100 Years in Iraq and Afghanistan - Making It So

AEY, Inc - awarded $48.7M from a $298M contract in 2007, U.S. Army - weaponry for Afghani forces.

They may still have contracts in Iraq.

On Friday, a federal grand jury indicted arms dealer AEY and four company officials on charges, among others, that they committed procurement fraud and lied to U.S. officials about the origin of Chinese manufactured ammunition supplied by the company to Afghan forces in Afghanistan pursuant to a U.S. Government contract. Section 126.1 of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations provides that it is the policy of the United States to deny approvals for exports and imports of defense articles originating in China.

Today, Henry Waxman, the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, released a letter detailing evidence the Chairman said suggested that John L. Withers, II, the U.S. ambassador to Albania, was involved in efforts to conceal the origin of the Chinese ammunition. The Chinese-made ammunition was being sold to AEY by the Albanian Ministry of Defense through the Military Export Import Company of Albania (MEICO). -- ExportLaw Blog

MEICO is the Albanian piece of the Albanian-Rwandan-Israeli-South-African-United-Kingdom weaponizing of Africa. This has fueled and enabled the genocides and rapes and systematic destruction of the civilian population of Africa.

Efraim Diveroli's AEY Inc., his father Michael Diveroli's Worldwide Tactical, and his uncle Bar-Kochba Botach's Botach Tactical -- are listed in federal contractor databases as "disadvantaged" or "minority owned." Their claim is that they are Hasidic Jews, but in fact, they merely converted for a brief time, and do not follow the proscriptions and practices of the Hasidic order.

The Bountiful, Utah, owner of Vector Arms, Ralph G. Merrill, was also arrested, having provided some management advice to AEY.

Note that the eastern European countries that AEY had obtained ammunition from for the Afghani forces, had offered to DONATE it to Afghanistan: in December 2007 the President of Albania traveled to Iraq and made a personal offer to David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker to provide the ammo free of charge.

See more of Matthew Blake's coverage of this at the Washington Independent -

The Pentagon found earlier this year that AEY had sent crates of rifle cartridges to Afghanistan that had "disintegrated from extensive termite damage." Some of the ammunition was more than 60 years old. Asked by the Pentagon what happened, an unidentified AEY official admitted that he had delivered "shit ammo" to Afghanistan security forces.

AEY was the principle weapons supplier for security forces fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban. -- AEY Official Admitted Termite-Damaged Ammo Was No Good

Also note Lindsay Beyerstein's historical coverage of AEY, Botach, and Kley Zion.



Summing up: The Pentagon has awarded weapons contracts to a firm, which is, more than likely involved in the weaponizing of Africa, and has provided inferior weaponry and ammo to the native Afghani forces fighting the "former" CIA assets, al Qaeda, and in all likelihood, still have contracts in Iraq, probably supplying the native Iraqi forces, in their fight against those "former" CIA assets.

How better to ensure that your forces will be needed ... for the next 100 years ... than by providing the worst equipment and ammo to the native troops?



ed.: Two Americans killed 3 years ago in Iraq - Dale Stoffel/Wye Oak Technology and Joseph Wemple/CLI - weapons "refurbishment", repurposing, and .... "coal and mineral processing". Is there another "IranContra" effort going on between the DRC and Iraq? Coltan for weapons?

Note - Coltan was a major cargo for Viktor Bout. Bout flew thousands of flights of weapons supplies into Iraq.

IranContra Redux

IranContra - as was practiced in the 1980s - had an essential element, the drug trade, which was documented by Gary Webb.

IranContra 2.0 - as is practiced now - appears to have a toe in same said niche. See Bill Conroy's Special to The Narco News Bulletin (March 11, 2008, U.S. Cocaine-Plane Invasion Spooking Latin America, Trail of Evidence Points to Major Covert Operation Targeting Venezuela).

