Sanuk wrote:
In 2010, a US trained police chief in Afghanistan along with several family members were murdered by JSOC operator during a family event. Oh and two pregnant women were killed and bullets were physically removed from bodies to coverup the incident.
The Gardez massacre would still be covered up if it wasn't for the Times (UK) who investigated it and refused to accept the military explanation. It makes you wonder who many times we hear that "insurgents were killed" really means civilians. That's the problem with using JSOC and avoiding Congressional oversight, they can largely do what they want.
http://www.worldcantwait.net/...-the-gardez-massacre
That is precisely why Rumsfeld like expanding the world as a battlefield provision to increase the scope of JSOC into traditional intelligence community territory. The CIA and every other 3 lettered intelligence agency not under DOD has to provide detailed reports and explanations to the congressional intelligence oversight committee. The DOD briefs the armed services committees on what he wants or what they ask. The military is one of the largest depts. with a lot of classified stuff. The below article is pretty interesting and should raise red flags to people critical of Flynn (who by most reports was seen as a reformer in the intelligence community). This wasn't written by the national review, but is based on writing by a former reporter with the Atlantic. Written in 2012. Here he states the following:
Marc Ambinder, a former reporter for
The Atlantic and
National Journal, goes deep inside JSOC to reveal that it has become perhaps the government’s most effective intelligence agency. Unassuming office buildings around the Washington area and beyond have become unlabeled spy centers that process untold volumes of information extracted from JSOC’s hunting missions, with such a rapid analytic turnaround time that the “shooters” of the unit can quickly begin planning their next kills. In fact, Ambinder reports in
The Command, his just-published eBook, the integration of tactical spying within JSOC is so thorough that it’s hard to distinguish “shooters” from analysts.
Yet JSOC operates with practically no accountability. In Iraq, it ran a torture chamber at a place called Camp Nama — until its leader, Stanley McChrystal and his intelligence chief, Michael Flynn, cleaned it up. (There’s a debate in military circles about whether McChrystal or his friend and successor, Adm. William McRaven
deserve credit for JSOC’s resurgence; but Ambinder’s reporting suggests Flynn is the real father of the modern JSOC.) The unit is supposed to answer to the chain of command, but it advised President Obama not to ask which Navy SEAL actually killed Osama bin Laden — and then wouldn’t tell Obama’s chief of staff, who ignored the advice. Even while the CIA works intimately with JSOC, it whispers to reporters, self-interestedly, that the unit is out of control.
Further down.
DR: So they torture people until Flynn figures out there’s a better way to get intelligence?
MA: I know that sounds like a neat narrative, and this is a complicated story. But in essence, that is what happened. While you have to say the command was complicit in the rough, bad stuff early on, they figured out what was happening, and they figured out a much better, humane and more effective way of doing it. Then they proselytize it, and make sure rest of the military knows they’re doing it that way. You can’t ever erase the stain of torture, but this command deserves credit for figuring out what to do about it, and how to meet the need for intelligence without roughing people up, and how to get inside the decision loops of the insurgents.
Further down.
There are legal restrictions on what the CIA can do in terms of covert operations. There has to be a finding, the president has to notify at least the “Gang of Eight” [leaders of the intelligence oversight committees] in Congress. JSOC doesn’t have to do any of that. There is very little accountability for their actions. What’s weird is that many in congress who’d be very sensitive to CIA operations almost treat JSOC as an entity that doesn’t have to submit to oversight. It’s almost like this is the president’s private army, we’ll let the president do what he needs to do. As long as you don’t get in trouble, we’re not gonna ask too many questions.
https://www.wired.com/2012/02/jsoc-ambinder/
"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden