US and NATO commander General Stanley A. McChrystal is demanding a massive expansion of “counterinsurgency” operations in Afghanistan that, according to classified documents, would require 500,000 troops over the next five years.

While bellicose new calls for the Obama administration and NATO to exponentially deepen the “war on terrorism” are being repeated endlessly, McChrystal and his own horrific crimes have received scant notice in the corporate propaganda media.

Murderer

McChrystal is a cold-blooded killer, who spearheads the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which writer Seymour Hersh identified as an executive assassination wing of the White house -- a death squad.

As noted in Steve Lendman’s “Afghantistan’s Operation Phoenix”: “McChrystal is a hired gun, an assassin, a man known for committing war crime atrocities as head of the Pentagon’s infamous Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) -- established in 1980 and comprised of the Army’s Delta Force and Navy Seals, de facto death squads writer Seymour Hersh described post-9/11 as an “executive assassination wing” operating out of Dick Cheney’s office.

“A 2006 Newsweek profile called JSOC ‘part of what Vice President Dick Cheney was referring to when he said America would have to ‘work on the dark side’ after 9/11’ . . .

“In his May 17 article, titled ‘Obama’s Animal Farm: Bigger, Bloodier Wars Equal Peace and Justice”, James Petras called him a ‘notorious psychopath’ in describing him this way: ‘His rise through the ranks was “marked by his central role in directing special operations teams engaged in extrajudicial assassinations, systematic torture, bombing of civilian communities and search and destroy missions. He is the very embodiment of the brutality and gore that accompanies military-driven empire building.”’

“ . . . JSOC’s assignment was (and still is) to capture or kill ‘high-value’ combatants, including Saddam Hussein, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, and many hundreds of Iraqis targeted in sweeping capture and extermination missions that include lots of collateral killings and destruction.”

Deception and propaganda

In addition to his role as a leading hit man for both the Bush-Cheney and Obama administrations, McChrystal has also spearheaded the official cover-ups of notorious black ops, including the manufactured “capture” of Saddam Hussein, to a host of deceptions surrounding the “kill” of Musab Zarqawi, which the Pentagon has admitted was a fabrication and a psy-op.

It was also McChrystal who personally led the cover-up of the friendly fire murder of Pat Tillman.

Torturer

McChrystal and his thugs are enthusiastic proponents of sadistic torture, as noted by Lendman, “committing endless atrocities Baghdad’s Camp Nama (an acronym for Nasty-Ass Military Area) and elsewhere in Iraq.

“Through most of 2003 and 2004, detainees were held at interrogation facilities like Camp Nama at Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). With good reason, it was off-limits to the ICRC and most US military personnel. In summer 2004, it was moved to a new location near Balad and also had facilities in Fallujah, Ramadi and Kirkuk.

US personnel and former detainees reported torture and abuse as common practice, including beatings, confinement in shipping containers for 24 hours in extreme heat, exposure to extreme cold, death threats, humiliation, psychological stress, and much more.”

Hell’s warden

What the world is witnessing in McChrystal’s skyrocketing public profile and political power is yet another instance in which a murderous psychopath is not where he belongs (in a high security prison, or institutionalized), but in command of US and NATO forces, virtually dictating the course of world events.

There is little doubt that the Obama administration, already an enthusiastic proponent of the “war on terrorism” deception, will follow McChrystal deeper in the abyss of death, horror and genocide. Throughout the years of imperial set-up into the 9/11 operation and the world war that ensued thereafter, Afghanistan today remains the key geostrategic hub for oil and gas pipelines and transit routes, opium and narco-trafficking, and military control of the Eurasian sub-continent. Obama’s vaunted promise to withdraw troops from Iraq is nothing more than a transfer of operations into Afghanistan (and Pakistan, Iran, etc.)

Seasoned observers of history, particularly the atrocities of the US wars in Vietnam and Latin America, are too familiar with the word “counterinsurgency,” what the code word means, how it will be used as a pretext, and what will happen next.