Filed under: 1984, 2 party system, barack obama, bush, doublespeak, george bush, Iraq, Kucinich, left right paradigm, mission accomplished, obama, obama deception, obama lies, obama surge, obamas war, orwell, surge
Kucinich: Obama’s Iraq ‘Exit’ Like Bush’s ‘Mission Accomplished’
Ron Brynaert
Raw Story
August 20, 2010
“Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today challenged the notion that removing ‘combat brigades’ but leaving 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq constitutes an end to combat operations, let alone an end to the war,” a press release sent to RAW STORY on Thursday stated.
The press release continues:
“Who is in charge of our operations in Iraq , now? George Orwell? A war based on lies continues to be a war based on lies. Today, we have a war that is not a war, with combat troops who are not combat troops. In 2003, President Bush said ‘ Mission Accomplished ‘ . In 2010, the White House says combat operations are over in Iraq , but will leave 50,000 troops, many of whom will inevitably be involved in combat-related activities.
“Just seven days ago, General Babaker Shawkat Zebari, the commander of Iraq ’s military, said that Iraq ’s security forces will not be trained and ready to take over security for another 10 years. One story is being told to the military on the ground in Iraq and another story is being told to their families back home.
“You can’t be in and out at the same time.
“This is not the end of the war; this is simply a new stage in the campaign to lull the American people into accepting an open-ended presence in Iraq . This is not an honest accounting to the American people and it diminishes the role of the troops who will put their lives on the line. This is not fair to the troops, their families or the American people.
“The Administration and the Pentagon would be wise to level with the American people about our long-term commitment to Iraq .
“The cost of the wars has been estimated to be around $1 million per soldier per year. Each year the troop levels stay at 50,000 means another $50 billion is wasted. I object to spending billions of dollars to maintain a charade in Iraq while our own economy is failing and over 15 million Americans are out of work. I object to keeping any level troops in Iraq to maintain a war based on lies. It is time that Congress sees through the manipulation and finally acts to truly end the war by stopping its funding,” said Kucinich.
Kucinich’s statement doesn’t mention President Obama’s name once, but the president also didn’t don a military jumpsuit and fly a plane onto a carrier with a gigantic “Mission Accomplished” banner.
Many of the top liberal blogs who have criticized Obama the past year went silent on the Iraq “exit” coverage (perhaps some are on August vacation).
Read Full Article Here
Filed under: dehumanization, dictatorship, empire, eugenics, genocide, infanticide, Iraq, iraqi casualties, military, military industrial complex, nation building, occupation, taliban, troops, u.s. soldiers, war casualties, war crime, war crimes, war on terror
US Soldier recounts aftermath of Iraqi civilian massacre
Filed under: Afghanistan, bagdad, civilian casualties, civilian death toll, dehumanization, Dictatorship, Fascism, human rights, Iraq, occupation, Pentagon, u.s. soldiers, us army, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, wikileaks
U.S. Army Teaching Trainees to Kill Kids and Women
Press TV
April 18, 2010
A former US Army specialist, who was part of the same unit that killed Iraqi civilians from a helicopter in 2007, says dehumanization is part of basic US army training.
In an interview with Press TV, Josh Steiber explained the three years he spent in the US Army before he asked to be released as a conscientious objector.
Steiber said “the dehumanizing of people from other countries” was the main reason that he quit the Army.
“As far back as basic training, we were singing songs as we were marching around, joking about killing women and children,” he told the Press TV correspondent in Washington.
The whistle-blower website, WikiLeaks, released a shocking video earlier this month showing US soldiers in an Apache helicopter killing dozens of Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters employees, in cold blood.
Steiber noted that he sang the following song together with other members of his unit:
- I went down to the market where all the women shop
I took out my machete and I began to chop
I went down to the park where all the children play
I pulled out my machine gun and I began to spray
Steiber pointed out that he did not personally know the pilot in the video because they were attached to his unit only on that one fateful day.
However, the former US Army specialist was not surprised by what was on the tape.
“You’re focused on the physical aspect, but all along there is a psychological aspect.”
“I think it would be wrong to put all [the blame] on the individual soldier. I think it’s very telling that the secretary of defense, [Robert Gates], came out over the weekend and said there is no wrongdoing in the video.”
“And so if you’re only adjusting a few soldiers when the secretary of defense is putting his stamp of approval on this, then the system is not gonna change.”
Steiber concluded that there are other soldiers and veterans who are as disillusioned and war-weary as he is.
Filed under: Afghanistan, army, Baghdad, civilian casualties, civilian death toll, dehumanization, Dictatorship, Empire, Fascism, George Bush, human rights, Iraq, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, occupation, Oppression, Pentagon, Troops, u.s. soldiers, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, wikileaks
Wikileak’d video shows U.S. troops killing civilians, children and 2 Reuters reporters
FULL VIDEO
Iraqi family demands justice for US attack death
Military Massacre of Pregnant Afghan Women Covered Up as ‘Honor Killings’
Ret. intel officer: US troops violated Rules of Engagement in Reuters shooting
Filed under: Afghanistan, bin laden, bush, CIA, Coup, gulf war, Iraq, nation building, north korea, Nuke, occupation, osama, Pakistan, Saddam Hussein, State Sponsored Terrorism, War On Terror, WMD | Tags: Abdul Qadeer Khan, Khan Research Laboratories
Saddam’s Nuke Salesman Was Protected By U.S. Government
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
March 10, 2010
The Washington Post has completely whitewashed new revelations concerning how close Saddam Hussein came to obtaining a nuclear bomb by failing to mention the fact that the provider, Khan Research Laboratories, was shielded from investigation by the U.S. government for decades.
“As troops massed on his border near the start of the Persian Gulf War, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein weighed the purchase of a $150 million nuclear “package” deal that included not only weapons designs but also production plants and foreign experts to supervise the building of a nuclear bomb, according to documents uncovered by a former U.N. weapons inspector,” reports the Post today.
“The offer, made in 1990 by an agent linked to disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, guaranteed Iraq a weapons-assembly line capable of producing nuclear warheads in as little as three years.”
However, the report completely fails to even mention the fact that Khan Research Laboratories, the source from which Saddam would have procured a nuclear bomb, was protected from investigation by the U.S. government since at least the mid-1970’s, as investigative journalist Greg Palast exposed in a 2001 BBC report.
In 2004, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s atom bomb program, admitted sharing nuclear technology via a worldwide smuggling network that included facilities in Malaysia that manufactured key parts for centrifuges.
Khan’s collaborator B.S.A. Tahir ran a front company out of Dubai that shipped centrifuge components to North Korea.
Despite Dutch authorities being deeply suspicious of Khan’s activities as far back as 1975, the CIA prevented them from arresting him on two occasions.
“The man was followed for almost ten years and obviously he was a serious problem. But again I was told that the secret services could handle it more effectively,” former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers said. “The Hague did not have the final say in the matter. Washington did.”
Lubbers stated that Khan was allowed to slip in and out of the Netherlands with the blessing of the CIA, eventually allowing him to become the “primary salesman of an extensive international network for the proliferation of nuclear technology and know-how,” according to George W. Bush himself, and sell nuclear secrets that allowed North Korea to build nuclear bombs.
“Lubbers suspects that Washington allowed Khan’s activities because Pakistan was a key ally in the fight against the Soviets,” reports CFP. “At the time, the US government funded and armed mujahideen such as Osama bin Laden. They were trained by Pakistani intelligence to fight Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Anwar Iqbal, Washington correspondent for the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, told ISN Security Watch that Lubbers’ assertions may be correct. “This was part of a long-term foolish strategy. The US knew Pakistan was developing nuclear weapons but couldn’t care less because it was not going to be used against them. It was a deterrent against India and possibly the Soviets.”
