Skyfall, starring David Petraeus By Pepe Escobar

ROVING EYE

Skyfall, starring David Petraeus

By Pepe Escobar 

My name is Petraeus. David Petraeus. Move over, Bond, with your Skyfall; this is the real deal, a certified political/national security blockbuster to end them all. 

This is how Hollywood would market it; "He had the nation's highest security clearance. But above all he was an embedded lady killer." 

Now for the casting. Daniel Craig could easily play The General, although The General would rather teleguide a Hellfire than an 

  
Aston Martin, and wear a "fruit salad" (as in myriad decorations) instead of a killer Tom Ford suit. Demi Moore - sultry as ever - could play "Paula". Assorted Iraqis and Afghans would play "collateral damage". 

Meanwhile, murky does not even begin to describe alleged reality - as in the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, retired Gen David Petraeus, resigning over a bedroom farce only two days after President Barack Obama is re-elected, amid crossfire accusations raging for weeks regarding what the CIA was exactly doing in Libya, that godforsaken land liberated by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and now ruled by a bunch of militias. 

As whodunits go, this plot is going nowhere. Nobody knows why this blockbuster was leaked last Friday - by the way only one day after President Obama himself had learned about it (on the other hand attorney general Eric Holder of The Fast and the Furiousfame knew about it since "late summer", according to the proverbial anonymous, "US officials"). 

Nobody knows what the Federal Bureau of Investigation was planning to do before all hell broke loose - considering that its four-month investigation had unearthed that Petraeus and his lover, West Point graduate, fitness fanatic, adoring biographer Paula Broadwell, had not breached national security. 

Or maybe they had. For starters, The General - possessor of the nation's highest national security clearance - was using a mere G-mail account to talk dirty to Paula, using what The Washington Post gleefully described as "a tactic of terrorists who are rightly wary of espionage". And when it was leaked that the FBI found no "major security breaches", this means there WAS a security breach. 

My guy
The bedroom farce elements are enough to have Moliere rolling in his tombe. The whole thing started when Floridian Jill Kelley complained about receiving harassing emails from Paula, the adoring co-author (with Washington Post journalist Vernon Loeb) of the full-access biography All In: The Education of General David Petraeus, published in January. Paula and Petraeus had been getting down to the nitty-gritty since November 2011, two months after Obama appointed him as head of the CIA. Talk about an embedded biographer. 

So Paula must have thought she was in a sexy quadrangle, not triangle. She obviously didn't know much about Jill Kelley - the third woman in the farce - the other three sides being Paula and Petraeus' wife, the now "furious" Holly. The Tampa Bay Times described The General as a grandfather to Kelley's family. 

Kelley also happened to be a critical player; a "social liaison" to the Pentagon's supreme, shadowy, counterterrorism/killing machine, the Fort Bragg-based Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). It's crucial to know that it was the JSOC that allegedly led the CIA and the Pentagon into what had happened during the attack against the US consulate in Benghazi in which ambassador Chris Stevens was killed. 

None of this obviously mattered to Paula; in the harassing emails that culminated in this bombshell, she bluntly ordered Kelley to "stay away from my guy". 

As for "my guy", he has multiple questions to answer. First of all; why did the CIA tell the White House that the Benghazi drama was provoked by that stupid "Prophet Muhammad" YouTube video - and not an attack coordinated by previously NATO-enabled Salafi-jihadis? 

And then, no less important; why did The General not decide to commit his public seppuku over two weeks ago, when FBI agents talked to him in person about the investigation? Was it his paramount reason the desire not to bomb the Obama administration and practically hand the election over to the Republican Party? Or maybe he was hoping the whole thing would simply be covered up, like a Pashtun wedding party obliterated by a Hellfire missile? 

According to The New York Times, the whole thing blew over in late October after an "unidentified" FBI employee - now identified as sending photos of his shirtless torso to Jill Kelley - spilled the beans to Congress Republicans all the way to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Nobody knows what was this FBI's informer agenda. 

In a nutshell, the FBI didn't manage to keep the investigation secret. Cantor, according to the Times, had a serious meeting with FBI director Robert Mueller III on Halloween; then nobody knows what happened till Election Day, November 6, when the FBI went by the book and told James Clapper Jr, the Director of National Intelligence, about the bedroom farce. To say that Mueller and Cantor also have a few questions to answer is the understatement of the year. 

With US corporate media now totally berserk, the master narrative remains that The Samurai General did the honorable thing by resigning. It all goes back to good ol' American Puritanism. You can be a killing machine, responsible for the death of untold numbers of civilians. But don't you dare betraying your devoted wife. 

The General may be thinking he chose the wrong profession. What an unforgiving environment; James Bond gets to wear fabulous suits, drinks countless martinis, drives an Aston Martin, shoots every bad guy in sight and beds every foxy lady in the universe. 

The failed warrior 
David Petraeus was more of a PR genius than a samurai to begin with. His cinematic model would be Captain Willard as played by Martin Sheen in Coppola's Apocalypse Now; the warrior intellectual. Petraeus, who for quite a while actively positioned himself as a possible presidential candidate in 2012, was clever enough to sell to US public opinion - and gullible mainstream media - the notion that he was a winner in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These are two monumental fallacies. 

