WTF???? Woodward is on WJ saying that the WH admits Iraq

[napi21]

was not won only with the surge, but there was a "SECRET PLAN" that was the REAL fix, but all he can call it is "newly developed techniques"!!!!!!

The host even asked Bob why he could say THAT much but not tell all, and Bob said "It's TOP SECRET and the surge was only a part"!

First of all, doesn't THAT prove Obama & Biden are right when they say the surge was a part of getting to where we are today, but not THE reason????

[Cassandra]

1. You can pay attention when he drones on?

You know it's only TOP SECRET because he's saving it for the next book.

[dkf]

2. I was reading something on this

They were guessing its some sort of tagging system which tracks whoever the target is and allows them to kill the person.

Sort of "enemy of the state"ish.

[Kalyke]

5. I thought it was because they'd been bribing insurgents to sit it out.

[rurallib]

13. My thought too - but how secret can it be if we know?

I have heard over and over that paying the insurgents was what stopped the violence.

[dkf]

14. bribes aren't top secret...thats sop.

[Gman]

3. Probably referring to the "tagging" technology

for taking out insurgents. SOunds like good stuff that worked. Still doesn't justify an unjust war and occupation.

[leveymg]

12. We know who the Sunni insurgents are because Saudi intel was running them, and has IDed some.

The Sunni insurgency was getting most of its support from a faction of the Saudis. There would have been no effective Sunni resistance without the aid of Saudi intelligence. Now that al-Qaeda in Iraq has outlived its usefulness, the Saudis have turned some of them over to us, and we're paying them now. See, generally, http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com/2008/06/saudi-covert-action-in-iraq-more-cash.html.

This was hardly the first time the Saudis had a major covert operation inside Iraq that compromised U.S. interests, the US Gov't knew about but officially looked the other way and actually covered up. Consider this: http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a94defects#a94defects

1994: US Declines to Accept Documents Exposing Saudi Ties to Islamic Militants and Pakistan’s Nuclear Program
Edit event

Mohammed al-Khilewi, the first secretary at the Saudi mission to the United Nations, defects and seeks political asylum in the US. He brings with him 14,000 internal government documents depicting the Saudi royal family’s corruption, human-rights abuses, and financial support for Islamic militants. He meets with two FBI agents and an assistant US attorney. “We gave them a sampling of the documents and put them on the table,” says his lawyer, “but the agents refused to accept them.” (New Yorker, 10/16/2001) The documents include “details of the $7 billion the Saudis gave to Saddam Hussein for his nuclear program—the first attempt to build an Islamic Bomb.” However, FBI agents are “ordered not to accept evidence of Saudi criminal activity, even on US soil.” (Palast, 2002, pp. 101) The documents also reveal that Saudi Arabia has been funding Pakistan’s secret nuclear weapons program since the 1970s. Furthermore, they show that Pakistan in return has pledged to defend Saudi Arabia with nuclear weapons if it faces a nuclear attack. While US officials do not formally accept the documents apparently the US learns of their content, because author Joe Trento will later claim that the CIA launches a high-level investigation in response to what they revealed. However Trento will add that the outcome of the investigation is unknown. (Trento, 2005, pp. 326)

[leveymg]

18. More on Saudi Covert Operations Supporting the Sunni Insurgency

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/27/world/middleeast/27saudi.html?pagewanted=print

July 27, 2007
Saudis’ Role in Iraq Frustrates U.S. Officials
By HELENE COOPER

This article was reported by Helene Cooper, Mark Mazzetti and Jim Rutenberg, and written by Ms. Cooper.

SNIP

The American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, immediately protested to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, contending that the documents were forged. But, said administration officials who provided an account of the exchange, the Saudis remained skeptical, adding to the deep rift between America’s most powerful Sunni Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, and its Shiite-run neighbor, Iraq.

Now, Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at what they say has been Saudi Arabia’s counterproductive role in the Iraq war. They say that beyond regarding Mr. Maliki as an Iranian agent, the Saudis have offered financial support to Sunni groups in Iraq. Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow.

One senior administration official says he has seen evidence that Saudi Arabia is providing financial support to opponents of Mr. Maliki. He declined to say whether that support was going to Sunni insurgents because, he said, “That would get into disagreements over who is an insurgent and who is not.”

Senior Bush administration officials said the American concerns would be raised next week when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates make a rare joint visit to Jidda, Saudi Arabia.