In September 2005 it emerged that the Amsterdam court which sentenced Khan to four years imprisonment in 1983 had lost the legal files pertaining to the case. The court’s vice-president, Judge Anita Leeser, accused the CIA of stealing the files. “Something is not right, we just don’t lose things like that,” she told Dutch news show NOVA. “I find it bewildering that people lose files with a political goal, especially if it is on request of the CIA. It is unheard of.”
In 2005, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged that Khan had provided centrifuges and their designs to North Korea.
Having armed once branch of the “axis of evil,” it’s no surprise that Khan was also used in an attempt to arm Saddam Hussein with nuclear weapons, opening up another perfect justification for Iraq to subsequently be invaded and occupied by U.S. forces.
Although the 2003 invasion was sold on the lie that Saddam was hiding weapons of mass destruction which proved to be non-existent, it wasn’t for the want of trying, since efforts to arm Saddam with nuclear weapons via the Khan network were a mere continuation of the U.S. government’s program to provide Saddam with chemical and biological weapons, tools used to commit atrocities that were later cited by the U.S. as one of the primary reasons for the attack.
Of course, since the Washington Post is a mouthpiece for the new world order and the Bilderberg Group that owns it, in covering the Khan-Saddam connection writer Joby Warrick knows that his bosses wouldn’t be pleased if he actually gave you more than half the story, which is why his article amounts to nothing more than a misleading whitewash.
Filed under: bush, Bush Sr., chemical ali, civilian casualties, corruption, Dictatorship, Empire, George Bush, Iran, Iraq, iraq casualties, kangaroo court, Milosevic, nation building, occupation, reagan, rumsfeld, Saddam Hussein, scandal, War On Terror | Tags: Ali Hassan al-Majid, ICC, international criminal court, Iran-Iraq War
Chemical Ali Could Have Exposed Iraq-Gate
consortiumnews.com
January 26, 2010
Editor’s Note: The hanging of Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as “Chemical Ali” for his role in using chemical weapons in Iraqi wars of the 1980s and early 1990s, silenced yet one more witness who otherwise could have filled in the blanks of the Reagan-Bush-I roles in secretly assisting Saddam Hussein’s armies, the so-called Iraq-gate scandal.
If Majid had been turned over to the International Criminal Court – rather than prosecuted by kangaroo tribunals set up in Iraq by George W. Bush’s administration – he could have been systematically debriefed about what U.S. officials, including George H.W. Bush, did to facilitate Iraq’s acquisition of dangerous chemical weapons.
Instead, Majid – wearing a red jump suit, his head covered by a black sack and a noose around his neck – was dropped through the trap door of a scaffold on Monday. His potential to embarrass the Bush Family was eliminated, just as was done to Saddam Hussein three years ago, as this Dec. 30, 2006, article (slightly modified) recounts:
The hanging of Saddam Hussein was supposed to be – as the New York Times observed – the “triumphal bookend” to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. If all had gone as planned, Bush might have staged another celebration as he did after the end of “major combat,” posing under the “Mission Accomplished” banner on May 1, 2003.
But by the end of 2006, with nearly 3,000 American soldiers already killed and the Iraqi death toll exceeding 600,000 by some estimates, Bush was forced to savor the image of Hussein dangling at the end of a rope a little more privately.
Still, Bush had done his family’s legacy a great service, while also protecting secrets that could have embarrassed other senior U.S. government officials, both past and present.
By arranging Saddam Hussein’s execution, Bush had silenced a unique witness to crucial chapters of the secret history that stretched from Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979 to the alleged American-Saudi “green light” for Hussein to attack Iran in 1980, through the eight years of the Iran-Iraq War during which high-ranking U.S. intermediaries, such as Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, allegedly helped broker supplies of war materiel for Hussein.
Hussein now won’t be around to give troublesome testimony about how he obtained the chemical and biological agents that his scientists used for producing the unconventional weapons that were deployed against Iranian forces and Iraqi civilians. He can’t give his perspective on who got the money and who facilitated the deals.
Nor will Hussein be available to give his account of the mixed messages delivered by George H.W. Bush’s ambassador April Glaspie before Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Was there another American “green light” or did Hussein just hear what he wanted to hear?
Like the climactic scene from the Mafia movie “Casino” in which nervous Mob bosses eliminate everyone who knows too much, George W. Bush guaranteed that there would be no public tribunal where Hussein could give testimony on these potentially devastating historical scandals and thus threaten the Bush Family legacy.
That could have happened if Hussein had been turned over to an international tribunal at The Hague as was done with other tyrants, such as Yugoslavia’s late dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Instead Bush insisted that Hussein be tried in Iraq despite the obvious fact that the deposed Iraqi dictator would receive nothing close to a fair trial before being put to death.
Hussein’s hanging followed his trial for executing 148 men and boys from the town of Dujail in 1982 after a foiled assassination attempt on Hussein and his entourage. Hussein’s death effectively mooted other cases that were supposed to deal with his alleged use of chemical weapons to kill Iraqi civilians and other crimes that might have exposed the U.S. role.
Filed under: 9/11, 9/11 Truth, Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda Tapes, alqaeda, Asif Ali Zadari, Ayman al Zawahiri, Barack Obama, Benazir Bhutto, Bhutto, bin laden, bin laden dead, Bin Laden Tapes, Blackwater, CIA, Colonel Bob Pappas, fake alqaeda, False Flag, FBI, fearmongering, inside job, IntelCenter, Iraq, karzai, Media Fear, Media Manipulation, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, obama, obama deception, obama surge, occupation, Omar Sheikh, osama, osama dead, Pakistan, Propaganda, psychological operations, psychological warfare, Psyops, scam, State Sponsored Terrorism, surge, tora bora, truth movement, War On Terror, yemen, zawahiri
Bin Laden’s Ghost Claims Flight 253 Attack
NoWorldSystem
January 25, 2010
Yet another attempt into making sure everyone is properly scared of another devastating 9/11-style attack on US soil. According to the new Bin Laden audiotape he is claiming responsibility for the foiled Flight 253 attack on a Detroit airliner and promises more attacks if US continues to support Israel. CIA-linked IntelCenter, –a company that was CAUGHT red-handed manipulating an al-Zawahiri video– now claims that this new audio is a ‘possible indicator‘ for an upcoming attack within the next 12 months.
The only purpose for videos like this is to promote fear and to rationalize U.S. occupation in the middle east. However, many people are upset with the occupation of Blackwater in Pakistan and the 700 total deaths from drone strikes, the remorseless night-killings of Afghanis and the $57,077 a minute price the U.S. taxpayers are paying to protect opium crops. Not to mention the people are angry at the recent U.S. air-strike on Yemen that killed at least 120 innocent civilians, including children in December 2009.
The audiotape also fuses the links between Flight 253, AlQaeda and Yemen that will give the government talking points for the reason of the destabilization of the regions and the U.S. economy. The authenticity of the new bin laden tape is unknown, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that it’s probably an impostor that sounds like Bin Laden. In the November 12, 2002 Bin Laden recording, voice-recognition experts in Switzerland said that it was 95% certain the tape was not the voice of the AlQaeda leader, that “it could be an impostor”.
It seems that now more than ever do they want to keep perpetuating the notion that Bin Laden is alive and well to keep the War on Terror going and to keep the American people infuriated that this man who supposedly did 9/11 is still walking and talking. The U.S. Department and the FBI released a photoshop rendition of an aged Bin Laden that turned out to be from online photo of Spanish politician Gaspar Llamazares.
An organization with a budget of billions of dollars was resorting to comic-like methods in its pursuit of terrorists and criminals, said the daily El Mundo.
Is Bin Laden DEAD?