The revolving door ethos in Washington - in this case between the Pentagon and the CIA - reached new heights of absurdity when Petraeus, who adapted his counterinsurgency tactics from Iraq to Afghanistan, as in take, clear, hold and build, was put in charge, as CIA director, of analyzing ... the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. The Taliban must be laughing all across the Hind Kush about Petraeus's counterinsurgency "success" - which, by the way, he imposed, along with other Pentagon generals, on Obama in late 2009. 

Petraeus is a product of the Pentagon. He could never, by himself, get rid of the inbuilt logic of Endless War, established by Republican strategists of what French political scientist Alain Joxe has characterized as "war neoliberalism". 

Iraq and Afghanistan were pure manifestations of "war neoliberalism". Petraeus's "surge" in Iraq was a sham. When he arrived with his suitcases full of cash to convince Sunni guerrillas to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq, and not American soldiers, the real surge was already being accomplished; this was the surge led by the Iraqi Interior Ministry and Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, which had practically succeeded in the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad and surrounding areas, reverting the population balance to the benefit of Shi'ites. As for the Sunni guerrillas, at least they could pocket American money while biding their time to continue their fight against a Shi'ite-dominated government in Baghdad. 

Obama's foreign policy team certainly thought that Petraeus counterinsurgency mumbo-jumbo would allow Iraq - and later Afghanistan - at least some sort of what could be dubbed inter-communitarian democracy, saving American face in terms of a troop exit that would not replicate the last helicopter leaving a Saigon roof in 1975. 

But the fact is Petraeus did not win any hearts and minds in either Iraq or Afghanistan; his take, clear, hold and build tactics ultimately led to nowhere in both cases - and we're not even talking about serious instances of torture, extrajudicial killings, illegal detentions and widespread shadow war. His "mini-surge" could only have had a shot at succeeding in Afghanistan (and that's quite a stretch) if it was not mini; if he had had access to hundreds of thousands of troops - something politically unacceptable in the US. 

Then there's Benghazi. What may have really happened is that the US consulate in Benghazi was a sort of CIA safe house/spy house - thus under Petraeus responsibility, not the State Dept. This neatly dovetails with "Paula" casually saying, at the University of Denver on October 26, that "prisoners" were being held at the consulate (the CIA vehemently denied it, so there must be a degree of truth to it). 

That the consulate was attacked by Salafi-jihadis is out of the question. The State Department may have been the fall guys - while Petraeus/CIA got away with their incompetence. Well, until the bedroom farce exploded. 

It remains to be seen whether anyone in Washington will dare asking the pertinent questions. It remains to be seen whether Petraeus's relentless, hyper-counterproductive (not to mention collateral damage-laden) drone wars will be reevaluated. It remains to be seen whether Obama 2.0 will decide to practice diplomacy - and not shadow war - in the intersection between Central and South Asia. 

The inestimable Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst, suggests Obama should stop listening to " faux experts - the neocon specialists at Brookings, AEI and elsewhere" and instead go for "genuine experts like former national intelligence officer for the Near East Paul Pillar, former State Department chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson, and military historian and practitioner Andrew Bacevich (Lt Col, USA, ret). These are straight-shooters; they have no interest in 'long wars'; they will tell you the truth; all you need to do is listen." 

Forget about straight shooters. The Acting CIA Director is now Michael Morell, a puppet of counter-terrorism czar John Brennan. As for The General, what a sorry exit; he gets no fancy car, no martinis, no Tom Ford killer suit, he doesn't save the world. And in the end he doesn't even get the girl. 

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His most recent book is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). 

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com 

Why Did CIA Director Petraeus Resign? Why Was the U.S. Ambassador to Libya Murdered?

Why Did CIA Director Petraeus Resign? Why Was the U.S. Ambassador to Libya Murdered?

By Washington's Blog

The Deeper Questions Behind the Ambassador’s Murder … and the CIA Boss’ Sudden Resignation

While the GOP is attacking (and Dems defending) the Obama administration in connection with the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, there is a deeper story.

Sure, it is stunning that the State Department never requested backup or that people such as Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer allege that President Obama personally watched in real time the attacks as they occurred via video feeds from drones flying over the Benghazi consulate.

But these claims only can be assessed – and the whole confusing mess only makes sense – if the deeper underlying story is first exposed.

Many Syrian Terrorists Come from Libya

The U.S. supported opposition which overthrew Libya’s Gadaffi was largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists.

According to a 2007 report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center’s center, the Libyan city of Benghazi was one of Al Qaeda’s main headquarters – and bases for sending Al Qaeda fighters into Iraq – prior to the overthrow of Gaddafi:

Al Qaeda is now largely in control of Libya.  Indeed, Al Qaeda flags were flown over the Benghazi courthouse once Gaddafi was toppled.

(Incidentally, Gaddafi was on the verge of invading Benghazi in 2011, 4 years after the West Point report cited Benghazi as a hotbed of Al Qaeda terrorists. Gaddafi claimed – rightly it turns out – that Benghazi was an Al Qaeda stronghold and a main source of the Libyan rebellion.  But NATO planes stopped him, and protected Benghazi.)

