I watched the confirmation hearing for incoming Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Dennis Blair, tonight. Diane Feinstein is now the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It appears that new members of the committee include Carl Levin of Michigan and Republican Jim Risch of Idaho. The ranking member is Kit Bond of Missouri, who has already announced that he is retiring from the Senate in January, 2011. At that point, it’s most likely that Orrin Hatch will take over as the ranking member of Intelligence.
My overall impression of Admiral Blair was favorable. He refused to call waterboarding ‘torture’, but he also promised that the procedure will not be done on his watch. I believe Blair dodged the question for the simple reason that he wants to maintain good relations with members of the intelligence community that may now be facing legal jeopardy for participating in acts that Bush’s Justice Department assured them were legal. I’d prefer everyone drop the bullshit and legalisms, but I understand.
On the whole, I thought Blair was thoughtful, cautious, and committed to the right things. I think he will work on the problems of excessive contracting, overclassification, and lack of oversight and accountability. He appears to understand the problems created for the intelligence community during the Bush years and he has a plan to improve things. I think Blair will be pretty good and he’s a hell of a lot better than crazy James Woolsey who Bill Clinton put in charge of the nation’s intelligence community in 1993.
I’m happy with Blair but much more enthusiastic about Leon Panetta for Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). Between the two of them I think we’ll be able to build an intelligence capability that we can be proud of and that will serve Obama well.
Dennis Blair, the guy who supported and enabled the Indonesian genociders in East Timor – lovely choice! The very same guy who, days after the unbelievably vicious Liquica Church massacre, offered aid and support to Wiranto, the Indonesian commander of the militia that committed that massacre, and did so in defiance of orders from U.S. officials to tell Wiranto to stop the killing and disband his militias. And then he lied and claimed he was unaware of the massacre despite strong documentary evidence that he knew about it.
And Blair’s offer of aid and support encouraged Wiranto, who went on to order more massacres in more churches in East Timor.
No wonder he refused to call waterboarding torture. Oh yeah, if his history is any indication, he sure is committed to the right things – for the Bush regime, maybe.
Panetta, on the other hand, seems to have the right point of view, and I do like that choice based on what I know so far.
Doesn’t this picture make you shivver?
That’s Cohen pulling a Rummy with Wiranto, General in change of Indo’s military during the transition to East Timorese Independence. Indonesia’s military destroyed over 80% of the structures in the entire country and killed and raped hundreds.
This was the 2nd massacre/genocide of the East Timorese that DEMOCRATS have allowed to go unpunished.
Blair made sure of that personally. If he feels otherwise, he needs to address it publicly.
Remind you of any other pictures we’ve seen?
I’m not sure Obama knows how quickly his good will could vaporize if he doesn’t keep up with some of this stuff.
http://www.counterpunch.org/simpson12262008.html
If you want to try the absolute silver lining on the East Timor episode, perhaps it was his dedication to keeping out of foreign entanglements that led him to do what he did during the Clinton era.
Perhaps he felt that part of withdrawing from over-entanglement in the world’s affairs was that you are necessarily less capable to prevent massacre in remote regions, so why not start ignoring them right then and there?
Then again, you want your head spook a little scary.
the Counterpunch piece is a bit of a hatchet job.
It takes a quote where he acknowledges that the TMI has elements participating but notes that there are positive effects from the joint-training and makes it sound like he was denying TMI involvement. It notes that after-reports found that a third of the war criminals were U.S. trained, and suggests that Blair knew that at the time. It blasts him for not insisting on a disbanding of militias without any supporting evidence that he didn’t make that demand. It suggests that his invitation to visit headquarters in Hawaii was somehow at odds with his instructions and says that the State Department complained, but it again supplies no supporting evidence.
The US government did not cover itself in glory during the East Timor episode, but we did eventually sever our military ties. I think you and I both know that the real issue was the decision to create military ties to Indonesia in the first place. We’ve been dealing with the devil in Indonesia for forty years now and it periodically makes us look very bad. Yet, to place the blame for a policy nearly a half-century in the making on the commander of the Pacific fleet seems a little strained. I saw nothing in that report that was documented to concern me.