In IranContra 1.0, the US sold weaponry to Iran for the Iraq-Iran War (the US also sold weaponry to Saddam Hussein for that war), .... after the Islamic Revolution in Iran in which the US embassy staff were held hostage. Within months of Reagan taking office, the Iranians experienced a miraculous turnaround and began winning battles. The weapons shipments to them may have been payback for "October Surprise" (ceasing all communication with the Carter Administration and not releasing the hostages until after Reagan's inauguration). Adelino Amaro da Costa- defense minister of Portugal objected to the shipments of weaponry from and through Portugal, destined for Iran - was assassinated immediately after going public and threatening to elevate it to the UN. See Paul Mitchell's Portugal: inquiry concludes bomb killed Prime Minister Carneiro in 1980 (10 January 2005) on the World Socialist Website:

A new parliamentary inquiry into the deaths of the Portuguese prime minister and defence minister in 1980 has concluded they were the victims of a bomb blast on board their aircraft....

...In December 2004, Nuno Melo, president of the latest commission of inquiry, announced, “We have evidence of an explosive device placed under the floor of the pilot’s cabin, which had sufficient strength to damage control cables and injure the pilots.” Melo explained that chemical analysis of the plane wreckage demonstrated the presence of potassium and lead, which can be used to make a bomb. “It seems sufficiently clear to me that the Cessna 421A crashed at Camarate during the night of December 4, 1980 due to sabotage,” Melo stated.

Melo also suggested that a possible motive for the assassinations was illegal gun running from Portugal to Iran during the 1980 Iranian hostage crisis. The seizure of 52 hostages in the US Embassy in Teheran was the culmination of the Iranian Revolution of 1978/79. Following the overthrow of the last government appointed by the Shah of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini assumed power. The inability of President Carter to secure the hostages’ release contributed to his unpopularity and helped spell defeat for Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election.

According to the commission, da Costa had cancelled a shipment of guns from Portugal to Iran which then resumed five days after his death. More guns were sent from Portugal to Iran on January 22, 1981—two days after President Reagan’s inaugural speech, during which he announced the release of the hostages.

Other evidence presented to the commission alleges that the guns, re-labelled as farm machinery, were shipped with the help of Army Marshall Costa Gomes, who was Portuguese president from 1974-1976, and Admiral Pinheiro de Azevedo, who was prime minister in 1975. Two former members of the right-wing terrorist group Commandos in Defence of Western Civilisation (Codeco) admitted they knew who had planted the bomb.

The theory that the ministers were assassinated to cover up a secret US arms deal with Iran involving shipments via Portugal has been pursued by Ricardo Sa Fernandez, the lawyer representing the relatives of the crash victims, who is also a former Portuguese finance minister.

In his book, The Crime of Camarate, Sa Fernandez claims the intended victim of the plane crash was actually da Costa. He says da Costa had discovered documents showing that Portuguese army officers secretly helped send arms to Iran in a deal between officials linked to 1980 presidential and vice-presidential candidates Reagan and George Bush Senior, and intended to raise the issue at the United Nations Security Council....

IranContra 1.0 involved selling weaponry to a nation who sanctioned the kidnapping of US personnel (in Tehran and Beirut) ... supposedly our enemies ... and laundering monies through the Savings & Loans ... and buying cocaine from Colombians and distributing it to gangs in major US cities ... in order to support the Contras in Nicaragua ... and negotiate the return of the Beirut hostages (CIA's station chief in Beirut, William Buckley, & others).

We've already identified the 'mortgage industry' as being a good candidate for providing the laundering end of IranContra 2.0. If the same said operation were being executed now, exactly what 'militias' are being trained and supported by the CIA? In the 1980s, it was the Contras, with the 'mujihadeen' in Afghanistan probably also benefitting from a drug-profits slush fund.

What militias seem to have a steady supply of weaponry nowadays? The scale of this operation may not be just for Palestinian civil war.

