General Petraeus and the Neo-Con connection

This is like something from one of us crazy conspiracy theorists.

Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.

From Chris Matthews at MSNBC:

Fred and Kimberly Kagan are hawks. They share the ideology of those who backed the Iraq War. Why are they on the inside of an administration elected based on its opposition to the Iraq war?

I am one of those who believed from square one that the war in Iraq was an ideological war pushed from the outset by those who wanted us to overthrow the Iraq government and install ourselves in Baghdad. They got their way under a less-than-informed President, George W. Bush. Now we discover that a pair of them, the Kagans, have been right there in the room with the head of the Afghan mission, advising him every step of the way.

Why? Why did General Petraeus assume the right to allow people who represent the very opposite of President Obama’s philosophy to advise him? What agenda was his seeking here? What was he buying into? Was he buying into the hawkish agenda of those who advocated war on Iraq in the first place? If so, why was he working for President Obama who stood out there against that war?

I have to think that Petraeus either doesn’t understand politics and ideology or he shapes his ideology, or accepts the ideology of those who have stood against Obama from the beginning. This is really strange, really strange and someone in the administration better start paying attention to who is getting into the tent and who they are indeed working for.

Kimberly and Frederick Kagan are very interesting people indeed, close to the American Enterprise Institute and similar neo-con hit-squads. As Matthews asks, why were they "advising" Petraeus?

The Washington Post has the whole timeline of neo-con infiltration of the Obama administration:

Frederick and Kimberly Kagan, a husband-and-wife team of hawkish military analysts, put their jobs at influential Washington think tanks on hold for almost a year to work for Gen. David H. Petraeus when he was the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Provided desks, e-mail accounts and top-level security clearances in Kabul, they pored through classified intelligence reports, participated in senior-level strategy sessions and probed the assessments of field officers in order to advise Petraeus about how to fight the war differently.

Their compensation from the U.S. government for their efforts, which often involved 18-hour workdays, seven days a week and dangerous battlefield visits?

Zero dollars.

Although Fred Kagan said he and his wife wanted no pay in part to remain “completely independent,” the extraordinary arrangement raises new questions about the access and influence Petraeus accorded to civilian friends while he was running the Afghan war.

Petraeus allowed his biographer-turned-paramour, Paula Broadwell, to read sensitive documents and accompany him on trips. But the entree granted the Kagans, whose think-tank work has been embraced by Republican politicians, went even further. The four-star general made the Kagans de facto senior advisers, a status that afforded them numerous private meetings in his office, priority travel across the war zone and the ability to read highly secretive transcripts of intercepted Taliban communications, according to current and former senior U.S. military and civilian officials who served in the headquarters at the time.

The Kagans used those privileges to advocate substantive changes in the U.S. war plan, including a harder-edged approach than some U.S. officers advocated in combating the Haqqani network, a Taliban faction in eastern Afghanistan, the officials said.

The pro-bono relationship, which is now being scrutinized by military lawyers, yielded valuable benefits for the general and the couple. The Kagans’ proximity to Petraeus, the country’s most-famous living general, provided an incentive for defense contractors to contribute to Kim Kagan’s think tank. For Petraeus, embracing two respected national security analysts in GOP circles helped to shore up support for the war among Republican leaders on Capitol Hill.

Fred Kagan, speaking in an interview with his wife, acknowledged the arrangement was “strange and uncomfortable” at times. “We were going around speaking our minds, trying to force people to think about things in different ways and not being accountable to the heads” of various departments in the headquarters, he said.

The extent of the couple’s involvement in Petraeus’s headquarters was not known to senior White House and Pentagon officials involved in war policy, two of those officials said. More than a dozen senior military officers and civilian officials were interviewed for this article; most spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

Petraeus, through a former aide, declined to comment for this article.

As war-zone volunteers, the Kagans were not bound by stringent rules that apply to military personnel and private contractors. They could raise concerns directly with Petraeus, instead of going through subordinate officers, and were free to speak their minds without repercussion.

Some military officers and civilian U.S. government employees in Kabul praised the couple’s contributions — one general noted that “they did the work of 20 intelligence analysts.” Others expressed deep unease about their activities in the headquarters, particularly because of their affiliations and advocacy in Washington.