Many people were so traumatized from the events of 9/11/2001 that they immediately believed that an unknown group called AlQaeda and its so-called leader Bin Laden were the culprits based on fear alone. We were told by the Bush administration that if we did not act, the terrorists will hit us again, and so the country was coerced into obedience and accepted what they were told.
We are continued to be coerced by videotapes despite the many prominent men and women who say that Bin Laden is dead from either health problems, military strike or assassination:
This is what former USMC Colonel Bob Pappas had to say about the death of Bin Laden;
- “bin Laden is dead, he was killed during the attacks on Tora Bora. The pathetic political nonsense spewed by Senator John Kerry and his lackeys that the Bush administration allowed bin Laden to walk unmolested into a Pakistani sanctuary is hogwash, no, it’s bovine scatology.”
“However, the administration probably knew that bin Laden was dead, as does this current one, a notion reinforced by a statement made during the waning months of the Bush Administration by Vice President Cheney to that effect; and for that reason among others the Administration chose make Iraq the main effort in the War on Terror.”
According to Afghan President Hamid Karzai says Osama bin Laden is “probably” dead. FBI counter-terrorism chief, Dale Watson, also says he thinks Osama bin Laden is “probably” dead. Pakistan President Asif Ali Zadari says “I don’t think he’s alive” even his counterpart Benazir Bhutto claims Bin Laden was assassinated by “Omar Sheikh”.
Regardless if he’s dead or not, his whereabouts still remain a mystery and yet still remains the big-bad-boogieman that is continually propped up every time he is needed (dropping poll numbers) in order to control the minds of the American people. It won’t be long now until there is a need for another ‘mastermind’ (one that isn’t a corpse) that will take his place as the most evil man on earth.
Osama Videos Behind the Scenes
Filed under: Afghanistan, airstrikes, blackops, Blackwater, CIA, civilian casualties, Coup, Dictatorship, drones, Empire, Fascism, Hamid Karzai', Iraq, karzai, Military, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, nation building, occupation, Pakistan, scandal, Taliban, terrorist funding, uav, War On Terror
Gates Admits Blackwater Operating in Pakistan
Raw Story
January 22, 2010
The Pentagon has gone into damage control mode after Defense Secretary Robert Gates appeared to confirm that security contractor Blackwater is operating in Pakistan.
The admission, quickly denied by Defense Department officials, has set fire to long-simmering rumors inside Pakistan about the involvement of for-profit contractors in the war against the Taliban.
Defense Department officials say Gates did not mean to suggest that Blackwater is now operating on Pakistani soil when a journalist from Pakistan’s Express TV asked him about military contractors’ activities.
In the interview, which took place Thursday, Gates was asked “about another issue that has come up and again … about the phone security companies [sic] that have been operating in Iraq, in Afghanistan and now in Pakistan. Xe International, formerly known as Blackwater or Data Corp. Under what rules are they operating here in Pakistan?”
“Well, they’re operating as individual companies here in Pakistan, in Afghanistan and in Iraq,” Gates replied. “If they’re contracting with us or with the State Department here in Pakistan, then there are very clear rules set forth by the State Department and by ourselves.”
Pentagon backtracks after Gates admits Blackwater operating in PakistanThe Pentagon has gone into damage control mode after Defense Secretary Robert Gates appeared to confirm that security contractor Blackwater is operating in Pakistan.
The admission, quickly denied by Defense Department officials, has set fire to long-simmering rumors inside Pakistan about the involvement of for-profit contractors in the war against the Taliban.
Defense Department officials say Gates did not mean to suggest that Blackwater is now operating on Pakistani soil when a journalist from Pakistan’s Express TV asked him about military contractors’ activities.
In the interview, which took place Thursday, Gates was asked “about another issue that has come up and again … about the phone security companies [sic] that have been operating in Iraq, in Afghanistan and now in Pakistan. Xe International, formerly known as Blackwater or Data Corp. Under what rules are they operating here in Pakistan?”
“Well, they’re operating as individual companies here in Pakistan, in Afghanistan and in Iraq,” Gates replied. “If they’re contracting with us or with the State Department here in Pakistan, then there are very clear rules set forth by the State Department and by ourselves.”
Story continues below…
“This appears to be a contradiction of previous statements made by the Defense Department, by Blackwater, by the Pakistani government and by the US embassy in Islamabad, all of whom claimed Blackwater was not in the country,” investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill wrote.
In November, Scahill reported that Blackwater is operating out of a covert US operating base in Karachi, where it “plan[s] targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, ‘snatch and grabs’ of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan.”
In December, the UK’s Guardian reported that Blackwater guards are patrolling a CIA airbase in Baluchistan province.
Gates’ comments have sent Pakistan’s legislature into an uproar, with at least one government official denying knowledge of Gates’ remarks.
Pakistan has been rife with rumors in recent years about private security contractors operating on the country’s soil, and “about purported US plots to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and build permanent American military bases,” as the Wall Street Journal puts it.
“Mr. Gates himself may have inadvertently helped fuel a new rumor,” the Journal stated.
Defense officials tried to clarify the comment Thursday night, telling reporters that Mr. Gates had been speaking about contractor oversight more generally and that the Pentagon didn’t employ Xe [a.k.a. Blackwater] in Pakistan.
It was too late, however. By Friday morning, an array of Pakistani newspapers, television stations and radio programs reported that “Blackwater” had begun operating in Pakistan as well, citing Mr. Gates’s comments.
Whether it was a mistake or an unintentional admission, Gates’ comments are certain to complicate efforts by the US to prod Pakistan into refocusing away from its long-time rival, India, to the Taliban presence on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
To that end, the US has announced it will provide Pakistan with a dozen Shadow drones, smaller cousins of the Predator drones the US uses in air strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the New York Times reports.
The US has also announced a new strategy for the war effort that focuses on the “re-integration” of Taliban fighters into mainstream society. The effort will be led by Afghan President Karzai. In discussing the plans Friday, Karzai “spoke about offering money and jobs to tempt Taliban fighters to lay down their arms and return to civilian life,” according to Pakistan’s Dawn Media Group.
Filed under: 2-party system, Afghanistan, airstrikes, alqaeda, Arabian Peninsula, Barack Obama, Britain, bush, bush = obama, Caspian Sea, China, Colonialism, Coup, Dictatorship, drone attacks, Empire, Europe, european union, Flight 253, future wars, gas prices, George Bush, gulf, gulf of Aden, impirialism, India, indian ocean, Iran, Iraq, islamist, Israel, left right paradigm, middle east, Military, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, mutallab, nation building, obama, obama = bush, obamas war, occupation, Oil, Oman, Pakistan, Petrol, puppet governments, resource wars, Robert Gates, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Shiite, Somalia, staged terrorist attack, sunni, Turkmenistan, uav, United Kingdom, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, WW3, ww4, yemen | Tags: christmas bomber, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, underwear bomber
Obama’s Yemeni odyssey targets China
Asia Times
January 9, 2010
A cursory look at the map of region will show that Yemen is one of the most strategic lands adjoining waters of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. It flanks Saudi Arabia and Oman, which are vital American protectorates. In effect, Uncle Sam is “marking territory” – like a dog on a lamppost. Russia has been toying with the idea of reopening its Soviet-era base in Aden. Well, the US has pipped Moscow in the race.
The US has signaled that the odyssey doesn’t end with Yemen. It is also moving into Somalia and Kenya. With that, the US establishes its military presence in an entire unbroken stretch of real estate all along the Indian Ocean’s western rim. Chinese officials have of late spoken of their need to establish a naval base in the region. The US has now foreclosed China’s options. The only country with a coastline that is available for China to set up a naval base in the region will be Iran. All other countries have a Western military presence. (are western military puppet governments)
The American intervention in Yemen is not going to be on the pattern of Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama will ensure he doesn’t receive any body bags of American servicemen serving in Yemen. That is what the American public expects from him. He will only deploy drone aircraft and special forces and “focus on providing intelligence and training to help Yemen counter al-Qaeda militants”, according to the US military. Obama’s main core objective will be to establish an enduring military presence in Yemen. This serves many purposes.