Perhaps the question will bring it all home when its phrased ... what INSURGENTS seem to have a steady supply of weaponry nowadays? ... Iraq, Afghanistan, and as of lately, Pakistan. Note that particular Baluchs (traditional opposition to the Pakistani government) have reported being trained by both US & UK military and intelligence officials.

What is the ostensible justification for continued US presence in those nations? The Insurgencies and the instability they have brought for Iraq and Afghanistan.

What if there were no insurgency? What if someone threw a war and nobody came to fight? Who was supplying personnel and funds to the insurgency in Iraq? Our old friends from the 'funding the mujihadeen' days ... the Saudis.

Cleanup has already begun ... Viktor Bout was arrested and extradiction is being pursued by the US (from Thailand, "suspicion of attempting to ship arms to American agents who were posing as Farc rebels in Colombia"), and this was supposedly engineered by DEA unbeknownst to the CIA. Uh-huh. Sounds like someone from the CIA dropped a dime on the merchant of death.

Ciara Durkin had seen / discovered something happening at the Bagram Air Base right about the time its airport was upgraded to accommodate C-5's, which enabled the bypassing of all CENTCOM refueling bases - something so out of the norm that she warned her family to investigate, in the event of her untimely death. Had she discovered the weapons and/or the heroin drugs end of IranContra 2.0? She was killed - execution-style - shot to the head - on the secure Bagram Base.

Heroin and/or poppies from Afghanistan, for eventual heroin distribution into the former Soviet Union, Europe and the UK via the CIA's creature in the Balkans - the Kosovars; cocaine runs to the U.S. from Colombia and Venezuela; laundering the cash through the mortgage industry; supplying weapons to insurgencies in at least 3 nations. Seymour Hersch identified one of the operations - The Redirection, (March 5, 2007).

What does this mean? We're funding and supplying folks to fight our troops?

I believe that's called treason in a time of war. Its not the first foray into that for the Bush family (see Ben Aris and Duncan Campbell's How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power on The Guardian (UK), and Webster Tarpley's work).

Abdul Salaam - Afghan warlord who fought against coalition now a governor

Nick Meo reports on the Times (UK, January 9, 2008, Taleban warlord gets new job as governor):

A feared Taleban commander who fought against British troops until he changed sides has been named governor of the key town of Musa Qala.

The appointment of Abdul Salaam to the crucial job was hailed last night by the Afghan Government, which is redoubling British-supported efforts to persuade Taleban commanders to end their armed struggle.

Officials hope that persuading Mullah Salaam, formerly one of their most ferocious enemies, to “reconcile” will encourage other Taleban commanders to change sides....

...the appointment will be opposed bitterly by many anti-Taleban Afghans who fear that the reconciliation process will allow fundamentalists to return to power, at least at local level. It will also put British soldiers in the unusual position of working closely with a man who was pledged to kill them a few weeks ago.

During the ten months when the Taleban ran Musa Qala, a key opium bazaar town in the north of Helmand, Afghans accused of being British spies were hanged in public, and suspected government collaborators were tortured. Heroin was traded openly in the town, and an estimated half a billion dollars of drugs were stockpiled there. Mullah Salaam was an important leader in the town during that time....

...Yesterday the new governor said that the Taleban had been divided for a while in Musa Qala but the majority were behind him.

“There are two groups of Taleban fighters in Musa Qala and I have the backing of the major one. The Taleban who are against peace and prosperity in Afghanistan, I will fight them,” he said.

The appointment comes soon after two senior international officials from the UN and EU were ordered to leave the country by President Karzai, who accused them of trying to negotiate with Taleban commanders in Musa Qala....

U.S. Marines Shot At & Killed Innocent Civilians

Jay Price reports for the News & Observer (Raleigh, NC; Witness: Marines fired on harmless civilians, Jan 8, 2008):

CAMP LEJEUNE — After they were attacked by a car bomb, a Marine Special Operations unit drove down an Afghan highway for several miles shooting at — and apparently killing — motorists who posed them no threat, said the first witness Tuesday in an unusual hearing into the incident.

