‘Institutional Failures’ Led Military to Teach War on Islam

A slide from Army Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley's course on Islam at the Joint Forces Staff College. The course is canceled and Dooley has been fired from the college, but its influence may remain.

A class urging senior US military officers to wage “total war” on Islam wasn’t just the work of one misguided teacher. According to an inquiry ordered by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it was the result of “institutional failures in oversight and judgment” at one of the military’s top educational institutions.

Those are the results of a months-long, military-wide review into the US armed forces’ educational programs, prompted by a series of Danger Room articles on counter-terrorism training that sought to portray the world’s billion-plus Muslims as enemies of the United States.

The worst of those courses was taught at Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia. Titled “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism,” the course began years ago as an inoffensive examination of the roots of violent extremism. But in later years, the class was “modified to adopt a teaching methodology that portrayed Islam almost entirely in a negative way,” said Col. Dave Lapan, a spokesman for Gen. Martin Dempsey, the nation’s top military officer.

The instructor of the course, Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, spent weeks arguing that the US was at war with the Islamic faith. In planning for that war’s next phases, Dooley invited his students to use the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, and to target the “civilian population wherever necessary.”

Dooley has now been stripped of his teaching position at the college and formally reprimanded — but not cashiered from the Army. Two civilian officials at the college are being reviewed for possible “administrative or disciplinary action,” according to Lapan. “A second military officer will receive administrative counseling.”

With the exception of Dooley’s class, however, the Pentagon review “confirmed that adequate academic standards for approving course curricula, presentations and selecting qualified guest lecturers were in place” at the rest of the military’s teaching centers, Lapan added.

That brings the inquiry to a close — without resolving several questions about the course. Nor will the officers exposed to the anti-Islam message receive retraining to correct what the military itself considers an inappropriate and offensive instruction.

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White House Sends ‘Gun-Walking’ Docs Down the Memory Hole (UPDATED)

President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder (left) and HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. Photo: HUD

Thousands of documents sought by congressional investigators about a disastrous plan by federal agents to allow guns to “walk” into the hands of Mexico’s drug cartels will now be out of reach. The Obama administration has asserted its executive privilege to withhold the documents — just as lawmakers prepare to vote to hold the nation’s top lawman in contempt of Congress.

In other words, the political battle between the White House and Capitol Hill over the scandal could be on the verge of going nuclear.

For a year and a half, investigators in Congress have pressed Attorney General Eric Holder to provide tens of thousands of documents about Fast and Furious. At first one of several sting operations by the ATF’s Phoenix Field Division against the cartels, the operation ended in disaster as hundreds of guns were allowed to move freely into Mexico, many becoming lost until turning up at murder scenes and cartel stockpiles. Included in this list of smuggled guns were AK-47 variant rifles discovered in Arizona at the scene of a shootout between bandits and Border Patrol tactical officers. The Dec. 14, 2010, firefight caused the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

Tens of thousands of documents related to the operation could reveal which officials knew what, and when. That is, if those documents ever saw the light of day. Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have accused Holder of stonewalling investigators, and issued a (unsuccessful) subpoena in October demanding the documents. A meeting last night between Holder and Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the committee, ended without a compromise being reached. If today, a majority of committee members vote to hold Holder in contempt for not abiding by the subpoena, a resolution will then have to move to the House Floor. But because of executive privilege, Holder is no longer required to abide by the subpoena at all.

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Top General Accused of Blocking Corruption Probe to Help Obama

Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV speaks to troops in Afghanistan. Photo: DoD

One of the US Army’s rising stars stands accused of obstructing an inquiry into widespread corruption and mismanagement of the Afghan forces he mentored. And if the charges are accurate, they could end the career of one of the military’s top officers.

Lt. Gen. William Caldwell IV, until last year the US officer in charge of training Afghan security forces, allegedly blocked a Defense Department inspector general investigation into a pattern of misconduct exhibited by the Afghan National Army’s medical division. Aided by his senior staff, Caldwell prevented that inquiry to spare his command embarrassment ahead of US national elections.

“How could we think to invite the DOD IG [the Pentagon inspector general] in during an election cycle?” Caldwell allegedly upbraided subordinate officers who favored an outside inquiry in fall 2010. Caldwell, supposedly in an “emotional” state, yelled, “You should know better!”

The accusations are laid out in a letter sent to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (.pdf), who calls the incident an apparent “cover up.” The Wall Street Journal first reported the letter’s contents.

President Obama “calls me Bill,” Caldwell allegedly bragged, according to the letter. The general supposedly didn’t want to spoil that first-name relationship with a messy inquiry into corruption and wrongdoing at Afghan hospitals.