A new great game begins
First, the US move has to be viewed against the historic backdrop of the Shi’ite awakening in the region. The Shi’ites (mostly of the Zaidi group) have been traditionally suppressed in Yemen. Shi’ite uprisings have been a recurring theme in Yemen’s history. There has been a deliberate attempt to minimize the percentage of Shi’ites in Yemen, but they could be anywhere up to 45%.
More importantly, in the northern part of the country, they constitute the majority. What bothers the US and moderate Sunni Arab states – and Israel – is that the Believing Youth Organization led by Hussein Badr al-Houthi, which is entrenched in northern Yemen, is modeled after Hezbollah in Lebanon in all respects – politically, economically, socially and culturally.
Yemenis are an intelligent people and are famous in the Arabian Peninsula for their democratic temperament. The Yemeni Shi’ite empowerment on a Hezbollah-model would have far-reaching regional implications. Next-door Oman, which is a key American base, is predominantly Shi’ite. Even more sensitive is the likelihood of the dangerous idea of Shi’ite empowerment spreading to Saudi Arabia’s highly restive Shi’ite regions adjoining Yemen, which on top of it all, also happen to be the reservoir of the country’s fabulous oil wealth.
Saudi Arabia is entering a highly sensitive phase of political transition as a new generation is set to take over the leadership in Riyadh, and the palace intrigues and fault lines within the royal family are likely to get exacerbated. To put it mildly, given the vast scale of institutionalized Shi’ite persecution in Saudi Arabia by the Wahhabi establishment, Shi’ite empowerment is a veritable minefield that Riyadh is petrified about at this juncture. Its threshold of patience is wearing thin, as the recent uncharacteristic resort to military power against the north Yemeni Shi’ite communities bordering Saudi Arabia testifies.
The US faces a classic dilemma. It is all right for Obama to highlight the need of reform in Muslim societies – as he did eloquently in his Cairo speech last June. But democratization in the Yemeni context – ironically, in the Arab context – would involve Shi’ite empowerment. After the searing experience in Iraq, Washington is literally perched like a cat on a hot tin roof. It would much rather be aligned with the repressive, autocratic government of Saleh than let the genie of reform out of the bottle in the oil rich-region in which it has profound interests.
Obama has an erudite mind and he is not unaware that what Yemen desperately needs is reform, but he simply doesn’t want to think about it. The paradox he faces is that with all its imperfections, Iran happens to be the only “democratic” system operating in that entire region.
Iran’s shadow over the Yemeni Shi’ite consciousness worries the US to no end. Simply put, in the ideological struggle going on in the region, Obama finds himself with the ultra-conservative and brutally autocratic oligarchies that constitute the ruling class in the region. Conceivably, he isn’t finding it easy. If his own memoirs are to be believed, there could be times when the vague recollections of his childhood in Indonesia and his precious memories of his own mother, who from all accounts was a free-wheeling intellectual and humanist, must be stalking him in the White House corridors.
Israel moves in
But Obama is first and foremost a realist. Emotions and personal beliefs drain away and strategic considerations weigh uppermost when he works in the Oval Office. With the military presence in Yemen, the US has tightened the cordon around Iran. In the event of a military attack on Iran, Yemen could be put to use as a springboard by the Israelis. These are weighty considerations for Obama.
The fact is that no one is in control as a Yemeni authority. It is a cakewalk for the formidable Israeli intelligence to carve out a niche in Yemen – just as it did in northern Iraq under somewhat comparable circumstances.
Islamism doesn’t deter Israel at all. Saleh couldn’t have been far off the mark when he alleged last year that Israeli intelligence had been exposed as having kept links with Yemeni Islamists. The point is, Yemeni Islamists are a highly fragmented lot and no one is sure who owes what sort of allegiance to whom. Israeli intelligence operates marvelously in such twilight zones when the horizon is lacerated with the blood of the vanishing sun.
Israel will find a toehold in Yemen to be a god-sent gift insofar as it registers its presence in the Arabian Peninsula. This is a dream come true for Israel, whose effectiveness as a regional power has always been seriously handicapped by its lack of access to the Persian Gulf region. The overarching US military presence helps Israel politically to consolidate its Yemeni chapter. Without doubt, Petraeus is moving on Yemen in tandem with Israel (and Britain). But the “pro-West” Arab states with their rentier mentality have no choice except to remain as mute spectators on the sidelines.
Some among them may actually acquiesce with the Israeli security presence in the region as a safer bet than the spread of the dangerous ideas of Shi’ite empowerment emanating out of Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah. Also, at some stage, Israeli intelligence will begin to infiltrate the extremist Sunni outfits in Yemen, which are commonly known as affiliates of al-Qaeda. That is, if it hasn’t done that already. Any such link makes Israel an invaluable ally for the US in its fight against al-Qaeda. In sum, infinite possibilities exist in the paradigm that is taking shape in the Muslim world abutting into the strategic Persian Gulf.
It’s all about China
Most important, however, for US global strategies will be the massive gain of control of the port of Aden in Yemen. Britain can vouchsafe that Aden is the gateway to Asia. Control of Aden and the Malacca Strait will put the US in an unassailable position in the “great game” of the Indian Ocean. The sea lanes of the Indian Ocean are literally the jugular veins of China’s economy. By controlling them, Washington sends a strong message to Beijing that any notions by the latter that the US is a declining power in Asia would be nothing more than an extravagant indulgence in fantasy.
In the Indian Ocean region, China is increasingly coming under pressure. India is a natural ally of the US in the Indian Ocean region. Both disfavor any significant Chinese naval presence. India is mediating a rapprochement between Washington and Colombo that would help roll back Chinese influence in Sri Lanka. The US has taken a u-turn in its Myanmar policy and is engaging the regime there with the primary intent of eroding China’s influence with the military rulers. The Chinese strategy aimed at strengthening influence in Sri Lanka and Myanmar so as to open a new transportation route towards the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and Africa, where it has begun contesting traditional Western economic dominance.
China is keen to whittle down its dependence on the Malacca Strait for its commerce with Europe and West Asia. The US, on the contrary, is determined that China remains vulnerable to the choke point between Indonesia and Malaysia.
An engrossing struggle is breaking out. The US is unhappy with China’s efforts to reach the warm waters of the Persian Gulf through the Central Asian region and Pakistan. Slowly but steadily, Washington is tightening the noose around the neck of the Pakistani elites – civilian and military – and forcing them to make a strategic choice between the US and China. This will put those elites in an unenviable dilemma. Like their Indian counterparts, they are inherently “pro-Western” (even when they are “anti-American”) and if the Chinese connection is important for Islamabad, that is primarily because it balances perceived Indian hegemony.
The existential questions with which the Pakistani elites are grappling are apparent. They are seeking answers from Obama. Can Obama maintain a balanced relationship vis-a-vis Pakistan and India? Or, will Obama lapse back to the George W Bush era strategy of building up India as the pre-eminent power in the Indian Ocean under whose shadow Pakistan will have to learn to live?
US-India-Israel axis
On the other hand, the Indian elites are in no compromising mood. Delhi was on a roll during the Bush days. Now, after the initial misgivings about Obama’s political philosophy, Delhi is concluding that he is all but a clone of his illustrious predecessor as regards the broad contours of the US’s global strategy – of which containment of China is a core template.
The comfort level is palpably rising in Delhi with regard to the Obama presidency. Delhi takes the surge of the Israeli lobby in Washington as the litmus test for the Obama presidency. The surge suits Delhi, since the Jewish lobby was always a helpful ally in cultivating influence in the US Congress, media and the rabble-rousing think-tankers as well as successive administrations. And all this is happening at a time when the India-Israel security relationship is gaining greater momentum.
