In One Month, Joe Biden Proves that there is High Water in Hell

December 19, 2010: Vice President Biden

promised Sunday that the United States

will withdraw from Afghanistan by 2014,

"come hell or high water."

Not that Vigilant Grandpa believes you have an ounce of credibility Mr. Biden, however a six year old girl or boy would likely have taken you at your word and believed their mom and/or dad would be home for good by their 10th birthday.

During your "promise" delivered on Meet the Press, you were asked whether the United States is winning or losing in Afghanistan, and you replied, "The one thing I've never been accused of is not being straight. We are making progress. Are we making sufficient progress fast enough? The answer remains to be seen."

As a practicing grandpa Mr. Biden, I am curious if the role of

Vice President limits "your perception of shooting straight

and making promises" to only those of voting age?

By Patricia Zengerle
January 11, 2022

(Reuters) - The United States is not in Afghanistan to "govern," but will stay beyond a scheduled 2014 security handover if Afghans want, visiting U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday.

Seeking to reassure the Afghan leader, who has accused Washington in the past of meddling, Biden said Afghans were capable of building their own institutions and the United States was not in the war-torn country to "nation-build."

"We are not leaving if you don't want us to leave. We plan on continuing to work with you and it's in the mutual self-interest of both nations," he said.

The visit was Biden's first trip to Afghanistan as vice president. He has been openly critical of Karzai in the past, questioning the Afghan leader's credibility as a partner and accusing him of doing little to tackle corruption.

A senior administration official said the two leaders' meetings with staff and one-on-one had gone well.

"The tone was excellent, a productive and positive meeting and my understanding is the same was true of their one on one," the official said.

It comes after the bloodiest year of the nearly decade-long war in Afghanistan, with violence at its worst since U.S.-led Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001 following the September 11 attacks on the United States.

"It is not our intention to govern or to nation-build. This is the responsibility of the Afghan people and they are fully capable of it," Biden said in a press statement after talks and lunch with Karzai.

A war review by U.S. President Barack Obama in December said "notable operational gains" had been made and the Taliban's momentum arrested in much of the country and reversed in some areas, but any gains were fragile and reversible.

The review also said the United States was on track to begin gradually withdrawing its troops -- numbering about 97,000 out of some 150,000 foreign troops -- in July.

The reduction is part of an ambitious NATO-backed plan for Afghans to take the lead in securing the whole country in 2014.

"The vice president was simply restating for the public what he had said to the president, which was that the US wants an enduring partnership with Afghanistan," the administration official said.

Biden said U.S. forces had made progress against militant insurgents, but for these advances to hold, Afghanistan needed to take responsibility for its own security and Pakistan should do more to stop the Taliban.

"NOT LEAVING"

Biden said the United States would remain in Afghanistan beyond the 2014 handover deadline if the Afghans wanted. Complete article on Biden's confusion about leaving and staying

Bush Officials Pushed for Iraq War

ABC's "This Week"
10/24/10
Former Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Hugh Shelton says that, during the Bush administration, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and other Pentagon officials pushed to go to war with Iraq "almost to the point of insubordination."

"There was a very strong push in those days for us to go into Iraq, and there was absolutely no intelligence, zero, that pointed toward the Iraqis.," he told Christiane Amanpour on ABC's 'This Week' on Sunday. "It was all Al Qaida, Osama bin Laden. And yet there was an element there that was -- that was pushing to go into Iraq at the same time."

George Bush was focused on Afghanistan and initially resisted the pressure to invade Iraq, Shelton says. But he was eventually convinced.

"Afghanistan, remember, was going very, very well," Shelton said. "The drumbeat back here in Washington was still pushing, coming out of the Pentagon, let's go to Iraq, let's get -- take him out. And he finally said, let's go."

U.S. taxpayers are about to bail out the depositors of a fraudulent Afghan bank (Bill Black)

Thanks to Naked Capitalism for the following post:
Naked Capitalism Site

Monday, September 6, 2010

Bill Black: “Control Fraud” Crushes Kabul,

And the New York Times

Needs to Correct its Correction

By William C. Black, Associate Professor of Economics and Law, University of Missouri-Kansas City, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, who also posts at New Economic Perspectives.

The New York Times, in a story entitled “Afghanistan Tries to Help Nation’s Biggest Bank” issued the following correction:

Correction: September 4, 2010

An earlier version of this article, citing American and Afghan officials, erroneously stated that the United States would contribute money to help the Kabul Bank. American officials say the United States is providing technical assistance but no funds for the bank.

Bill Black

The problem is that the “earlier version” was correct – the correction is incorrect. Kabul Bank has been revealed to be a “control fraud.” Control frauds occur when those that control a seemingly legitimate entity use it as a “weapon” to defraud. Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime – combined. Control frauds can also cause immense damage to a nation because they are run by financial elites that curry favor from political elites. The result is that they are often able to loot “their” banks for years with impunity. They also degrade the integrity of the entire system.