CNN, the Telegraph,  the Washington Times, and many other mainstream sources confirm that Al Qaeda terrorists from Libya have since flooded into Syria to fight the Assad regime.

Mainstream sources also confirm that the Syrian opposition is largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists.  See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

The U.S. has been arming the Syrian opposition since 2006. The post-Gaddafi Libyan government is also itself a top funder and arms supplier of the Syrian opposition.

The Real Story At Benghazi

This brings us to the murder of ambassador Stevens and the sudden resignation of CIA boss David Petraeus.

The Wall Street Journal, Telegraph and other sources confirm that the US consulate in Benghazi was mainly being used for a secret CIA operation.

They say that the State Department presence in Benghazi “provided diplomatic cover” for the previously hidden CIA mission.

Reuters notes that the CIA mission involved finding and repurchasing heavy weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals.

Business Insider reports that Stevens may have been linked with Syrian terrorists:

There’s growing evidence that U.S. agents—particularly murdered ambassador Chris Stevens—were at least aware of heavy weapons moving from Libya to jihadist Syrian rebels.

In March 2011 Stevens became the official U.S. liaison to the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan opposition, working directly with Abdelhakim Belhadj of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group—a group that has now disbanded, with some fighters reportedly participating in the attack that took Stevens’ life.

In November 2011 The Telegraph reported that Belhadj, acting as head of the Tripoli Military Council, “met with Free Syrian Army [FSA] leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey” in an effort by the new Libyan government to provide money and weapons to the growing insurgency in Syria.

Last month The Times of London reported that a Libyan ship “carrying the largest consignment of weapons for Syria … has docked in Turkey.” The shipment reportedly weighed 400 tons and included SA-7 surface-to-air anti-craft missiles and rocket-propelled grenades.

***

Reuters reports that Syrian rebels have been using those heavy weapons to shoot downSyrian helicopters and fighter jets.

The ship’s captain was ”a Libyan from Benghazi and the head of an organization called the Libyan National Council for Relief and Support,” which was presumably established by the new government.

That means that Ambassador Stevens had only one person—Belhadj—between himself and the Benghazi man who brought heavy weapons to Syria.

Furthermore, we know that jihadists are the best fighters in the Syrian opposition, but where did they come from?

Last week The Telegraph reported that a FSA commander called them “Libyans” when he explained that the FSA doesn’t “want these extremist people here.”

And if the new Libyan government was sending seasoned Islamic fighters and 400 tons of heavy weapons to Syria through a port in southern Turkey—a deal brokered by Stevens’ primary Libyan contact during the Libyan revolution—then the governments of Turkey and the U.S. surely knew about it.

Furthermore there was a CIA post in Benghazi, located 1.2 miles from the U.S. consulate, used as “a base for, among other things, collecting information on the proliferation of weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, including surface-to-air missiles” … and that its security features “were more advanced than those at rented villa where Stevens died.”

And we know that the CIA has been funneling weapons to the rebels in southern Turkey. The question is whether the CIA has been involved in handing out the heavy weapons from Libya.

In other words, ambassador Stevens may have been a key player in deploying Libyan terrorists and arms to fight the Syrian government.

Other sources also claim that the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was mainly being used as a CIA operation to ship fighters and arms to Syria.

Many have speculated that – if normal security measures weren’t taken to protect the Benghazi consulate or to rescue ambassador Stevens – it was  because the CIA was trying to keep an extremely low profile to protect its cover of being a normal State Department operation.

Why Did CIA Chief David Petraeus Suddenly Resign?

CIA boss David Petraeus suddenly resigned, admitting to an affair.  This could be the real explanation, given that affairs of high-level intelligence chiefs could compromise national security.

But the timing of Petraeus’ resignation becomes more interesting once one learns that that he was scheduled to testify under oath next week before power House and Senate committees regarding the Benghazi consulate.

Many speculate that it wasn’t an affair – but the desire to avoid testifying on Benghazi – which was the real reason for Petraeus’ sudden resignation.

The Big Picture

Whatever the scope of the CIA’s operation in Benghazi – and whatever the real reason for the resignation of the CIA chief – the key is our historical and ongoing foreign policy.

For decades, the U.S. has backed terrorists for geopolitical ends.

The U.S. government has been consistently planning regime change in Syria and Libya for 20 years, and dreamed of regime change – using false flag terror – for 50 years.

Obama has simply re-packaged Bush and the Neocons’ “war on terror” as a series of humanitarian wars.

And the U.S. and its allies will do anything to topple Iran … and is systematically attempting to pull the legs out from Iran’s allies as a way to isolate and weaken that country.

Americans should ask ourselves if that’s what we want …

General Petraeus: Zionism's Military Poodle

by James Petras / May 5th, 2008

General Petraeus: President Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders promised to end their support for the special groups but the nefarious activities of the Quds Force have continued.

Senator Joseph Lieberman: Is it fair to say that the Iranian-backed special groups are responsible for the murder of hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians?