United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates is due to visit Delhi in the coming days. The Obama administration is reportedly adopting an increasingly accommodative attitude toward India’s longstanding quest for “dual-use” technology from the US. If so, a massive avenue of military cooperation is about to open between the two countries, which will make India a serious challenger to China’s growing military prowess. It is a win-win situation as the great Indian arms bazaar offers highly lucrative business for American companies.
Clearly, a cozy three-way US-Israel-India alliance provides the underpinning for all the maneuvering that is going on. It will have significance for the security of the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. Last year, India formalized a naval presence in Oman.
All-in-all, terrorism experts are counting the trees and missing the wood when they analyze the US foray into Yemen in the limited terms of hunting down al-Qaeda. The hard reality is that Obama, whose main plank used to be “change”, has careened away and increasingly defaults to the global strategies of the Bush era. The freshness of the Obama magic is dissipating. Traces of the “revisionism” in his foreign policy orientation are beginning to surface. We can see them already with regard to Iran, Afghanistan, the Middle East and the Israel-Palestine problem, Central Asia and towards China and Russia.
Arguably, this sort of “return of the native” by Obama was inevitable. For one thing, he is but a creature of his circumstances. As someone put it brilliantly, Obama’s presidency is like driving a train rather than a car: a train cannot be “steered”, the driver can at best set its speed, but ultimately, it must run on its tracks.
Besides, history has no instances of a declining world power meekly accepting its destiny and walking into the sunset. The US cannot give up on its global dominance without putting up a real fight. And the reality of all such momentous struggles is that they cannot be fought piece-meal. You cannot fight China without occupying Yemen.
Russia, China, Iran redraw energy map
Asia Times
January 9, 2010
The inauguration of the Dauletabad-Sarakhs-Khangiran pipeline on Wednesday connecting Iran’s northern Caspian region with Turkmenistan’s vast gas field may go unnoticed amid the Western media cacophony that it is “apocalypse now” for the Islamic regime in Tehran.
The event sends strong messages for regional security. Within the space of three weeks, Turkmenistan has committed its entire gas exports to China, Russia and Iran. It has no urgent need of the pipelines that the United States and the European Union have been advancing. Are we hearing the faint notes of a Russia-China-Iran symphony?
The 182-kilometer Turkmen-Iranian pipeline starts modestly with the pumping of 8 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Turkmen gas. But its annual capacity is 20bcm, and that would meet the energy requirements of Iran’s Caspian region and enable Tehran to free its own gas production in the southern fields for export. The mutual interest is perfect: Ashgabat gets an assured market next door; northern Iran can consume without fear of winter shortages; Tehran can generate more surplus for exports; Turkmenistan can seek transportation routes to the world market via Iran; and Iran can aspire to take advantage of its excellent geographical location as a hub for the Turkmen exports.
We are witnessing a new pattern of energy cooperation at the regional level that dispenses with Big Oil. Russia traditionally takes the lead. China and Iran follow the example. Russia, Iran and Turkmenistan hold respectively the world’s largest, second-largest and fourth-largest gas reserves. And China will be consumer par excellence in this century. The matter is of profound consequence to the US global strategy.
Filed under: Afghanistan, alqaeda, Barack Obama, Iraq, Military, Military Industrial Complex, mutallab, nation building, obama, obamas war, occupation, Troops, u.s. soldiers, War On Terror, yemen | Tags: bukar al-Qirbi, Rashad al-Alimi
Yemen tells U.S. soldiers to keep out
The Independent
January 8, 2010
Yemen insisted yesterday that it could handle its own mounting security challenges without any direct foreign intervention, pointedly warning Washington to learn the lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan.
While welcoming US intelligence and technological co-operation, the Deputy Prime Minister for Defence and Security, Rashad al-Alimi, told a crowded news conference in the capital, Sana’a, that the government did not want foreign troops on its soil.
That message was reinforced by Foreign Minister Abukar al-Qirbi, who told CNN that fighting militants was “the priority and the responsibility of our security forces and the army”.
On the possibility of direct US military intervention, he said: “No, I don’t think we will accept that. I think the US as well have learned from Afghanistan and Iraq and other places that direct intervention can be self-defeating.”
Filed under: 9/11 Truth, Afghanistan, Airport Security, airstrikes, Alex Jones, alqaeda, amsterdam, aqap, aristocrats, Barack Obama, bilderberg, bin laden, CIA, Colonialism, Cult Programming, DHS, Dictatorship, Empire, fake alqaeda, fake terror threat, fake terrorists, False Flag, FBI, Flight 253, global elite, gordon brown, Homeland Security, inside job, IntelCenter, internationalist, Iraq, islamist, kosovo, Kurt Haskell, Military, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, Mossad, Muslim Brotherhood, mutallab, nasser, nation building, NATO, obama, obama deception, obamas war, occupation, Oil, oligarchy, PETN bomb, plane bomber, resource war, ruling class, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, staged terrorist attack, State Sponsored Terrorism, terror watch list, terrorist patsy, Troops, truth movement, Uncategorized, War On Terror, war spending, webster tarpley, White House, yemen, zawahiri | Tags: christmas bomber, crotch bomber, flight 253 mystery, Nassir al-Wahishi, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab
Obama Blames al-Qaeda for Christmas False Flag, Sets Stage for Yemen Attack
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
January 3, 2010
On Saturday, Obama said the Christmas day non-attack over Detroit was the work of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the latest incarnation of the perennial boogieman used by government to frighten people into accepting foreign invasions and occupations and an ever-growing police state grid at home.
“We know that [Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab] traveled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies. It appears that he joined an affiliate of al Qaeda, and that this group — Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America,” Obama said in his address to the nation.
Nassir al-Wahishi is the new Osama bin Laden. He was appointed by Ayman al-Zawahiri to run AQAP in Yemen. Al-Zawahiri is a documented intelligence asset. His brother Zaiman al-Zawahiri fought for the CIA in Kosovo and ran terrorist camps under NATO protection in the U.S. zone in Kosovo.
Ayman, according to January 2000 U.S. Congressional testimony, was granted U.S. residence by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. This is almost impossible for many legitimate immigrants to obtain but is often granted to CIA assets that need to get in and out of the country as they perform their assignments.
Ayman al-Zawahiri founded the Egyptian Islamic Jihad with the help of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization long ago penterated and comprmised by British intelligence. The CIA funneled support to the Muslim Brotherhood in an effort to overthrow Egyptian president Gamal Abddul Nasser, considered the father of Arab nationalism.
“The real Muslim Brothers are those whose hands are never dirtied with the business of killing and burning,” Robert Dreyfuss summarized in 1980. “They are the secretive bankers and financiers who stand behind the curtain, the members of the old Arab, Turkish, or Persian families whose genealogy places them in the oligarchical elite, with smooth business and intelligence associations to the European black nobility (Bilderberg) and, especially, to the British oligarchy.”
The Islamist movement and in particular the violent Jihadist movement are creations of the elite and are used for political purposes contrary to those declared by their wild-eyed adherents who are generally patsies and useful idiots.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is but the latest assemblage of fanatics to be used by the elite to further their agenda of global domination and the mass murder and suffering it requires.
If Nassir al-Wahishi is connected to Ayman al-Zawahiri, it is a pretty safe bet to say he is a tool of the CIA as well. Nassir al-Wahishi also had a close relationship to the Big Kahuna of CIA operatives, the late Osama bin Laden.
“This is not the first time this group has targeted us,” Obama continued in his weekend address. “In recent years, they have bombed Yemeni government facilities and Western hotels, restaurants and embassies — including our embassy in 2008, killing one American. So, as president, I’ve made it a priority to strengthen our partnership with the Yemeni government-training and equipping their security forces, sharing intelligence and working with them to strike al-Qaeda terrorists.”