Fred Kagan, who works at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, was one of the intellectual architects of President George W. Bush’s troop surge in Iraq and has sided with the Republican Party on many national security issues. Kim Kagan runs the Institute for the Study of War, which favors an aggressive U.S. foreign policy. The Kagans supported President Obama’s decision to order a surge in Afghanistan, but they later broke with the White House on the subject of troop reductions. Both argue against any significant drawdown in forces there next year.

Petraeus’s successor, Gen. John R. Allen, allowed the Kagans to stay at the headquarters for his first few months on the job last year and permitted them to return for two additional short visits. After the couple’s most recent trip in September, they provided a briefing on the war and other foreign policy matters to the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

The Kagans said they continued to receive salaries from their think tanks while in Afghanistan. Kim Kagan’s institute is funded in part by large defense contractors. During Petraeus’s tenure in Kabul, she sent out a letter soliciting contributions so the organization could continue its military work, according to two people who saw the letter.

On Aug. 8, 2011, a month after he relinquished command in Afghanistan to take over at the CIA, Petraeus spoke at the institute’s first “President’s Circle” dinner, where he accepted an award from Kim Kagan. To join the President’s Circle, individuals must contribute at least $10,000 a year. The private event, held at the Newseum in Washington, also drew executives from defense contractors who fund the institute.

“What the Kagans do is they grade my work on a daily basis,” Petraeus said, prompting chortles from the audience. “There’s some suspicion that there’s a hand up my back, and it makes my lips talk, and it’s operated by one of the Doctors Kagan.”

Now, why would we think that?

What an interesting turn of phrase.

Hopefully, we will be getting more on this... in the meantime, read the entire investigative piece by the Washington Post, which is stellar.

Five of Wands

Five of Wands: Conflict, competition, discord








The Boy Scouts of America were selling some sugared-up substances outside my local grocery store this weekend... and I really really really wanted to walk right up to them and ask, do you let the transgender scouts in? The Girl Scouts do! But I lacked the nerve; the scout-leaders on duty had that hyper-masculine, super-patriotic Toby Keith vibe going on. I could easily see it all escalating into a heated argument, and possibly culminating in a call to Greenville's finest.

Those guys love cops. Some of them ARE cops.

I used to relish that sort of thing, but now I get weary and tired just thinking about it. (sigh) Do we get less radical as we age, or just more sensible? I mean, it would all be a huge waste of time, and could get me locked up besides.

Then again, IS it a waste of time? Could one of those unassuming, plucky little boy scouts be gay or transgender and therefore: silently cheering me on? Could I make a good impression by accident? (I know I have in the past, but I usually only find that out years later.)

Well, I'll never know now. I passed them by and pretended not to hear them when they politely addressed me as ma'am and asked me to buy their sugar-treats. If I had stopped, even for a second, the argumentative questions WOULD have tumbled right out of my mouth. I am old enough now, to Know Thyself well.

Therefore, I know when to keep on walking... unless I have the strength and wherewithal to deal with the various Toby-Keithesque-characters of upstate South Carolina. And at that time and place, I just didn't.

I hope some brave young person, with energy and time to burn, does.

One of those little scouts needs to hear you speak up.

~*~

We watched the whole first season of HOMELAND on DVDs, which was terribly enjoyable but politically disturbing.

Is the CIA really this much of a mess? I shudder to think.

And do we accept this fact without question, just to have some mind-twisting entertainment? Are government-sanctioned, covered-up drone attacks on masses of children now just another plot development?

Saints preserve us.

As when I watched Standard Operating Procedure, I had nightmares after one of the episodes, the one about the drone attacks.

Observations: Nobody plays crazy as well as Claire Danes. Her stream-of-consciousness mania/complaining about not being able to find a green pen (Not blue!) was fantastic. I highly recommend the show for sheer class and talent on display, and yet... I resent the fact of the war, the tortures, the devastation they are dramatizing. But of course, that is all some genuinely high-stakes stuff, isn't it? This makes for some honestly gut-wrenching drama and challenges to the moral sensibility. One's conscience is suddenly thrown into high gear, and how many TV shows can manage to do that?

On the other hand, the danger is that horrifying, harrowing military realities are reduced to the status of a Tom Clancy thriller. I find this disorienting. It leaves a decidedly-unpleasant taste in the mouth. More psychologically sophisticated than John Wayne in Sands of Iwo Jima, to be sure... but still presented as entertainment. And is there any way the CIA does NOT come off as a glamorous occupation, with Claire Danes madly running around risking her life to save the unsuspecting populace? Or, as Peter O'Toole noted in that obscure cult movie, The Stunt Man: "I know a man who made an anti-war movie; a good one. When it was shown in his home town, army enlistment went up six hundred percent."