General Petraeus: It certainly is… That is correct.

– General Petraeus testimony to the US Senate, April 8-9, 2008.

'The Israeli flag is proudly displayed above the Sacred Ark alongside the American flag…' ( in an orthodox synagogue in wealthy Georgetown, Washington DC. The entrance fee to the synagogue is $1000 for a single holiday.) 'On each Sabbath the prayers include the benediction for the Israeli Jewish soldiers and the prayer for the welfare of the Israeli government and its officials. Many Jewish American Administration pray there. They not only don't try to conceal their religious affiliation, but go to great lengths to demonstrate their Judaism since it may help their careers greatly. The enormous Jewish influence in Washington is not limited to the government. In the Washingtonian, media's a very significant part of the most important personages and of the presenters of the most popular programs on the TV are warm Jews… and let us not forget, in this context, the Jewish predominance in the Washingtonian academic institutions.'

– Avinoam Bar-Yosef (the Israeli daily newspaper) Ma'rivSeptember 2, 1994 (translated by Israel Shahak).

Introduction

When President Bush appointed General David Petraeus Commander (head) of the Multinational Forces in Iraq, his appointment was hailed by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post as a brilliant decision: A general of impeccable academic and battlefield credentials and a warrior and counter-insurgency (terrorist) intellectual. The media and the President, the Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and Congress, described his appointment as 'America's last best hope for salvation in Iraq'. Senator Hilary Clinton joined the chorus of pro-war politicians in praise and support of Petraeus' 'professionalism and war record' in Northern Iraq. In contrast, Admiral William Fallon, his predecessor and former commander, had called Petraeus' briefings 'a piece of brown-nosing chicken shit.'
In theory and strategy, in pursuit of defeating the Iraqi resistance, General Petraeus was a disastrous failure, an outcome predictable from the very nature of his appointment and his flawed wartime reputation.

In the first instance, Petraeus was a political appointment. He was one of the few high military officials who shared Bush and the Zioncons' assessment that the 'war could be won.' Petraeus argued that his experience in Northern Iraq were replicable throughout the rest of the country. Moreover Petraeus, unlike most military analysts, was willing to ignore the heavy costs of multiple prolonged tours of duty on US troops. Petraeus' willingness to ignore the larger costs of prolonged military engagement in Iraq has weakened the capacity of the US to sustain its world-wide imperial interests. For Petraeus, sacrificing the overall cohesion and structure of the US military in Iraq, the global interests of the empire and the US domestic budget were worth securing Bush's appointment as Commander of the Forces in Iraq. Shortly after taking office and in the face of massive domestic, international and Iraq demands for the withdrawal of US troops, Petraeus took the path dictated by the US and pro Israeli militarists in the Bush Administration and their powerful 'Lobby.' He escalated the war, by calling up more troops, what he euphemistically referred to as 'the surge' — a massive call-up of 40,000 more mission-weary infantry and marines.

An analysis and critique of the failure of military-driven imperialism and its militarily dangerous consequences requires an objective critical analysis of Petraeus' media-inflated military record prior to taking command. Equally important Petraeus close ideological and political linkages with Israel's militarist approach toward Iran (and the rest of the Middle East countries opposing it) dates back to his close collaboration with Israel's (unofficial) military advisers and intelligence operatives in Kurdish Northern Iraq.
Petraeus' Phony Success in Northern Iraq

Petraeus' vaunted military successes in Northern Iraq — especially in Nineveh province in Northern Iraq was based on the fact that it is dominated by the Kurdish warlord tribal leaders and party bosses eager to carve an independent country. The relative stability of the region has little or nothing to do with Petraeus' counter-insurgency theories or policies and more to do with the high degree of Kurdish 'independence' or 'separatism' in the region. Put bluntly, the US and Israeli military and financial backing of Kurdish separatism has created a de facto independent Kurdish state, one based on the brutal ethnic purging of large concentrations of Turkmen and Arab citizens. General Petraeus, by giving license to Kurdish irredentist aspirations for an ethnically purified 'Greater Kurdistan,' encroaching on Turkey, Iran and Syria, secured the loyalty of the Kurdish militias and especially the deadly Peshmerga 'special forces' in eliminating resistance to the US occupation in Nineveh. Moreover, the Peshmerga has provided the US with special units to infiltrate the Iraqi resistance groups, and to provoke intra-communal strife through incidents of terrorism against the civilian population. In other words, General Petreaus' 'success' in Northern Iraq isnot replicable in the rest of Iraq. In fact, his very success in carving off Kurd-dominated Iraq has heightened hostilities in the rest of the country and provoked Turkish attacks in the region.