Obama’s statement came one day after Britain’s PM Gordon Brown called an “emergency summit” on “extremism” in Yemen. “Gordon Brown has invited key international partners to a high-level meeting in order to discuss how best to counter radicalization in Yemen,” a statement issued by Downing Street announced. “The prime minister will host the event on 28 January in London.”
“Yemen’s problems are many, and some are already spreading beyond its borders,” the establishment declares from the pages of The Washington Post. “Security and stability are deteriorating. The population is growing rapidly. The economy is collapsing. There are few good options today; things will look worse tomorrow. Immediate and sustained international attention is needed to at least lessen the impact of some problems.”
“While military and counterterrorism operations are critical, long-term development assistance is also necessary.”
Iranian Press TV comments: “Concerns are growing that the same fate as those of Afghanistan and Iraq, suffering violence despite years of foreign military presence, might await Yemen’s Muslim nation.”
Obama Administration Prepares Public Opinion for Attack on Yemen
globalresearch.ca
January 3, 2010
Five days after the unsuccessful attempt by a Nigerian student to set off a bomb aboard a Detroit-bound passenger jet, US military and intelligence officials are said to be preparing expanded military action against targets in Yemen, the Arab country where the student allegedly received terrorist training and was equipped with an explosive device.
A series of US media reports suggest that new US-backed military attacks inside Yemen are imminent. Citing “two senior US officials,” CNN reported: “The US and Yemen are now looking at fresh targets for a potential retaliation strike.”
The network said the officials “both stressed the effort is aimed at being ready with options for the White House if President Obama orders a retaliatory strike.” CNN continued: “The effort is to see whether targets can be specifically linked to the airliner incident and its planning. US special operations forces and intelligence agencies, and their Yemeni counterparts, are working to identify potential Al Qaeda targets in Yemen, one of the officials said.”
The network said the Obama administration and the long-time Yemeni dictator, Field Marshal Ali Abdullah Saleh, had reached an agreement to allow the US to fly cruise missiles, fighter jets and armed drones, used for remote-control assassinations, in Yemeni airspace. Talks were still ongoing on whether Saleh will give permission for the entry of US helicopter-borne Special Forces.
The report comes after a series of statements by top administration officials, including Obama himself, pledging that “all elements of US power” will be used in response to the failed attack on Northwest Flight 253. The White House has been under heavy fire from its Republican opponents over the evident security failure, and a military action would serve to divert public attention from the ongoing revelations of how the CIA and other US agencies ignored warnings about the impending attack.
Yemen’s foreign minister, Abu Bakr al Qirbi, told the BBC that his country was seeking stepped up military aid, presumably as part of a package deal—in effect, a bribe for allowing the country’s territory to be turned into a battlefield for US commandos.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Obama administration was discussing nearly tripling its military and counterterrorism aid to Yemen in the coming year. US aid jumped from $4.6 million in 2006 to $67 million this year, and would rise to as much as $190 million in 2010, according to “a senior military official.
Reuters, citing unnamed “defense and counterterrorism officials,” reported that “the Obama administration was exploring ways to accelerate and expand US assistance to Yemeni forces to root out the Al Qaeda leadership in the country, while keeping the role of the US military and intelligence agencies as behind the scenes as possible.”
The news agency reported a clash between Yemeni security forces and Al Qaeda fighters in the western Hudaydah province, around the town of Deir Jaber.
The Los Angeles Times cited a Yemeni terrorism expert as the source of an estimate that Al Qaeda has “as many as 2,000 militants and sympathizers exploiting the country’s economic and political chaos to create a base for jihad at the edge of the Persian Gulf.” This is ten times more than other media estimates of the number of such militants in Yemen, and 20 times the number of Al Qaeda forces said by US officials to be in Afghanistan now.
The Times report is part of an effort by the US media to portray Yemen as a lawless hotbed of terrorism and a major threat to the United States, in order to justify in advance an American attack, or even a full-scale invasion.
It was followed by an even more apocalyptic comment by “terrorism expert” Steven Emerson, interviewed Wednesday morning on CBS’ “Early Show.” He said that while the Pakistan-Afghanistan border was still “number one” for terrorist activity, the area surrounding the Gulf of Aden, including Yemen and Somalia, was “fast coming up the ladder.”
- “Yemen possibly could surpass Pakistan in the next year, given the terrorist trajectory for providing a haven for Al Qaeda,” he claimed. In light of the fact that the Obama administration is mobilizing 100,000 American troops as well as hundreds of warplanes and drones for combat along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, such a comparison is extremely ominous.
Emerson took particular note of “literally scores of American Muslim students studying and being trained in Yemen to this day…. There’s a pool of potential terrorists out there that have Western passports that can board planes without visas.”
The clear goal of such far-fetched claims is to create a pogrom atmosphere directed against all young American Muslims, particularly those of Arab or East African origin.
These comments were made one day after press reports of an alleged abortive attempt by a Somali man equipped with explosive powder and a syringe to board a passenger jet in Mogadishu, the capital city. This is the same modus operandi as that of the Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, aboard Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day. The Somali was arrested by African peacekeeping troops on November 13 and never succeeded in getting on the plane.
The Washington Post, the leading newspaper in the US capital, published an editorial Wednesday noting that in the wake of the Christmas Day bombing attempt, allegedly originating in Yemen, “some are asking whether the United States should launch a military offensive in that impoverished Arabian nation.” The editorial continued: “The answer, of course, is that it already has.”
Citing a series of raids conducted by Yemeni and US forces, the Post praised the Obama administration for having “significantly stepped up US counterterrorism operations in Yemen,” including the dispatch of CIA and Special Forces personnel. But it warned: “Still, Yemen’s steady slide toward failed-state status in recent years means that it, like nearby Somalia, will probably demand concerted and multifaceted US engagement for years to come. More than Special Forces and missile strikes are needed.”
While declaring that “US ground troops are not needed, for now, in Yemen or Somalia,” the newspaper suggested that such forces may well be required in the future. It declared, “in those countries, as in Afghanistan, a strategy limited to counterterrorism will not eliminate the threat.”
Once again, as in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq, American imperialism is preparing a military bloodbath in an impoverished country, using a terrorist attack—in this case a failed attempt—as the pretext. According to reports by the UN and Yemeni government statistics, some 35 percent of the adult population of the country is unemployed. Yemen is the poorest of the Arab countries, has exhausted its very limited oil export capacity, and now faces severe water shortages.
But Yemen possesses, like Afghanistan and Iraq, a highly strategic geographic location, adjacent to Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, and the Red Sea, controlling access to the Suez Canal. Yemen also borders on the Gulf of Aden, the shipping route for much of the oil leaving the Persian Gulf.
US military forces are already deployed across the strait of Bab el Mandeb in Djibouti, the former French Somaliland, which remains a virtual French colony. Djibouti hosts thousands of French and US troops who could quickly move into Yemen if so ordered by Paris and Washington. A large US and NATO war fleet patrols shipping lanes through the Gulf of Aden and south along the Indian Ocean coast of Somalia.
Summary of Facts: Flight 253 Event
Examiner
January 2, 2009
The US government who lied for wars in other resource-rich countries are lying about what happened on Delta Flight 253 with an alleged underwear/crotch bomber. Below is a summary of facts reported at this time, along with a 4-minute news interview from Webster Tarpley, followed by an extensive interview of Mr. Tarpley by Alex Jones.:
Before the flight to the US:
- * Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab traveled to Yemen to meet with “terrorists.” However, his mother also lives in Yemen, which could also explain the visit.
* The alleged terrorists in Yemen had been in Guantanamo Prison. They were released without trial by the Bush Administration even though they were reported as among the most dangerous detainees.