A former counterintelligence Marine with the unit said that as the convoy was returning to its base the turret gunner in the Humvee in front of him shot at “at least five and fewer than twenty” vehicles.

The Marine, former Staff Sgt. Nathaniel Travers, described seeing flashes of ugly scenes as he drove past cars careening off the road. Other cars were stopped, he said, with slumped occupants, including the frightened face of a child in the back seat of a car.

“I really felt that there were a lot of people that died that day who didn’t need to,” he said. “They were just driving their cars.”

Travers' account was similar to that given by civilian witnesses to an Afghan human rights group after the March 4 incident. As many as 19 people were killed and up to 50 wounded, according to earlier reports....

...None of the 30 Marines on the patrol has been charged with a crime. The hearing was ordered to examine the facts and evidence....

...The hearing, called a court of inquiry, is believed to be the first of its type help by the Marines in more than 50 years. Information that comes out of it could lead to legal charges, but the hearing is an administrative procedure to sort out the facts and evidence.

$15B a month - cost of wars

From Walter Pincus at the Washington Post (repost on The Age (Australia)) :

THE cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the worldwide battle against terrorism has hit almost half a billion dollars a day, a US senator says.

"This cost of this war is approaching $US15 billion ($A17 billion) a month, with the army spending $US4.2 billion of that every month," said Ted Stevens, one of the Senate's leading proponents of a continued US military presence in Iraq....

...Pentagon spokesmen would not comment on Senator Stevens' figure but said their latest estimate for monthly spending for Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terrorism was $US11.7 billion....

EU & UN Reps Expelled from Afghanistan; UK's MI6 Negotiated with Taliban

Deutsche Welle reports today:

A government official said that acting European Union mission head Michael Semple and senior UN official Mervyn Patterson had held an illegal meeting with members of the Taliban and must leave by Thursday, Dec. 27.

"It is the government's last decision. They are persona non grata," Reuters quoted an anonymous Afghan official as saying.

The press officer for the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, Nilab Mobarez, said the organization hoped to quickly clear up the situation so Patterson, who would leave the country on Thursday, could soon return....

...Semple, an Irishman, and Patterson, a Briton, were charged with having talks with the Taliban in the southern province of Helmand without the knowledge of the government in Kabul, which accused them of endangering the security and sovereignty of Afghanistan.

NATO and Afghan troops this month drove the Taliban out of the province, which is the heart of Afghan's drug-producing poppy production. The radical Islamists had controlled the region for the previous 10 months.

Thomas Harding and Tom Coghlan at The Telegraph have this revelation:

...The diplomatic row blew up after the Telegraph revealed that agents from MI6 entered secret talks with Taliban leaders despite Gordon Brown's pledge that Britain would not negotiate with terrorists.

Officers from the Secret Intelligence Service staged discussions, known as "jirgas", with senior insurgents on several occasions over the summer.

An intelligence source said: "The SIS officers were understood to have sought peace directly with the Taliban with them coming across as some sort of armed militia. The British would also provide 'mentoring' for the Taliban."

The disclosure comes only a fortnight after the Prime Minister told the House of Commons: "We will not enter into any negotiations with these people." Opposition leaders said that Mr Brown had "some explaining to do".

The Government was apparently prepared to admit that the talks had taken place but Mr Brown was thought to have "bottled out" just before Prime Minister's Questions on Dec 12, when he made his denial instead.

It is thought that the Americans were extremely unhappy with the news becoming public that an ally was negotiating with terrorists who supported the September 11 attackers.

MI6's meetings with the Taliban took place up to half a dozen times at houses on the outskirts of Lashkah Gah and in villages in the Upper Gereshk valley, to the north-east of Helmand's main town.

The compounds were surrounded by a force of British infantry providing a security cordon.