Petraeus: Armchair Strategist

His theory of 'securing and holding' territory presumes a highly motivated and reliable military force capable of withstanding hostility from at least eighty percent of the colonized population. Petraeus, like Bush and the Zionist militarists, ignores the fact that the morale of US soldiers in Iraq and those scheduled to be sent to Iraq is very low. The ranks of those who are seeking a quick exit from military service now include career soldiers and non-commissioned officers — the backbone of the military.1 The soldiers being recruited include convicted felons, mentally unstable young men, uneducated and impoverished immigrants and professional mercenaries. Unauthorized absences (AWOLs) have shot up — 14,000 between 2000-2005.1 In March 2007, over one thousand active-duty and reserve soldiers and marines petitioned Congress for a US withdrawal from Iraq. By April 2008, a record 69% opposed Bush's war strategy and economic policy.2 The opposition of retired and active Generals to Bush's escalation of troops percolates down the ranks to the 'grunts' on the ground, especially among reservists on active duty whose tours of duty in Iraq have been repeatedly extended (the 'backdoor draft'). Demoralizing prolonged stays or rapid rotation undermines any effort of 'consolidating ties' between US and Iraqi officers and certainly undermines most efforts to win the confidence of the local population.
If the US troops are deeply troubled by the war in Iraq and increasingly subject to desertion and demoralization, how less reliable is the Iraqi mercenary army? Iraqis recruited on the basis of hunger and unemployment (caused by the US war), with kinship, ethnic and national ties to a free and independent Iraq do not make reliable soldiers. Every serious expert has concluded that the divisions in Iraqi society are reflected in the loyalties of the soldiers. The attempt by Petraeus and US puppet Prime Minister Maliki to invade Basra in Southern Iraq turned into a military fiasco as thousands of Iraqi soldiers joined the insurgents.

General Petraeus could not count on his Iraqi troops because scores were defecting and perhaps thousands will in the future. An empty drill field, or worse a widespread barracks revolt, is a credible scenario. The continued high casualty rates among US soldiers and Iraqi civilians, during his 18 months as Commander suggests that 'holding and securing' Baghdad failed to alter the overall situation.

While the addition of 30,000 US troops saturating Baghdad initially reduced civilian and military casualties there, fighting intensified in other regions and cities. More important, the decline of violence had less to do with Petraeus' 'surge' and had more to do with the temporary political cease-fire reached with the anti-occupation forces of Muqtada al Sadr. This was clear when the US and its client Prime Minister Maliki launched an offensive against Sadr's forces in March-April 2008 and casualties shot up, and even the US 'Green Zone bunker' came under daily rocket attacks. After 18 months under Commander Petraeus, the Iraqi troops showed little willingness to fight their own compatriots engaged in resistance. Thousands turned their arms over to the anti-colonial popular militias and several hundreds joined them
Petraeus 'rule book' prioritizes "security and task sharing as a means of empowering civilians and prompting national reconciliation." 'Security' is elusive because what the US Commander considers 'security' is the free movement of US troops and collaborators based on the insecurity of the colonized Iraqi majority. They continue to subject the civilian Iraqis to arbitrary house-to-house searches, break-ins and humiliating searches and arrests.

While the death toll of civilians declined from 'hundreds a day' to 'hundreds a week,' it demonstrated Petraeus' failure to achieve his most elementary goal. Task Sharing as defined by Petraeus and his officers is a euphemism for Iraqi collaboration in 'administrating' his orders. 'Sharing' involves a highly asymmetrical relation of power: the US orders and the Iraqis comply. Petraeus defines the 'task' as informing on insurgents. The Iraqi population is supposed to provide 'information' on their families, friends and compatriots, in other words betray their own people. The concept sounded more feasible in his manual than in practice. US troops still are ambushed on a daily basis and insurgents, operating among the population, bomb their armored carriers.

'Empowering civilians,' another prominent concept in Petraeus' manual, assumed that those who 'empower' give up power to the 'others.' In other words, that the US military cedes territory, security, financial resource management and allocation to a colonized people or to the local armed forces. During his 18 months in command, it is the 'empowered' people who protect and support insurgents and oppose the US occupation and its puppet regime. In fact, what Commander Petraeus really meant was 'empowering' a small minority of civilians who were willing collaborators of an occupying army. They were frequently the deadly target of the insurgents. The civilian minority 'empowered' by the Petraeus formula requires heavy US military protection to withstand retaliation. In practice no neighborhood civilian collaborators have been delegated real power and those who were delegated authority, are dead, hiding or secretly allied with the resistance.

Petraeus' goal of 'national reconciliation' has been a total failure. The Iraqi regime is paralyzed into squabbling sects and warlords. Reconciliation between warring parties is not on the horizon. What Petraeus fails to recognize, but even his puppet allies publicly state, is that US colonization of Iraq is a blatant denial of the conditions for reconciliation. Commander Petraeus and his army and the dictates of the Zionist White House play off the warring parties undermining any negotiation toward 'conciliation.' Like all preceding colonial commanders, Petraeus fails to recognize that Iraqi popular sovereignty is the essential precondition for national reconciliation and stability. Military imposed 'reconciliation' among warring collaborator groups with no legitimacy among the Iraqi electorate has been a disaster.

Former Clintonite, Sarah Sewall (ex-Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Harvard-based 'foreign affairs expert') was ecstatic over Petraeus' appointment. Yet she claimed the 'inadequate troop to task ratio' would undermine his strategy.3 The 'troop to task ratio' forms the entire basis of Israel and the Zioncon Democratic Senators' Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer's' 'critique' of Bush's Iraq policy. Their solution is 'send more troops'. While Petraeus did increase the troops with the surge, it is militarily and politically unable to mobilize 500,000 more to meet Sewall's 'troop to task ratio.' This argument begs the question: Inadequate numbers of troops reflects the massiveness of popular opposition to the US occupation. The need to improve the 'ratio' (greater number of troops) is due to the level of mass Iraqi opposition and is directly related to increasing neighborhood support for the Iraqi resistance. If the majority of the population and the resistance did not oppose the imperial armies, then any ratio would be adequate — down to a few hundred soldiers hanging out in the Green Zone, the US Embassy or some local brothels.

Petraeus' prescriptions borrowed heavily from the Vietnam War era, especially General Creighton Abram's Clear and Hold counter-insurgency doctrine. Abrams ordered a vast campaign of chemical warfare spraying of thousands of hectares with the deadly Agent Orange to 'clear' contested terrain. He approved of the Phoenix Plan — the systematic assassination of 25,000 village leaders to 'clear' out local insurgents. Abrams implemented the program of 'strategic hamlets,' the forced re-location of millions of Vietnamese peasants into concentration camps. In the end, Abram's plans to 'clear and hold' failed because each measure extended and deepened popular hostility and increased the number of recruits to the Vietnamese national liberation army. Israel's brutal occupation policies in the West Bank have followed the same strategy with equally disastrous results, which doesn't prevent its advisers from selling it to the US military.

Petraeus is following the Abrams-Israeli doctrine with the same disastrous civilian casualties. Large-scale bombing of densely populated Shia and Sunni neighborhoods has taken place since he took command. Mass arrests of suspected local leaders accompanied by the tight military encirclement of entire neighborhoods. Arbitrary, abusive house-to-house searches turn the poor sectors of Baghdad into one big shooting gallery and concentration camp. Paraphrasing his predecessor, General Creighton Abrams, Petraeus wants to 'destroy Iraq in order to save it.' In fact his policy is merely punishing the civilians and deepening the hostility of the population. In contrast, the insurgents blend into the huge slum neighborhood of Sadr City population or into the surrounding provinces of Al-Anbar, Diyala, and Salah and Din. Petraeus was able to 'hold' a people hostage with armored vehicles but he has not been able to rule with guns. The failure of General Creighton Abrams was not due to the lack of 'political will' in the US, as he complained, but was due to the fact that 'clearing' a region of insurgents is temporary, because the insurgency is founded on its capacity to blend in with the people and then re-emerge to fight the occupation army.
Petraeus' fundamental (and false) assumptions are based on the notion that the 'people' and the 'insurgents' are two distinct and opposing groups. He assumed that his ground forces and Iraqi mercenaries could distinguish and exploit this divergence and 'clear out' the insurgents and 'hold' the people. The four-year history of the US invasion, occupation and imperial war, including his 18 months in command, provides ample evidence to the contrary. With upward of 170,000 US troops and close to 200,000 Iraqi and over 50,000 foreign mercenaries, Petraeus has failed to defeat the insurgency. The evidence points to very strong, extensive and sustained civilian support for the insurgency. The high ratio of civilian to insurgent killings by the combined US-mercenary armies suggests that US troops have not been able to distinguish (nor are interested in the difference) between civilians and insurgents. Even the puppet government complains of civilian killings and widespread destruction of popular neighborhoods by US aerial bombing. The insurgency draws strong support from extended kin ties, neighborhood friends and neighbors, religious leaders, nationalists and patriots: these primary, secondary and tertiary ties bind the insurgency to the population in a way which can not be replicated by the US military or its puppet politicians.

Early on, General Petraeus' plan to 'protect and secure the civilian population' was a failure. He flooded the streets of Baghdad with armored vehicles but was quickly forced to acknowledge that the 'anti-government… forces were regrouping north of the capital.' Petraeus was condemned to play what Lt. General Robert Gaid un-poetically called 'whack-a-mole: Insurgents will be suppressed in one area only to re-emerge somewhere else.'
General Petraeus made the presumptuous assertion that the Iraqi civilian population did not know that the 'special operations' forces of the Occupation, which he directed, is responsible for fomenting much of the ethno-religious conflict. Investigative reporter Max Fuller in his detailed examination of documents, stressed that the vast majority of atrocities… attributed to 'rogue' Shiite or Sunni militias "were in fact the work of government-controlled commandos of 'special forces,' trained by the Americans, 'advised' by Americans and run largely by former CIA agents."4Petraeus' attempt to play Good Cop/Bad Cop in order to 'divide and rule' has been unable to weaken the opposition and has instead destabilized and fragmented the Maliki regime. While Petraeus was able to temporarily buy the loyalty of some Northern Sunni tribal leaders, their dubious loyalties depends on multi-million dollar weekly payoffs.