* The government of Yemen reports that Islamic terrorists there have been arrested who have proven ties to Israeli intelligence.
* Abdulmutallab’s father, though we are told is a retired “Nigerian banker,” ran their defense industry in close cooperation with Israeli Intelligence (Mossad).
* Abdulmutallab’s father warned US embassy officials of his son’s dangerous behavior; this is corroborated with other US intelligence of warning.
* Abdulmutallab’s visa to the US was never withdrawn, though he was on a “terrorist watchlist.” This would make his trip impossible unless protocol was ignored.
* Flying from Nigeria, Abdulmutallab entered the Netherlands without passing through customs; impossible to do without assistance from an intelligence agency.
* At the Amsterdam airport, Abdulmutallab was assisted by a man appearing to be Indian, who claimed Abdulmutallab was a Sudanese refugee with no passport (he would not have been allowed to enter the EU without a passport through customs). This man and whoever authorized boarding without a passport are huge stories we haven’t heard. Where is the airport videos of this?
* Airport security in Amsterdam is contracted to an Israeli company with the most sophisticated technologies who had developed the concept of security profiling.
During the flight to the US:
- * Witnesses reported a man standing ten rows behind Abdulmutallab stand and use his camcorder to film the incident before it began. This important testimony was not pursued to discover the identity and role of this seemingly complicit person.
* Witnesses report Abdulmutallab was oddly vacant and calm; typical of a programmed
“Manchurian Candidate.” This might explain the behavior of the person filming: a “handler” who gave the code for Abdulmutallab to perform an act. Manchurian Candidates are now acknowledged historical fact. Research this if you are unfamiliar with the disclosed history.
After the flight:
- *Witness on flight 253, attorney Kurt Haskell, reports that there was another suspect handcuffed at the airport after landing that the FBI repeatedly lies and changes their story in explaining. Haskell says the detained passengers were told this man was identified by a bomb-sniffing dog as having explosives in his luggage.
* The Detroit News confirms the FBI has changed their story four times.
* 50 grams of PETN positioned on a seat and cushioned underneath a passenger are tested and would not cause significant damage to the plane.
* The US and UK government are using this incident to justify attack and possible invasion of Yemen.
* We’re reminded that yes, Yemen has oil and natural gas reserves worth stealing.
Filed under: Baghdad, Blackwater, civilian casualties, Dictatorship, Empire, Iraq, justice system, mercenaries, occupation, War On Terror
US judge lets Blackwater/Xe mercs off the hook
Press TV
January 1, 2010
A US federal judge has dismissed criminal charges against five Blackwater/Xe security guards accused of fatally shooting 14 people in Baghdad in September 2007.
On Thursday, Judge Ricardo Urbina said US government prosecutors violated the defendants’ rights by using incriminating statements they had made under immunity during a State Department probe to build their case.
“The government used the defendants’ compelled statements to guide its charging decisions, to formulate its theory of the case, to develop investigatory leads, and ultimately to obtain the indictment in the case,” Urbina ruled.
“In short, the government had utterly failed to prove that it made no impermissible use of the defendants’ statement or that such use was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The Blackwater/Xe mercenaries had been charged with killing 14 Iraqi civilians and wounding 18 others using gunfire and grenades at a busy Baghdad intersection in September 2007.
They faced charges of manslaughter.
In a public relations move meant to clean up the company’s image, which was tarnished by incidents in which civilians were killed in the Iraq war, Blackwater Worldwide rebranded and changed its name to a futuristic new name, Xe (pronounced like the last letter of the alphabet), in February 2009.
However, there is still great animosity toward Blackwater/Xe in Iraq.
Many Iraqis believe the US military allowed Blackwater/Xe mercenaries to commit numerous war crimes against their compatriots with impunity, and the latest court ruling will only reinforce such sentiments.
Filed under: Air Force, Dictatorship, Empire, global elite, human rights, Iraq, IVAW, Marines, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, occupation, Oppression, Troops, u.s. soldiers, veterans, War On Terror
U.S Soldiers Are Waking Up!
Filed under: Afghanistan, Baluchistan, big pharma, Blackwater, CIA, colombia, corruption, death squads, drug cartel, drug smuggling, drug trafficking, drugs, Extraordinary Rendition, FATA, gangsters, Hamid Karzai', heroin, India, Iran, Iran Contra, Iraq, islamibad, Israel, karachi, karzai, mafia, medical industrial complex, mercenaries, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, Nicaragua, obama, occupation, Oliver North, Opium, Pakistan, quetta, Saddam Hussein, scandal, Taliban, Troops, Venezuela, war on drugs, War On Terror, Waziristan, Weinberger, Zardani | Tags: government drug smuggling
Are America’s Mercenary Armies Really Drug Cartels?
Gordon Duff
December 29, 2009
News out of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India reports massive corruption at the highest levels of government, corruption that could only be financed with drug money. In Afghanistan, the president’s brother is known to be one of the biggest drug runners in the world.
In Pakistan, President Zardani is found with 60 million in a Swiss Bank and his Interior Minister is suspected of ties to American groups involved in paramilitary operations, totally illegal that could involve nothing but drugs, there is no other possibility.
Testimony in the US that our government has used “rendition” flights to transport massive amounts of narcotics to Western Europe and the United States has been taken in sworn deposition.
American mercenaries in Pakistan are hundreds of miles away from areas believed to be hiding terrorists, involved in “operations” that can’t have anything whatsoever to do with any CIA contract. These mercenaries aren’t in Quetta, Waziristan or FATA supporting our troops, they are in Karachi and Islamabad playing with police and government officials and living the life of the fatted calf.
The accusations made are that Americans in partnership with corrupt officials, perhaps in all 3 countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, are involved in assassinations, “unknown” criminal activities and are functioning like criminal gangs.
There is no oil. There is nothing to draw people into the area other than one product, one that nobody is talking about. Drugs.
The US got involved in massive drug operations, importation, processing and distribution during the Reagan years, supposedly to finance covert CIA operations involving death squads tasked with murdering Sandinista “infrastructure” in Nicaragua.
The deal involved Israel, Iran and the Colombian cartel. Saddam was even involved. In the end, President Reagan was put on the stand only to remember little or nothing of his tenure in office. Lt. Col. Oliver North was convicted as was Secretary of Defense Weinberger and many others. Pardons and “other methods” were used to keep the guilty out of jail.
Now we find what was supposed to be a CIA operation with one company only, Xe, operations that were meant to hunt a couple of terrorist/Taliban leaders in and around Quetta, a city of 1 million in remote Baluchistan has turned into a honeycomb of operations involving millions of dollars and personnel of all kinds, perhaps even ranking diplomats and high government officials, the highest.
The cover of hunting terrorists in remote areas with hundreds of armed men in cities on the other side of the country, cities filled with 5 star hotels, country clubs, polo, cricket and fine restaurants is not really cover, even by CIA standards.
The reports, bribes, actions that look and smell like drug gangs at work, tell a story that nobody wants to talk about.
With 50 billion dollars of opium from Afghanistan alone and crops in Pakistan and India also, managing the world’s heroin supply is, by my estimation, how all of this “muscle” is staying busy. When you see a black van full of armed men, is there a sign somewhere saying:
“We are counter terrorists working for the Central Intelligence Agency and we are only in town here, hundreds of miles from the nearest terrorist because we need a hot shower and to get a noise in the transmission checked out.”
Everyone can choose to believe what they want. It’s time we stopped lying. Its about drugs, always has been, always will, drugs and money. It buys men, it buys guns and it can buy governments and has, as anyone with eyes can see.