Officials in Washington have long resisted blaming Saudi Arabia for the chaos and sectarian strife in Iraq, choosing instead to pin blame on Iran and Syria. Even now, military officials rarely talk publicly about the role of Saudi fighters among the insurgents in Iraq.

The accounts of American concerns came from interviews with several senior administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they believed that openly criticizing Saudi Arabia would further alienate the Saudi royal family at a time when the United States is still trying to enlist Saudi support for Mr. Maliki and the Iraqi government, and for other American foreign policy goals in the Middle East, including an Arab-Israeli peace plan.

In agreeing to interviews in advance of the joint trip to Saudi Arabia, the officials were nevertheless clearly intent on sending a pointed signal to a top American ally. They expressed deep frustration that more private American appeals to the Saudis had failed to produce a change in course.

SNIP

The Bush administration’s frustration with the Saudi government has increased in recent months because it appears that Saudi Arabia has stepped up efforts to undermine the Maliki government and to pursue a different course in Iraq from what the administration has charted. Saudi Arabia has also stymied a number of other American foreign policy initiatives, including a hoped-for Saudi embrace of Israel.

Of course, the Saudi government has hardly masked its intention to prop up Sunni groups in Iraq and has for the past two years explicitly told senior Bush administration officials of the need to counterbalance the influence Iran has there. Last fall, King Abdullah warned Vice President Dick Cheney that Saudi Arabia might provide financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in any war against Iraq’s Shiites if the United States pulled its troops out of Iraq, American and Arab diplomats said.

Several officials interviewed for this article said they believed that Saudi Arabia’s direct support to Sunni tribesmen increased this year as the Saudis lost faith in the Maliki government and felt they must bolster Sunni groups in the eventuality of a widespread civil war.

Saudi Arabia months ago made a pitch to enlist other Persian Gulf countries to take a direct role in supporting Sunni tribal groups in Iraq, said one former American ambassador with close ties to officials in the Middle East. The former ambassador, Edward W. Gnehm, who has served in Kuwait and Jordan, said that during a recent trip to the region he was told that Saudi Arabia had pressed other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council — which includes Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman — to give financial support to Sunnis in Iraq. The Saudis made this effort last December, Mr. Gnehm said.

SNIP

The American officials in Iraq also say that the majority of suicide bombers in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia and that about 40 percent of all foreign fighters are Saudi. Officials said that while most of the foreign fighters came to Iraq to become suicide bombers, others arrived as bomb makers, snipers, logisticians and financiers.


SNIP

But Saudi officials have not been too happy with President Bush, either, and the plummeting of America’s image in the Muslim world has led King Abdullah to strive to set a more independent course.

The administration “thinks the Saudis are no longer behaving the role of the good vassal,” said Steve Clemons, senior fellow and director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. The Saudis, in turn, “see weakness, they see a void, and they’re going to fill the void and call their own shots.”

[Philosoraptor]

4. The jerk also said that the war was 'important'

[Heather MC]

7. Of course the war was important

It was important to all the contractors over there making 200K Plus a year
like my best friends triffling baby daddy who still doesn't pay child support

It was important to Exxon, Shell, Bp, and all the other companies who got Oil Leases

It was important to anyone who wasn't statisfied with just screwing over Americans in the Real Estate market to get rich

And it's Important to Republicans who can't win elections without killing soldiers and civilians!

[secondwind]

6. let's face it ..........the surge worked using a combination of bribery, and the

"Sunni awakening", and the "secret new killing techniques", AND 30,000 more troops.

Period.

Obama was right............we should never have gone over there in the first f***** place

[ProfessorGAC]

11. Then It Didn't "Work"

What worked was BRIBERY! You said it! I agree! Without bribing the street thugs into fighting with us instead of against us, nothing would have changed. The number of troops was nearly irrelevant compared to bribery.
The Professor

[leveymg]

8. It's called a "back-channels deal". The Saudis agreed to stop funding Al-Qaeda in Iraq in exchange

for our remaining in Iraq as a gendarme force -- that's essentially what McCain meant by his comment that U.S. forces would be there for 100 years. The Saudis are terrified by the prospect of all those Iraqi Sunnis acting as a destabilizing element, in the way the exiled PLO nearly overthrew the Heshmemite regime in Jordan.

At the same time, Turkey has cooled its offensive against the Kurds, possibly an oil for semi-autonomy deal is in the works.