Kabul Bank and Fraud

Kabul Bank is a typical example of a crude variant of control fraud at a major bank. Systems of crony capitalism, such as Afghanistan, inherently create an intensely “criminogenic” environment that produces epidemics of control fraud in the public, private, and non-profit sectors. Kabul Bank, like the (originally Pakistani) Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) – better known to regulators as the “Bank of Crooks and Criminals International” is reported to have helped everyone – corrupt Afghani government officials, corrupt business leaders, and the Taliban laundering its drug profits to, in part, buy weapons. Like BCCI, Kabul Bank’s managers’ reported frauds and self-dealing blew up the bank by causing massive losses. (If you believe that Kabul Bank is the only bank like this in Afghanistan you are consuming too much of Afghanistan’s leading export).

The CIA tells us that Afghanistan raised roughly $1 billion in revenues last year and expended $3.3 billion. The shortfall, of course, was funded by us (the West, principally the U.S.). Indeed, that understates the case because Afghanistan raised the $1 billion in revenues primarily through customs duties and the U.S. and other Western nations indirectly or directly funded most of those customs duties.

We know certain facts. Afghanistan has no deposit insurance system. Its government has no financial responsibility for bailing out Kabul Bank’s depositors. Nevertheless, Afghanistan’s government has announced it will bail out the depositors. The funds to bail out the depositors will come – indirectly, but surely – largely from the United States Treasury. The New York Times’ initial article correctly stated that the U.S. will bail out Kabul Bank’s depositors. Someone obviously demanded a “correction.”

U.S. Taxpayers Set up for Another Bank Bailout

Whoever that person was lied to the New York Times with the goal of getting the newspaper to lie to its readers. That lie succeeded. It is time for the New York Times to correct its correction and defeat this effort to mislead the public. The U.S. taxpayers are about to bail out the depositors of a fraudulent Afghan bank

U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan (NYT) and 1,114 U.S. military have lost their life.

U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan
By JAMES RISEN
New York Times
Published: June 13, 2010

WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and Blackberries.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”

The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion.

“This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,” said Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines.

American and Afghan officials agreed to discuss the mineral discoveries at a difficult moment in the war in Afghanistan. The American-led offensive in Marja in southern Afghanistan has achieved only limited gains. Meanwhile, charges of corruption and favoritism continue to plague the Karzai government, and Mr. Karzai seems increasingly embittered toward the White House.

So the Obama administration is hungry for some positive news to come out of Afghanistan. Yet the American officials also recognize that the mineral discoveries will almost certainly have a double-edged impact.
Link to complete NYT Article

Grandpa: 1,114 U.S. soldiers have lost their life in the government speak "Operation Enduring Freedom" war and now the U.S. might get their hands on "previously unknown" valuable minerals! Our men and women and being killed and the U.S. government just stumbles on a "stunning" $1 trillion of natural resources! DISGUSTING!!!!

Memorial Day is not about retail sales events, it is about 1+ million soldier deaths

Some very sobering hard core facts regarding the ULTIMATE SACRIFICE:

American War and Military Operations
Casualties: Lists and Statistics
CRS Report for Congress
February 26, 2010

Deaths
    4,435  Revolutionary War
    2,260  War of 1812
  13,283  Mexican War
364,511  Civil War (Union Soldiers)
     2,446  Spanish American War
116,516  WWI
405,399  WWII
   36,574  Korean War
   58,220  Vietnam "Conflict"
        383   Persian Gulf War
            8    Iranian Hostage Rescue Mission
        265   Lebanon Peacekeeping
          19   Grenada
          23    Panama
        383    Desert Shield/Desert Storm
          43    Somalia
            4     Haiti

From icasualties.org

    4,400  Operation Iraqi Freedom
    1,086  Operation Enduring Freedom/Afghanistan 

The numbers and impact on family lineage is heart wrenching. Take a minute and imagine the dads that never made it home to meet their child, the moms that never came back to braid her daughter's hair. Think about those that never came back to embrace their significant other and the family pain of losing one's son or daughter and acknowledging the family tree will never be the same.

Congress is in recess until June 4th; not that anyone notices a difference. Take a minute to remind your representative of THE example of ultimate sacrifice and that their lack of integrity, ineptness and self-centered core is a complete disgrace to those that truly gave to their country.

Do not use the lack of a draft as rationalization for your indifference to those in harms way. It is time to allow dads to meet their kids, for moms to again braid hair and for brothers and sisters to hug and laugh. BRING THEM HOME before another forest of "family trees" are lost.