In theory, Petraeus recognized the broader political context of the war: "There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq, to the insurgency… In Iraq, military action is necessary to help improve security… but it is insufficient. There needs to be a political aspect."5 Yet the key 'political aspect,' as he put it, is the reduction, not escalation, of US troops, the ending of the endless assaults on civilian neighborhoods, the terminationof the special operations and assassinations designed to foment ethnic-religious conflict, and above all a timetable to withdraw US troops and dismantle the chain of US military bases. During his 18-month tenure, Petraeus increased the number of troops, increased the bombing of the very people he was supposed to win over and fortified the 102 acres of US bases. General Petraeus was not willing or in a position to implement or design the appropriate political context for ending the conflict because of his blind implementation of the Bush-Zionist 'war to victory' policy.

The gap between Petraeus' 'theoretical' discourse on the centrality of politics and his practice of prioritizing military victory can be explained by his desire to please the Bush-Zioncons in Washington in order to advance his own military career (and future political ambitions). The result was an exceptionally mediocre military performance, underwritten by dismal political failures and the achievement of his personal ambitions.

In April 2008, the Bush Administration named Petraeus as head of the US Central Command, overseeing the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and the rest of the Horn of Africa. Petraeus replaced Navy Admiral William Fallon who was forced to resign his command by the White House and the Zioncons over his opposition to their war plans against Iran. Even prior to his retirement, Fallon had expressed his contempt for Petraeus' shameful truckling to the Zionists in Northern Iraq and the Bush Know Nothings in charge of Iraq and Iran policy planning. It is clear that Petraeus ensured his promotion on April 16, 2008, through his senate testimony, one week earlier (April 8-9, 2008) with his bellicose speech implicating Iran in the fighting deaths of US troops in Iraq. With the purge and intimidation of military officials not willing to act as White House/Zionist poodles, Petraeus had few competitors. Petraeus' promotion to the top military post, just days after his senate testimony pointing to war with Iran could not be attributed to his (failed) military performance, but to his slavish adherence to Bush's and Israel's push for heightened confrontation with Iran. Blaming Iran for his failed military policies served a double purpose: it covered up his incompetence and it secured the support of leading Zionist Senators like Joseph Lieberman.
Petraeus reference to the "need to engage in talks with some groups of insurgents" fell on deaf ears. His proposal was seen by the insurgents as a continuation of the divide and conquer (or 'salami') tactics. The only 'talks' Petraeus secured were with tribal leaders who demanded millions of dollars up front. Otherwise he failed to attract any sector of the insurgency. Petraeus proved to be an armchair tactician, wise on public relations 'techniques,' but mediocre in coming to grips with the 'decolonization' political framework in which tactics might work.

Petraeus Double Discourse

Commander Petraeus was quick to grasp the difficulty of his colonial mission. Just a month after taking command, he engaged in the same sophistry and double discourse of any colonial general confronted with an unwinable war. To keep the flow of funds and troops from Washington he talked of the "reduction of killings and discontent in Baghdad," cleverly omitting the increase of civilian and US deaths elsewhere. He mentioned 'a few encouraging signs' but also admitted that it is 'too early to discern significant trends.'6 In other words the 'encouraging signs' he expressed to the White House were of no military importance!
From the beginning Petraeus gave himself an open-ended mission by extending the time frame to secure Baghdad. He shifted the goal posts from days and weeks to 'months' and years. Playing with indefinite time frames in which to evaluate his performance, was a coy way to prepare the US public for prolonged warfare — with few positive results. There is nothing like a failed general acting as a political panderer covering his ass in anticipation of military defeat.

As a military intellectual, Petraeus surely has read George Orwell's 1984because he was so fluent in double-speak. In one breath he spoke of "no immediate need to request more US troops to be sent to Iraq," on the other he called for 30,000 additional troops as part of what he called 'the surge.' In March 2008, he spoke of big advances in security and one month later he demanded a 'pause' because the puppet regime and army were not capable of defending themselves without US backing.

Petraeus' political manipulation of troop numbers and his blatant lies about the security situation in Iraq prepared the ground for a greater military escalation in the region. "Right now we do not see other requests (for troops) looming out there. That's not to say that some emerging mission oremerging task will not require that, and if it does then we will ask for that." [my emphasis]7 First there's a 'surge' then there is an 'emerging mission' and suddenly there are another fifty thousand troops on the ground and in the meat-grinder that is Iraq, seven battleship and aircraft carriers off the Persian and Lebanese coasts, thousands more troops in Afghanistan and $175 billion dollars in military spending added to the 2008 federal budget.

Petraeus Political Ambitions

The General is a fine master of 'double speak.' Yet despite superb media performances before his colleagues in the White House and Congress, Petraeus' military strategy is doomed to go down the same road of political-military defeat as his predecessors in Indo-China. His military police have jailed tens of thousands of civilians and killed and injured many more. They were interrogated, tortured and perhaps some were 'broken.' But many more took their place turning the Green Zone into a war zone under siege. Petraeus' real security policy through intimidation 'held' only as long as the armored cars patrolled each neighborhood, pointing their cannons at every building. That proved to be a temporary solution. As soon as the troops moved on, the insurgents returned. The insurgents re-emerge after a week because they live and work there, whereas the Marines do not and neither do the Iraqi collaborators dare. Petraeus ran a costly colonial army, which suffers endless casualties and is not politically sustainable. Petraeus knows that, so he chose a political route upward and out of immediate command in Iraq, shifting the burden for failure to his replacement Lieutenant General Ray Odierno.