Since then, Caldwell has assumed command of US Army North in Texas, one of the Army’s most prestigious posts and the latest in a series of plum assignments. The son of a prominent Army general himself, his career trajectory has resembled that of another prestigious, esteemed general — David Petraeus. Caldwell commanded an airborne division at war (the 82nd; Petraeus ran the 101st); then took a senior appointment to Iraq (as chief spokesman for Petraeus during the surge); ran the Army’s big-think Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth (as Petraeus did before him); and then took a crucial job in Afghanistan running the training of Afghan forces (eventually under the command of Petraeus, who did the same job in Iraq). With a massive budget, Caldwell’s training efforts were considered the key to extricating the US military from combat in Afghanistan, a critical objective for Obama. Caldwell once told confidantes he considered himself fit to run the entire Afghanistan war.

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Washington’s 5 Worst Arguments for Keeping Secrets From You

Military patches, courtesy of milspecmonkey.com

The government’s vast secrecy bureaucracy does two things with great frequency. The first, of course, is keeping secrets. The second is devising elaborate reasons why you can’t know what those secrets are.

It’s hardly a secret that the government overclassifies basic information about what it does. What often gets overlooked is that the reasons it cites are often absurd. Sometimes they’re craven cover-ups learned years after the fact. Sometimes they’re ironic — or cynical — invocations that disclosure would aggravate the very problem it’s supposed to solve. Sometimes they’re bald contradictions of established policy or routine procedure.

Either way, the government has left a long, twisted trail of pretzel logic when it comes to all of the reasons you can’t know what it’s doing. Here are some of the lowlights.

Nuclear Experiments on People Would Have ‘Adverse Effects on Public Opinion’

Government secrecy is perhaps at its most pronounced with nuclear weapons. And most people would probably agree that discretion is the better part of valor when it comes to the US’s most dangerous arsenal. But that leeway probably doesn’t extend to atomic experiments on human beings. Still, back in the 1940s, the Atomic Energy Commission decided you couldn’t know about anything of the sort.

We now know that at the dawn of the nuclear age, the commission indeed used human guinea pigs to learn what the effects of atomic blasts and lingering radiation would be on the human physiology. In 1947, the commission wanted word that it was, among other things, feeding irradiated food to handicapped children kept very quiet. Its rationale was straightforward in its brazenness: We don’t want to be sued by an outraged public.

“It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans and might have adverse effects on public opinion or result in legal suits,” Army Col. O.G. Haywood Jr. wrote to fellow commission personnel on April 17, 1947. The memo’s title itself is an artifact of the days when government personnel felt safe to engage in a baldfaced cover-up: “Subj: MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS ON HUMANS.” (.pdf)

Haywood succeeded. Word of these atomic experiments — a practice that continued for another 15 years — came to light only after a savvy reporter named Eileen Welsome began exhuming long-forgotten documents at Kirtland Air Force Base in 1987. What she uncovered after a six-year inquiry would later compel President Clinton to form a major commission that ultimately led to official compensation for some of the family members of nuclear test subjects. Even Haywood couldn’t keep everything a secret.

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Russian Ship, Loaded With Attack Helos, Turns Away From Syria

A Russian-made Mi-24 Hind used by Macedonia. A Russian ship bound for Syria and loaded with export versions of these helos is reportedly turning back. Photo: Wikimedia

A transport ship the U.S. believes is carrying attack helicopters to Syria is now heading back to Russia. Ostensibly, the MV Alaed turned around after its insurance coverage was pulled. But the ship’s return coincides with a meeting between Obama and Vladimir Putin — a sign the two leaders may be starting to cooperate on what to do about Syria’s deadly war.

According to press reports, the Alaed, with its load of Mi-25 attack helos, had its insurance yanked by its British insurer, Standard Club, on Monday. The insurer had been reportedly approached by British security services and informed that providing insurance to the Alaed, which is owned by Russian cargo line Femco, violated European Union sanctions prohibiting arms sales to Syria. The insurer pulled its coverage, and the ship then turned back toward the Russian port of Kaliningrad. The ship had earlier stopped about 50 miles off Scotland’s northwest coast.

“The foreign secretary made clear to Russian foreign minister [Sergey] Lavrov when they met on 14 June that all defence shipments to Syria must stop,” a British Foreign Office statement read. The Foreign Office added that it is “working closely with international partners” to “stop the Syrian regime’s ability to slaughter civilians being reinforced through assistance from other countries.”

But it’s not clear if the ship was also ordered to return to port by Russian authorities. EU sanctions, for one, do not have jurisdiction over Russian ships. If Russia really wanted the ship to continue to Syria, and remained complicit in the slaughter of civilians, then it’s unlikely anyone could have stopped them. But letting the ship continue on its way would also contradict statements made by Vladimir Putin on Monday during the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico. During the leaders’ two-hour meeting, which is the first time the two have met as presidents, Putin and Obama agreed to a “peaceful” resolution to Syria’s bloodshed.

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