To maintain the stance that President Hamid Karzai's government was leading the negotiations the clandestine meetings took place in the presence of Afghan officials.

"These meetings were with up to a dozen Taliban or with Taliban who had only recently laid down their arms," an intelligence source said. "The impression was that these were important motivating figures inside the Taliban."

The Prime Minister had denied reports of talks with the Taliban under questioning from David Cameron, the Tory leader, in Parliament....

PART III - British soldiers killed with US weapons

PART III

Now to the drugs side of the equation --

Peter Dale Scott (Berkeley) has chronicled the drug distribution operations of "The Meta Group" (which involves "Far West"):

... some of Far West's work with Halliburton is apparently approved by the CIA....

...Russian sources estimate that from 1991 to 2003 the same group shipped to Western Europe up to 300 tons of heroin and sold it to wholesale buyers of Kosovo Albanian nationality. In the same period they sold up to 60 tons of heroin to Azeri and Roma (gypsy) wholesalers in the Volga and the Urals Federal Districts of Russia. The group's total receipts for heroin in 1991-2003 are estimated to be $5 billion. The chief narco-baron of the group is said to be Vladimir Filin, who is also the head of Far West....

Note at the end of September, Army National Guard Spc. Ciara Durkin, stationed at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, was murdered - shot once through the head, her body found near a Church on base. She had warned her family during her most recent visit that she had seen some things she didn't like and had made enemies because of it.

Note that Bagram runways had just been upgraded to be able to support C-5s -- the largest airlifter in the Air Force inventory and has the ability to carry 36 pallets of cargo, it has unlimited range through aerial refueling, and could bypass the main (U.S. Central Command area of responsibility) hubs.

Note the opium "golden arteries" into Iran & Turkey, and into the Caucasus countries.

And note that heroin abuse is up at least fold, possibly 15 fold in the Caucasus countries, and is increasing in Russia (80,000 drug-related deaths are registered annually in Russia; 350,000 drug addicts were registered in the country at the end of 2006; 70% of those people who admitted to drug use are under the age of 30).

Also note that Charles D. Riechers, principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition for the USAF was "suicided".

Ciara Durkin's family has gone to their Senator, John Kerry, for assistance investigating the matter. Note this is the same John Kerry who was responsible for producing the COVER-UP/BRUSH UNDER THE CARPET report for the Congressional IranContra investigation.

Bringing this up-to-date: Buzzy resigned from Blackwater's advisory board; the State Department's security chief Richard Griffin was forced to resign; then Cookie resigned from the State Department / Blackwater investigations, and then, from the State Department itself.

Has our illustrious media missed yet another story of USG-sponsored drug running for weapons?

Were the plans for IranContra merely re-architected for Afghanistan-Iraq-Lebanon?

Karzai says German Army needed for next 10 years in Afghanistan

Deutsche Welle has the story on this:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the German army would be needed in Afghanistan for the next 10 years, at the least, to keep the peace and restore basic infrastructure.

In an interview with German mass-selling daily Bild, published on Friday, Dec. 21, Karzai asked the Germans to be patient with their peacekeeping mission.

"We need more time," he told the paper. "Rebuilding will take longer than we expected. I suspect it could take a further 10 years -- at least 10 years."...

...Germany has been heavily involved in the NATO-led ISAF peacekeeping mission to Afghanistan since 2002. It has around 3,000 troops in the relatively calmer north of the country, who are largely responsible for civilian reconstruction projects and peacekeeping.

Karzai emphasised that Germany stood to benefit hugely from its engagement in Afghanistan.

"When people in Afghanistan today take care of their own lives, it means security for Europe and Germany," he said. "In places where terrorists and our neighbors try to [steer things], it means disaster -- even for Germany. That means the Afghans have both things in their power: Afghanistan's security as well as Germany's security."...

...Earlier this month, Germany's lower house of parliament voted to extend the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan by another year. The mission has claimed the lives of 26 German soldiers so far....

