If you were Obama, what would you do? - Page 10

kamikazi89 · 09-15-2011, 05:49 AM

Air Branch | CIA Special Activities Division

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The CIA often use Russian-built helicopters, such as MI-8/MI-17s, for covert operations. As these ubiquitous helicopters are usually commonplace in theater they create less attention than a tricked-out Black Hawk or MH-53 Pavelow and cannot be readily linked to US forces. These helos are cheap to run and easier to find spare parts for when operating outside the US military logisitical chain. They are also one of the few military helicopters capable of operating over the mountains of Afghanistan.

Stingers, Stingers, Who's Got the Stingers?

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Stingers inevitably turned up for sale on the international black market. Alan Kuperman, author of a history of the Stinger transfer published in 1999 in Political Science Quarterly, puts the United Arab Emirates, Somalia, Iraq, Qatar, Zambia, and North Korea among the nations to acquire the Stinger. They are also believed to be in the arsenal of anti-government guerrillas in Turkey and Sri Lanka, as well as Hezbollah guerrillas operating in Lebanon. In 1990, two Colombian drug dealers were arrested in Tampa, Fla., after attempting to arrange the purchase of Stingers for the Medellín Cartel. The following year, U.S. Customs agents in Miami arrested four men and charged them with attempting to smuggle Stingers and other weapons to Yugoslavia.

In the early '90s, Stingers were used in a flurry of attacks against military and possibly civilian aircraft. The Russian press reported that Islamic rebels used a Stinger to shoot down an Su-25 fighter-bomber over Tajikistan, and a U.N. investigation fingered the U.S.-made missile in an attack that brought down an Italian supply plane. In 1993, Muslim separatists shot down a Georgian airliner, killing dozens of passengers aboard. Investigators never determined what type of missile was used, but shortly before the attack took place, separatist leaders had coyly hinted to reporters that they were the proud owners of a few Stingers.

To stem the damage, the CIA sought to buy back its missing Afghan Stingers. The agency allocated $65 million for the program-about twice the cost of the original 1,000 sent to the mujahideen-which commenced in 1993 and relied upon the help and cooperation of Pakistani intelligence.

The CIA offered so much for the wayward Stingers-at least $100,000 a copy and possibly as much as $200,000-that the program's most immediate effect was to drive up the price of Stingers on the international black market. "They were offering so much that sellers could take the money and buy themselves cheaper anti-aircraft missiles and other weaponry," says Kuperman.

A former intelligence officer familiar with the program calls the buyback effort an abysmal failure. "The things have spread so far that we don't even know where they are anymore," he says.

Errant Stingers are still with us. In 1999, the Indian government claimed that Muslim rebels in Kashmir used a Stinger to down a military helicopter, killing all five soldiers on board. One defendant testified in the trial earlier this year of the men who bombed American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that he'd been commissioned to buy a plane for Osama Bin Laden in the mid-'90s. By his account, Bin Laden planned to use the plane to ship Stingers from Afghanistan to Sudan. And just weeks before Sept. 11, several Taliban soldiers carried Stingers on their shoulders during a military parade in Kabul.

During the past few decades, a variety of surface-to-air missiles-several may have been Stingers-have been used to shoot down 24 civilian aircraft, killing a total of almost 600 people. "After twenty years of reported instances of SAMs in the hands of rebel militias, narco-criminals, and terrorist groups, the potential for increased threats to civil aircraft has become a serious reality," says a Clinton-era report from the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security. "Fanatical elements [are] not deterred by the potential implications of mass casualties that could occur if a man-portable SAM were used against a commercial airliner."

Some say the military threat posed by the Stingers is overblown. In the past few weeks, a variety of military and intelligence sources have been quoted in the press as saying that the Stinger's battery packs are good for only four or five years, and hence any owned by the Taliban would be useless against an American-led military action in Afghanistan. However, a declassified Pentagon document obtained by Kuperman states that the battery packs have "a shelf life of at least 10 years, with a reliability rate of 98-99%."

John Pike, a weapons expert and head of GlobalSecurity.org, says the Stinger is not a "superweapon," but military strategists can't ignore it either. "There are newer and better SAMs on the market, but it's adequate to the task at hand," Pike says.

Ken Silverstein, a contributing editor of Harper's and Mother Jones, is the author The Private Warriors.

Afghanistan war logs: US covered up fatal Taliban missile strike on Chinook | World news | The Guardian
5 Biggest Revelations of Wikileaks Documents - Global - The Atlantic Wire

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30 Years Later, Taliban Still Have Stingers During the anti-Soviet Afghan War of the 1980s, the U.S. helped the Afghan insurgents secure stinger missiles. After the Soviet military withdrew and during the civil war of the 1990s, which is when the Taliban first emerged, the U.S. attempted to recover all of the missiles. But the New York Times reports, "The Taliban have used portable heat-seeking missiles against allied aircraft, a fact that has not been publicly disclosed by the military. This type of weapon helped the Afghan mujahedeen defeat the Soviet occupation in the 1980s." [Why Pakistan blocked Facebook and Youtube.]

U.S. and Afghan Officials Covering Up Civilian Deaths The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder finds "at least 144 separate incidents" of civilian casualties "and subsequent cover-ups." He writes, "The failed special forces attempt to kill Abu Layth Ali Libi, which resulted in the deaths of civilians, suggests the willingness of some provisional governors to collude with the official storyline. ... There is a reference to a CIA paramilitary operative shooting at 30 yards a blind woman, something that was duly reported back to headquarters."

Pete Seeger: Where Have All the Flowers Gone? - YouTube

Ways and Means

stoneric · 09-15-2011, 01:35 PM

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Originally Posted by Home Wrecker

How do they get around?

I really couldn't tell you but usually they're involved in some covert shit like the bin laden execution and don't travel in large easy targets like a chinook. Plus all the training our elite killers recieve makes them less expendable than the fodder that fill the ranks so it just makes me wonder.

HTAM · 09-15-2011, 02:12 PM

^I agree.

I have been right under a Chinook when it flies over, and you know they are near long before they are actually overhead.

Only two months ago three of them flew over the house and shit they were loud.

A Chinook has the 'flash' in the air that a limo has on the ground.

SEALs don't want you to know they were there until they've already left, and not even then, ideally.

Stoneric makes an interesting point.

KaptNemo · 09-15-2011, 02:22 PM

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Originally Posted by stoneric

. Plus all the training our elite killers recieve makes them less expendable than the fodder that fill the ranks so it just makes me wonder.

this all depends on where their op is... or at least back in the day it was easier to leave them behind if they had an op in enemy territory than it was to admit that we were engaged in ops that violate the Geneva conventions or US Rules of Engagement...

As far as how they get around, they're usually dropped in friendly territory and they hump dirt to get where they need to be, or if they go in at night high altitude jumps are always a possibility more than likely from a C130...

John F. Kerry · 09-20-2011, 02:54 PM

I was thinking... and i didnt feel like making a new thread so here it goes

...what is the difference between now and 2007?

in 2007 the economy was booming, home prices were skyrocketing, people were getting paid more and more and jobs were plentiful..

so what the fuck is really all that different today?

we have

the same population

the same levels of education

people still basically want to eat and spend and do the same things they did before

so what happened?

...

ok thats a pretty big and hard to answer question... but just in terms of one idea i had.

the new dem proposals to limit tax deductions on home interest- this to me seems like a really stupid idea... because it was all the home price rising that made people feel rich and made them spend money, before the crash...and if u do something that will make less people want to own homes, like this, it will cause the housing market to recover slower and less well... and as a result lots of the other rebound type things will be delayed or prevented from happening as well.

so... thats just one idea i was thinking about, but its sorta related to the op.... what happened? everything is still here, but for some reason its not working- that should be proof positive that its not a failure of society or the economy, but a failure of leadership!

its bush's failure of leadership too, to a certain extent, but cmon already all these yale and harvard fellas ...if they cant figure this shit out and right the ship, then wtf are they drawing these high salaries for?

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09-15-2011, 02:12 PM	#183 (permalink)
HTAM Old School Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 3,872 Thanks: 2,368 Thanked 2,117 Times in 1,179 Posts	^I agree. I have been right under a Chinook when it flies over, and you know they are near long before they are actually overhead. Only two months ago three of them flew over the house and shit they were loud. A Chinook has the 'flash' in the air that a limo has on the ground. SEALs don't want you to know they were there until they've already left, and not even then, ideally. Stoneric makes an interesting point.

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