistan’s chief narcobaron, Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was an opponent of the Taliban. Another drug baron all was Haji Zaman, and the US persuaded the Pakistanis to release from prison his Pakistani partner Haji Ayub Afridi. These men were also tied to t he Russian mafia and some of their profits got to the Chechnyan rebels. It is possible that at that stage, the US entered into these unsavory alliances as a way of weakening the Russian state. However, by 2006, the US was so deeply involved in the Afghan poppy business that there were complaints about Special Forces hogging the trade and working with “Victor Bout. Some point out that Special Forces had provided the muscle to help the CIA move drugs elsewhere and simply assume this was a resumption of business as usual. A more benevolent interpretation from a conservative publication was that the US had to permit the resumption of the opium trade in order to support the dollar. While Madsen suggests that Cheney and others are running some sort of business on their own, it is much more likely that they have just piggy-backed onto a government operated drug trade that serves some national interests. It could just be a repeat and expansion of what happened under Reagan and the first Bush.

On October 22, 2006, the Iraqi government reported that $600 million had been siphoned off in arms deals. Bout and the Russian mafia were not mentioned. One cannot help wondering, if they were involved, and if any high American officials were participating in dividing the spoils.

The more one digs, the more apparent it is that intelligence agencies, sometimes arms of government, some politicians, and the international underworld all swin in the same muddy water and frequently do business with one another.