Is it possible to portray something, anything, in movies and TV without somehow making it interesting and cool?

On the political flip-side, conservatives have often asked this same question about drug abuse. How can one properly dramatize drug abuse and its accompanying devastation, without inadvertently glamorizing drug use as dangerous and edgy?

Because it if weren't, on some level, we wouldn't bother watching.

We don't get the Showtime network, so I will probably not see the second season of HOMELAND in its entirety until it comes out on DVD. (I hope I can resist Googling the spoilers, as I have been known to do.) If the second season can keep up the dramatic tension, it should be excellent. The second season will debut on Showtime at the end of this month.

The nasty snipes at Dick Cheney are obvious, at least. And well-deserved.

~*~

Saturday's radio show podcast is online. Hope you will give us a listen.

Speaking of radio... Bob Jones University has sold their radio station, which had the cutesy call letters of WMUU: World's Most Unusual University. (Nobody ever argued with that.) It will now be converted into still another conservative talk-radio station here in town. Certainly, we know that is a DIRE NEED here in the upstate! (snark)

Swimming upstream, but we are still afloat. One slim hour of lefty-radio in a sea of constant and endless right-wing blather.

It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.

Bring Joe-Bob back to the Drive-In, and other horrifying updates

Joe-Bob Goes to The Drive-In was the name of Joe Bob Briggs' old B-movie column in the Dallas Morning Herald. These reviews were compiled into a very entertaining book by the same name. The book's sequel was titled, of course, Joe-Bob goes back to the drive-in (introduction by Wayne Newton). Both books are totally indispensable and absolutely necessary for any serious trash-culture fan!

Joe-Bob Briggs was really John Bloom, and with his TEXAS MONTHLY writing partner, Jim Atkinson, wrote a very good true-crime account of one woman killing another with an axe. I sure never forgot THAT one! (Aside: An Amazon reader informs us that this woman, Candy Montgomery, is now a nurse in Atlanta... remind me never to go to the hospital in Georgia, for any reason.) He hosted his own TV show for awhile: Joe-Bob's Drive-In Theater. This was one of the great treasures of the 90s, my friends. You may also recall Joe-Bob as the host of the more mainstream 90s cable-show MonsterVision, which brought us some far-out B-movie classics, such as the inimitable Basket Case.

Joe-Bob has been in a few movies himself, and was even in the mini-series of THE STAND, playing a character named Deputy Joe-Bob Brentwood (attesting to Stephen King's excellent B-movie sensibilities). He was also in Martin Scorcese's Casino, one of my favorite movies, where you may remember him getting fired by Robert DeNiro and hollering in protest, "This is not the way to treat people!" (I remember thinking, is that Joe-Bob Briggs he is firing????) Unfortunately, his scenes were deleted from Texas Chainsaw Massacre II, which I am sure upset him terribly.

My question: WHERE is the contemporary Joe-Bob? Why are we Joe-Bobless? It doesn't seem fair that we have no trash-movie impresario on regular TV these days. (Note: I'm sure one of the millions of satellite channels has this kind of programming, but I refer to mass-market TV.) I grew up with horror movies hosted by the incomparable Ghoulardi of Cleveland, and I love that kinda stuff.

Come back, Joe-Bob!!! And no offense, but you can leave your politics back in Texas. Nonetheless, if I have to put up with Libertarian jabber to get some decent B-movies, I am willing to do that.

~*~

Some more stuff:

:: Conspiracy theories! As an ex-Yippie, I eat em for breakfast. (I also figured this would go well with Joe-Bob.) Bin Laden Death Deemed Murder of CIA Case Officer as 9/11 Coverup:

President George W. Bush knew Osama bin Laden was a CIA agent and in no way ever involved in 9/11. He knew bin Laden personally from family visits and knew bin Laden had been to the White House while living in the US under the cover name of “Tim Osmon.”

This has been verified by CIA officials.

It has? Well, color me surprised.

I definitely need to hear more about this one.

:: Monica runs a video from Ellen DeGeneres, calling out the "One Million Moms" (actually only 40,000) who have targeted her as a gay spokesperson for JC Penneys. (I also thought homophobes go well with horror movies, so that is the reason the link goes here.)