Lastly, Washington and Tehran have agreed in principle to some sort of accomodation and expanded Iranian role in Shi'a southern Iran.

All this, subject to change without notice. Of course. It's called a truce. We lost. Iraq is splitting up, with or without us. Bush-Cheney-Petraeus called it The Surge, which is essentially a Declare Victory and Get Out end-game strategy.

[PRETZEL]

16. In this context,

from your post,

"Iraq is splitting up, with or without us."

Personally, this comment may actually put Joe Biden's call for splitting up Iraq in the early stages of the conflict in perspective. I tend to think he saw the sphere's of influence and the artificial boundaries in the whole region and reacted to what he felt was tribal influence being greater than national influence.

[leveymg]

21. Iraq is an artificial construct drawn on a map in the British Foreign Office 90 years ago

Without continuous foreign support and a monstrous dictator propped up from abroad, it can not survive as a unitary state, and has already devolved into three autonomous regions tied to regional powers.

[PRETZEL]

23. Agreed,

the continuous foreign support is (to me anyway) nothing more than contractual oil relationships. As the oil goes, so goes the foreign support. Western support in this region and it's reliance on the oil is what fueled the west's industrialization.

There's now too many states in the oil game both on the supply side and on the demand side. It seems that the vaccuum created by the war has only led to an acceleration of the holders of the resources within Iraq making their own power plays and it just may be succeeding.

[leveymg]

26. Absolutely right. Iraq became important in 1912 when Britain converted its Navy from coal to oil.

That decision was made by a young Admiralty Minister named Winston Churchill. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (predecessor to BP) was the result.

The Ottoman Empire and Caliphate were carved up after the First World War, and Britain attempted to occupy the new state of Iraq for the next twenty years, at the cost of 18,000 British casualties. These losses so greatly weakened the British Army's readiness that British forces were decisively defeated and pushed out of France and Europe by the Germans in 1940.

You should read Anthony Sampson's The Prize, by far the best work on the strategic importance of oil and how possession of it determined western history during the 20th Century.

[PRETZEL]

27. Thanks,

I remember reading about this but didn't remember some of the specifics.

[TahitiNut]

28. That describes most of the Middle East as well as Africa.

"Nations" with boundaries drawn by colonial powers for the purposes of subjugation and exploitation, NOT to afford indigenous people with "defensible borders" (God forbid!) or culturally-compatible populations able to assert sovereignty over their own affairs and resources.

If anything, boundaries were drawn in a manner that perpetuates destabilization and social unrest in the tried-and-true "divide and conquer" colonial approach.

[wellst0nev0ter]

9. Some Kind Of Phoenix Program

Same shit, different war.

[leveymg]

10. That was tried and failed - "the Salvador Option" - led to civil war.

Of course, if they want another civil war, they can always just restart the operation.

[dhpgetsit]

15. That was the thrust of his point.

He said that the surge was a necessary part in the strategy to decrease the violence, but only a part.

[sinkingfeeling]

17. US assassination teams to help with the 'ethnic cleansing'?

[Solly Mack]

19. lolol we won but it's a secret how? lmao

roflmao


and some in America will get a chubby over this...all exicted...all happy...too pleased.

lmao

[puebloknot]

20. To have access to TOP SECRET information, Bob Woodward ...

... would have to have a top secret security clearance -- in the best of all possible worlds.

I heard him discussing this on (I think) Larry King, and I came away with the impression that he was talking about (just as you've posted) "newly developed techniques," but I've seen some posts here at DU where "techniques" morphed into "technology," and people were wondering what kind of new secret weaponry is being used in Iraq.

Did you ever play Telephone when you were a kid?

[leveymg]

22. Woodward is an Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) alumn

He was a communications officer and intelligence briefer on the Staff of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs working in the basement of the White House during the Johnson Administration. Woodward had the highest clearances.

Ben Bradlee, his boss at The WaPo, was also ONI.

[puebloknot]

29. I used to work for ONI. Shoulda known that!

I was a secretary, not a spy!

[DumptyHumpty]

24. The surge working was always a lie.

We paid off people not to fight, now they are fighting once again. Bloodshed is going back up in Iraq. You can only buy people off so long.

Let's not forget that their are four million refugees!

[spanone]

25. so woodward has security clearance???? maybe all the pnac'ers do

[Disturbed]

30. Why do the Busholini Cult talk to Woody when they know that

he will make them look like the Assholes that they are?