General Petraeus realized his long-term political ambitions exceeded his military abilities. Militarism is a stepping-stone to a higher post in Washington. Since only winning generals or draft dodgers are elected President, Petraeus, like McCain, must present failure as success.

In his Senate testimony of April 8-9, 2008, Petraeus lied to Congress and the American people about the US military failures, fabricating accounts of progress, in order to bolster the sagging fortunes of his political patron, President Bush. His Senate testimony and press conferences were designed to bolster Bush's total loss of credibility: he claimed that the war was being won, Iraq was stabilized, security and peace were 'around the corner' and that we should go to war with Iran.

If the media uncritically swallowed Petraeus testimony, the public didn't and a host of former generals and admirals were chagrined, embarrassed and outraged that he was advancing his career by sucking up to President Bush and Israel at the expense of the troops serving under him.

Petraeus Panders to Israel's Fifth Column: The Iran Threat

By the spring of 2008, as the war turned from bad to worse, as the insurgency grew in power and his leadership and strategy was transparently a sham, Petraeus played his last formidable political card. To sustain his position and cover up his defeats in Basra, and his inability to lower US casualties or even defend the Green Zone, he blamed Iran. It was Petraeus who charged Iranian weapons were blowing up US armored carriers; Iranian agents were training the Iraqi resistance and defeating his army of 200,000 Iraqi collaborators. Petraeus could not face the fact that he was losing Iraq. He deflected attention from the failure of his entire military-political strategy in Iraq by dragging in Iran as a key military player.
In pointing to Iran, Petraeus played the dangerous game of echoing the Israeli line and providing support for a military attack on Iran promoted by the leadership of the Major American Jewish Organizations.

Even while Petraeus was covering up his failure by blaming Iran, the Iraqi puppet government was praising the Iranian government for helping to stabilize the country, using its influence on the Shia militias to hold their fire. Puppet Prime Minister Maliki invited the Iranian President to Baghdad, signed trade agreements and praised their co-operation and efforts to stabilize the country.

The only organized group, which took up Petraeus', campaign to blame Iran for the US defeats was the Zionist Power Configuration in the US. In the Congress, media and public forums, Zionists amplified and backed Petraeus. They see him as a critical ally in countering the National Intelligence Report absolving Iran of having a program to develop nuclear weapons. No other high military commander, in Europe or the US, took up Petraeus call to arms against Iran… except the Israeli military command. It is a sad commentary on the state of the US military when generals advance to the highest posts by flattering and propagandizing for the most discredited American president in memory and advance the agenda of power brokers for a foreign power.

General Petraeus, in his advance from Commander of US and 'allied' forces in Iraq to head of the US Central Command overseeing current US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and overseeing future wars with Iran, Lebanon and Syria, has left behind a bitter legacy of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths, an unreliable Iraqi 'quisling' army, a failed client regime and a vast US bunker under constant attack. Every military official and most experts know that he was 'Bush's man' and his advances were very much a product of the White House and its pro-Israel backers in the Congress.
Conclusion

The advance of Petraeus is a victory of the Zionist Power Configuration in its quest for American military leaders willing to pursue Israel's agenda of sanctions and war against Iran. That is why the ZPC was a factor in the ousting of Admiral William Fallon, and why the main propaganda bulletin (the Daily Alert) of the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations worked for and hailed his promotion to military overseer of the Middle East wars. AIPAC and their bought and bonded Senators ensured Petraeus an easy time during his confirmation hearing and his unanimous endorsement. His appointment marks the first time that the Zionist Power Configuration has trumped the views and opinions of the majority of active and retired American military officers. How far Petraeus will go in 'paying back' his debt to his long-term Zionist backers for his meteoric rise remains to be seen. What is certain is that they will demand that he line up with the State of Israel in pushing forth toward a war with Iran.

It is neither military honor, nor patriotism, which will restrain Petraeus from pursuing the Zionist War for Israel agenda — but his future presidential ambitions. He will have to calculate whether a second Middle East war, which will please Israel and billionaire American (?) Zionist political fundraisers can offset voter discontent resulting from a war in which the price of oil will rise to $300 dollars a barrel and cost several tens of thousands of American casualties, will further his political ambitions.

The US has degenerated into a sorry state of affairs when its future course depends on the political calculus of a feckless General, a failed counter-insurgency 'expert' and ambitious politician pandering to billionaire political contributors working for a foreign colonial power.

Financial Times, March 3-4, 2007 p.2. # #
USA Today, April 22, 2008. #
Guardian, March 6, 2007. #
Chris Floyd 'Ulster on the Euphrates: The Anglo-American Dirty War.' #
BBC, 3/8/2007. #
Aljazeera, 3/8/2007. #
AlJazeera, 3/8/2006. #

James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50-year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). His latest books are The Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press, 2006) and Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, Militants (Clarity Press, 2007). He can be reached at:jpetras@binghamton.edu. Read other articles by James, or visit James's website.