Taliban "former insurgents" invited back into Afghani government

Doug Saunders at the Toronto Globe & Mail has the story on Britain's (and Canada's) move towards the Karzai inclusion:

Britain will support deals with Taliban insurgents to give them places in Afghanistan's new government and military, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced yesterday....

... Mr. Brown said that Britain will join Afghan President Hamid Karzai in making money and job offers to "former insurgents."...

British officials said that this reconciliation process will involve offering salaries, jobs and possibly high-status positions to those Taliban officers and fighters who are part of the Islamic militant organization for non-ideological reasons.

Mr. Brown also pledged £450-million ($932-million Canadian) in extra reconstruction aid, some of which can be used to make offers to erstwhile Taliban insurgents....

Canadian officials in Afghanistan said that their government agencies and diplomats have shifted their position toward embracing Mr. Karzai's approach, although the military has not followed suit.

Mr. Brown made a point of denying that he would engage in larger negotiations that might give the Taliban itself a place in the future of Afghanistan: "Our ojective is to defeat the insurgency by isolating and eliminating their leadership. I make it clear that we will not enter into any negotiations with these people."

Significantly, Mr. Brown added: "And we will support the government in their efforts to reconcile all parties to Afghanistan's democratic constitution."

By emphasizing "all parties," military officials said, Mr. Brown seemed to indicate that even those Taliban officers and soldiers who appear on the military's terrorist blacklist could be eligible for deals - a sharp break with the current positions of U.S. and Canadian military officials, who have repeatedly insisted that no talks will take place with terrorists.

The United States offers the poorly funded Peace Through Strength Program, which encourages Taliban fighters to lay down their arms, but offers little more than amnesty from prosecution in exchange. Mr. Karzai represents the other extreme: He has said that even Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban and former ruler of Afghanistan, could be party to negotiations.

Mr. Brown's new strategy is far closer to Mr. Karzai's in that it theoretically extends jobs and status to all but the highest Taliban officials, thus placing Canada in a potentially awkward position with its NATO partners.

"The aim here is to split the officer corps of the Taliban, making an escape from insurgency appealing, especially to those who are participating mainly for financial reasons," an official at Britain's Department of Defence said yesterday.

While the most senior leaders of the Taliban wouldn't be considered, most other figures, including those who may have participated in terrorism, would not necessarily be exempt.

Canadians to be in Afghanistan at least until 2015

Thursday's Toronto Globe & Mail has Murray Brewster's Canadian Press report on the plans for Canadian presence in Afghanistan:

The Foreign Affairs Department has developed plans to keep a Canadian provincial reconstruction base in Kandahar until at least 2015, federal officials say.

The department has also started recruiting diplomatic staff to fill posts at the base for one-year assignments that stretch beyond Parliament's self-imposed deadline of February, 2009, for an end to the military mission.

Sources within the department said the two diplomatic openings currently being filled run from the fall of next year to the fall of 2009.

The provincial reconstruction base, nestled in an old fruit-canning factory in a Kandahar suburb, was set up in 2005.

It functions as the headquarters for Canada's reconstruction efforts, giving development officials, the RCMP and corrections officers a secure location from which to help Afghans rebuild their shattered country.

The base, while protected by the Canadian military, is entirely separate from the combat units, located at Kandahar Airfield, NATO's principal base in southern Afghanistan.

Contingency plans for a long-term Canadian diplomatic and development presence in the war-torn city were initially drawn up in the spring of 2006, not long after the Conservatives came to office and at the same time that an extension to the military mission was proposed, diplomatic sources said.

The proposal apparently has so-called "off-ramps" that would allow Ottawa to withdraw, or hand over the Kandahar base to another country.

But the first opt-out date is not until 2011, the same year an international agreement to rebuild Afghanistan expires, the sources indicated.

Coincidentally, 2011 is the same year the Conservative government chose in its Throne Speech as an extension for Canada's military commitment...