:: And finally, from Politico: The political transformation of Barack Obama, which has most assuredly been horrifying.

Add your own, play along at home.

Albert Hofmann 1906-2008

Left: Albert Hofmann shows us the molecule. (But first, are you experienced?) Photo from the New York Times.

~*~

Albert Hofmann was always pretty freaked out by the massive amounts of LSD taken in the USA. No wonder; he seemed transformed by only a small amount. At his 100-year-birthday celebration, covered by the New York Times two years ago, he described the experience of working for Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz Laboratories, isolating rye-grown, poisonous ergot fungus, used successfully by midwives for millennia to precipitate childbirth. He finally isolated the compound, lysergic acid. Tinkering a bit, it was his 25th compound that unlocked the stratosphere, lysergic acid diethylamide.

As legend and myth tell us, if you get any onya, well, kiss it goodbye for 10-12 hours. The stories are never-ending--one of my favorites involves an old friend who was cutting tabs of acid and looked down after about an hour to see his hands melting. (Humorously, he told me "I knew I'd never get any work done with hands like THOSE!")

LSD is tasteless, odorless, colorless and can be absorbed right through the skin. What, did you panic and decide you didn't want any after all? Ha! Too late, babe. Toss your cookies into the toilet all you want, but it's too late, ignition is imminent and your ticket to Andromeda will NOT be canceled, however much you barf up that little tab of paper with Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice printed thereon. You don't even have to swallow it; in fact, when some Yippie (I think it was Paul Krassner) spat on somebody important (possibly Richard Nixon?), law enforcement analyzed the saliva to make sure no LSD was present. (Chatter of dosing Richard Nixon was constant. Not as punishment, but to enlighten him, which as we know, he sorely needed.)

It was said that Hizzoner, Owsley himself, CLOSED THE LAB during the final stage of chemical composition, whatever IT IS that makes it happen. WE ARE CLOSING THE LAB, announced Bear. And if you were inside after the doors closed, you stayed in--and you went to Andromeda with everyone else. Those not ready for space travel waited patiently outside for the batch to be done, several hours it was, and then the magic batch was ready. Owsley's famous product, the veritable Cadillac of psychedelic drugs, then went into the eager hands of the Bay Area's prodigious acidheads, always up for infinite experimentation. The FINAL STAGE (more mythical terms) means one must inhale it, and then, like it's inventor, you are tripping.

At left: Owsley's acid tabs were often printed with R. Crumb's underground comic-book character Mr Natural on them, and this became a sign of quality as well as a brand name: "Does anyone have any Mr Natural?"


In the late 70s, various university towns hosted many tales of disreputable chemists, dropouts from various nearby schools, synthesizing LSD in the garage, but UNWILLING to go to the much-heralded, necessary FINAL STAGE--then selling this inferior, not-completely-synthesized product on the street as acid. Many of the bad trips, muscle-squeezing aches (imitating strychnine poisoning), crashing headaches and other bad side effects of late 70s acid, were said to be caused by this not-LSD, that was known as LSA. I have no way of knowing if these stories are true. Alas, one of the negative side effects of the drug war, then as now, has been to keep people uneducated about the basics; the street thrived on rumor. (And BTW, you are invited to post your own mythology and rumor in the comments!) Personally, I've always enjoyed these stories as spiritual dharma-talk: you know the disreputable acid-manufacturer by the fact that he is not willing to take his LSD himself.

But Dr Hofmann did. Of course, as stated above, he had to.

It was as he was synthesizing the drug on a Friday afternoon in April 1943 that he first experienced the altered state of consciousness for which it became famous. "Immediately, I recognized it as the same experience I had had as a child," he said. "I didn't know what caused it, but I knew that it was important."

When he returned to his lab the next Monday, he tried to identify the source of his experience, believing first that it had come from the fumes of a chloroform-like solvent he had been using. Inhaling the fumes produced no effect, though, and he realized he must have somehow ingested a trace of LSD. "LSD spoke to me," Mr. Hofmann said with an amused, animated smile. "He came to me and said, 'You must find me.' He told me, 'Don't give me to the pharmacologist, he won't find anything.' "

He experimented with the drug, taking a dose so small that even the most active toxin known at that time would have had little or no effect. The result with LSD, however, was a powerful experience, during which he rode his bicycle home, accompanied by an assistant. That day, April 19, later became memorialized by LSD enthusiasts as "bicycle day."