What about the point that he supposedly failed to execute a direct order from civilian military leadership?
there is no evidence to support the claim. It’s not documented.
he received a few questions about East Timor from Democrats. I think Wyden and Feingold both asked him to explain his role. For his responses, he’s a slippery fuck like he’s supposed to be, but it doesn’t sound like he has any special culpability for what went on there.
Let’s see……Evidence indicates he knew about the Liquica massacre. He was instructed by U.S. officials to order Wiranto to stop brutally massacring people and disband his militias. Instead, knowing about the massacre, and defying instructions from Washington, he met with Wiranto, and offered him additional aid and assistance that encouraged and enabled Wiranto’s murderous activities.
And then he lied about it.
Looks to me kind of like he’s wading, if not swimming in East Timorese blood, and certainly has it dripping from his hands. Maybe THAT’s why he’s kind of slippery – all that blood, you know.
He also invited the General to vacation at his home in Hawaii!
what evidence?
Interestingly enough all google news articles on the subject prior to Sept 9th, 1999 (the eventual cut off ties talk) are gone..’poof’. They are still available from research services, including the DOD briefings where these issues are discussed directly by sources you might find believable such as Rear Admiral Quigley.
If you are a member of ‘Highbeam’ or another such site, you can review the press, DOD releases etc from the time.
Ultimately, Blair bought Indonesia some FUs to get their bloody work done, sacrificing the powerless in exchange for access to resources once again:
Here is text from a release dated days after the church massacre that puts the situation very diplomatically, and of course is among the only articles easily available of the ‘free press’ of the internet:
The whole thing was immoral, which doesn’t seem to bother folks when a Dem does it, but especially so because the delay in sanction was pointless. Pointless because it predictably served no actual American interest.
East Timorese Oil is now directly accessed by Western Oil companies instead of through an Indonesian intermediary. Indonesia had just gone Democratic and Wiranto was on the verge of toppling the Democratically elected president. Cutting off military ties earlier would likely have strengthened the weakened president and made clear our expectations of our economic partners.
As it turned out, none of it mattered, East Timor was decimated to make an example of them (for Aceh, the Mollucas, Central Sulawesi, Irian Jaya and other estive regions) and little changed outside of the fact of murder and near total destruction of a UN recognized nation.
People die when our guys ‘wing’ it.
Special culpability? I don’t think the question is culpability, it’s judgment and obedience. As the story is told, he disobeyed Clinton and made his own call that snuggled us up to Might over Right.
Perhaps that was him taking the blame so Clinton could say one thing and do another, I don’t know. But if the public story is true, do we really need a rogue atop the Intelligence apparatus? Or is that just a role he’s intended to play this time as well?
You know, ‘darn that rogue intelligence community for doing all that evil stuff I told them not to..’
he says the story is bullshit and is supplying Wyden with cables that he says will prove it. He was following U.S. policy and that policy was to offer incentives/threats to stop the killing in East Timor, but not to do anything dramatic to stop it. If you have a link, I’ll read the counter reports…
So, cozying up to the bloodthirsty commander, and offering him money and military aid constitutes incentives/threats – interesting concept.
I don’t think you know what you are talking about.
The commander of the Pacific fleet’s job was to work closely with the Indonesian armed services and government. His job was to oversee a joint training program. That policy was questionable. Ultimately, the relationship could not be sustained because of the situation in East Timor, but that decision had to come from on-high. You might as well object to anyone that has served in a command role in the U.S. military. Oh wait!! You do that.
You are right, BooMan. I never know what I am talking about, especially when it comes to U.S. officials supporting and/or turning a blind eye to the blood and a deaf ear to the screams of innocent people being murdered and tormented by U.S. allies using resources provided by the U.S.
and, you provide no evidence of this ‘blind eye’.
I object to anyone who takes part in doing harm to innocent people for any reason at any time. “Duty” is no excuse.
The only real war heroes are the ones who say “no”.