Riding the bicycle, Hofmann famously said "I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his own creation - the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence."(1) Words quoted over and over again, it was the statement heard round the world.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Mr. Hofmann participated in tests in a Sandoz laboratory, but found the experience frightening and realized that the drug should be used only under carefully controlled circumstances.

And this is what brought the CIA knocking. You have WHAT? A scary drug? When the Generals come calling, you know you got trouble.(2)

Thus, Hofmann learned the Gospel Rule of LSD (SET AND SETTING!) before anybody else:

In 1951, [Hofmann] wrote to the German novelist Ernst Junger, who had experimented with mescaline, and proposed that they take LSD together. They each took 0.05 milligrams of pure LSD at Mr. Hofmann's home accompanied by roses, music by Mozart and burning Japanese incense. "That was the first planned psychedelic test," Mr. Hofmann said.

He took the drug dozens of times after that, he said, and once experienced what he called a "horror trip" when he was tired and Mr. Junger gave him amphetamines first. But his hallucinogenic days are long behind him.

"I know LSD; I don't need to take it anymore," Mr. Hofmann said. "Maybe when I die, like Aldous Huxley," who asked his wife for an injection of LSD to help him through the final painful throes of his fatal throat cancer.

But Mr. Hofmann calls LSD "medicine for the soul" and is frustrated by the worldwide prohibition that has pushed it underground. "It was used very successfully for 10 years in psychoanalysis," he said, adding that the drug was hijacked by the youth movement of the 1960's and then demonized by the establishment that the movement opposed.

Indeed, we might name Timothy Leary the PT Barnum of the movement...as we go from bourgeois, ultra-civilized Hofmann and his Mozart (the museum or the drawing room, if you will) to the Merry Pranksters, Ken Kesey, Leary and the Grateful Dead, signifying the carnival, the circus, the traveling show, scary gypsies.(3) As LSD made it's way down the social ladder, it would become more dangerous, as indeed, life on the lower rungs is more fraught with danger in general. Dangerous, my late Native American friend Steve Conliff used to say, like gunpowder or nuclear fission. In the right hands, great, useful, incredible! But in the wrong hands?

I repeat, in the wrong hands? (4) When administering LSD, mind control is fairly easy to accomplish. And it was that hugely scary, almost effortless mind-control--the various vampiristic elements of the counterculture--that gave everyone pause. (They liked to call it "suggestibility" in the mental health literature.) As Leary was busted by none other than G. Gordon Liddy at Millbrook (5) the whole enterprise came crashing down, at least for awhile. But alas, the myth, the legend, the concept, would never die.

"Wanna buy a space ticket/see God?" is a pretty amazing selling-point. As we say in retail, it sells itself. The echoes of Eden, the invitation to bite the forbidden fruit and ye will be as Gods, is just TOO MUCH for some of us.

As lesser psychedelics, such as party-friendly Ecstasy, would take over the kids' market, LSD now remains in the hands of the psychedelic connoisseur, or the interrogator.

And now, the man who gave us the key to the golden door, has passed:

Mr. Hofmann rose, slightly stooped and now barely reaching five feet, and walked through his house with his arm-support cane. When asked if the drug had deepened his understanding of death, he appeared mildly startled and said no. "I go back to where I came from, to where I was before I was born, that's all," he said.

Goodbye, Dr Hofmann. And thank you for Andromeda. It was beautiful.

~*~

1) See Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream by Jay Stevens.

2) Heartily recommend the highly flawed but fascinating LSD-inspired movie, Brainstorm. Not entirely the movie-makers' fault that the movie ends badly, since Natalie Wood died during filming, re-arranging the plot. For a comprehensive account of extensive CIA research into LSD-based interrogation techniques (testing LSD on regular people who had no idea what awaited them), see the invaluable Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties and Beyond by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain.

3) See The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe.

4) See THE FAMILY: The Story of Charles Manson's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion by Ed Sanders--the best book to place the whole Manson-family saga in the social setting of the times. (COURT TV groupies, take note, has tons of great observations, hippie history and creepy connections that you'll never read anywhere else.)

5) For both sides of this bust, see Flashbacks, Timothy Leary's autobiography. G. Gordon Liddy gives his version in his own autobiography, Will. Interestingly, they mirror each other's account of the bust remarkably well. Later, they would serve time in the same prison! (Is America great or what?)