Filed under: 9/11 Truth, Afghanistan, Airport Security, airstrikes, alqaeda, Censorship, CIA, Coverup, False Flag, FBI, fearmongering, Flight 253, Homeland Security, inside job, Iraq, Joe Lieberman, karl haskell, LIHOP, Mainstream Media, Media, media blackout, media censorship, Media Fear, Media Manipulation, MIHOP, military strike, mutallab, nation building, neocons, occupation, passport, plane bomber, preemptive war, Propaganda, Saber Rattling, State Sponsored Terrorism, truth movement, TSA, Uncategorized, War On Terror | Tags: Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, christmas bomber, flight 253 mysteries, flight 253 oddities, Patricia “Scotty” Keepman, Patricia Keepman, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab
Man Videotaped Entire Incident on Flight 253
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
December 28, 2009
For ABC News and the corporate media, it is a foregone conclusion. The Christmas underwear bomber is al-Qaeda.
“American officials have cause to worry there may be more al Qaeda-trained young men in Yemen planning to bring down American jets,” report Brian Ross and Richard Esposito. “Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, charged with the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253, told FBI agents there were more just like him in Yemen who would strike soon.”
And then there is the supposed tape released four days before the attempted underwear bombing. It shows what ABC describes as “the leader of al Qaeda in Yemen” who says he will kill Americans. “We are carrying a bomb to hit the enemies of God.”
“Yemen has become a principal al Qaeda training ground and the accused suicide bomber told the FBI he was trained for more than a month in Yemen, given 80 grams of a high explosive cleverly sewn into his underpants, undetected by standard security screening.”
On Sunday, the neocon Joe Lieberman said the U.S. needs to bomb Yemen and pronto. “Iraq was yesterday’s war, Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war,” the “hawkish” (neocon) senator from Connecticut told Fox News.
Lieberman, who helms the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Yemen is the new home of al-Qaeda. A script on Yemen and al-Qaeda is now being uniformly followed by the corporate media.
Meanwhile, more suspicious information about the underwear bombing has surfaced. An eye witness told the news talk radio station 620 WTMJ in Milwaukee that a man on the flight had videotaped the entire flight.
Patricia “Scotty” Keepman and her daughter witnessed the alleged botched bombing. Keepman’s “daughter said that ahead of them was a man who videotaped the entire flight, including the attempted detonation.”
“He sat up and videotaped the entire thing, very calmly,” said Patricia. “We do know that the FBI is looking for him intensely. Since then, we’ve heard nothing about it.”
On Saturday it was reported that a “sharp-dressed man” had escorted Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab when he boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in Amsterdam. Mutallab was allowed on the plane without a passport. It was later reported that Mutallab seemed to be in a trance.
The alleged videotaping of the underwear bomber and his fudged attack is another oddity that the corporate media should zoom in on. Unfortunately, we no longer have a functioning investigative media in this country.
Instead we will hear endless pabulum about a resurgent al-Qaeda and murderous idiocy from neocons like Joe Lieberman who are screaming for another small and defenseless country to be bombed and more innocents slaughtered as the U.S. chases a phantom terror group created by the CIA.
Terrorist Allowed on Plane Without a Passport AND He Was on a Terrorist Database
Filed under: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, obama, obama deception, obama surge, occupation, Pakistan, Pentagon, Senate, surge, Troops
Hillary: We’ll Be In Afghanistan for 50 or 60 Years
Washington’s Blog
December 24, 2009
On December 1st, President Obama talked about withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan within 18 months.
Everyone now knows that there is no firm withdrawal date from Afghanistan. See this and this.
But in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on December 2nd, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton actually gave a much longer horizon for the presence of U.S. troops in America:
- Senator UDALL.— So, in an ideal world, we would get the job done militarily in the short term; in the medium and long term, we would have a presence in the region, economically, diplomacy, and politically.
Secretary CLINTON. Well, as we have with so many other countries— obviously, we have troops in a limited number of countries around the world; some have been there for 50, 60 years, but we have long-term economic assistance and development programs in many others. And we think that’s a likely outcome in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, that we would be there with a long-term commitment.
Does this mean that U.S. troops will be in Afghanistan in 50 year?
On the surface, Clinton’s statement could be interpreted to mean that troops will leave sooner, but that America will have long-term economic assistance and development programs in Afghanistan for many decades to come.
However, U.S. charities working in Afghanistan report that they are subject to Pentagon sponsorship and control, and so the Afghani people view them as part of the U.S. military (which hampers their aid work).
Therefore, whether or not troops will remain in Afghanistan for a half century or more, the Afghani people and the rest of the world may consider it a permanent occupation.
Remember also that – while the U.S. government has promised to withdraw by December 31, 2011 from Iraq – the U.S. is building numerous permanent military bases in that country. (see this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this). So talk is cheap.
Filed under: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Congress, Dictatorship, education, Empire, Fascism, Iraq, Israel, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, obama, obamas war, occupation, oligarchy, Pakistan, Patriot Act, public school, Senate, war funding, War On Terror, war spending
Senate passes $636 billion defense spending bill
WSWS
December 20, 2009
With overwhelming bipartisan support, the United States Senate passed a massive $636 billion military appropriations bill for 2010.
The bill includes some $128 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it does not fully fund the Obama administration’s escalation in Afghanistan, making likely further appropriations for war spending next year.
The deployment of 30,000 additional US troops is expected to cost $35 to $40 billion a year. On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced that the first of the new troops ordered to Afghanistan have begun to arrive.
All told, US military spending in 2010 will be close to $700 billion. If one adds the hundreds of billions of dollars in military-related spending included in the budgets of other departments, the total is as much as $1 trillion.
The overwhelming support for the bill, which passed 88-10 vote by the Senate on Saturday morning, demonstrates the bipartisan agreement in Washington on the war policy of the Obama administration. The vote comes shortly after President Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize speech, in which he outlined an expansion of US militarism.
Among the many separate provisions of the bill is the allocation of $80 million to acquire more unmanned Predator drones, currently being used to bomb both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The administration is planning on expanding these operations, including drone attacks against insurgents in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan that might target the large city of Quetta.
The Senate, which is currently discussing Obama’s health care overhaul, is expected to vote in support of the measure later this week.
Added on to the bill was a two-month extension of the anti-democratic Patriot Act, which also has bipartisan support. Other amendments to the bill temporarily extended jobless pay and health care assistance for the unemployed. These measures will be reexamined in February.
Meanwhile, states, cities and school districts throughout the country are imposing cuts to balance budget deficits that add up to a small fraction of the military spending bill.
School districts, in particular, are planning crippling cuts in preparation for the second half of the school year, beginning in January. Below are some examples of measures recently pushed through or planned:
• $550 million in K-12 education cuts in Michigan, leading school districts to lay off staff, close schools and eliminate programs.
• $300 million in cuts to K-12 education in Indiana. This amounts to an across-the-board 3-percent cut in the state’s education budget.
• $101.5 million less for public schools in South Carolina, adding to cuts of $85 million in September, along with $38.3 million in Medicaid cuts.
• $110 million in cuts to the 127,000-student Prince George County School District in Maryland, including 490 layoffs, an increase in class sizes, and teacher furloughs.
• $750 million withheld from local governments by New York Governor David Paterson, including funding cuts of between 10 percent and 30 percent for school districts.
• Plans for up to $470 million in cuts to public education in Los Angeles, California, including up to 8,000 layoffs.
The combined budget deficits for all 50 states this year was about $180 billion, less than one third of the military appropriation passed by the Senate.
Obama Approves $30 Billion in Military Aid to Israel Over Next Decade
Antiwar.com
December 18, 2009
As the single largest expense of the 2010 foreign aid budget, President Obama approved $2.775 billion in military aid to Israel, the first payment in a decade-long commitment that will reach at least $30 billion.
Last year, Israel’s military budget amounted to $13.3 billion, so the US funding is a significant portion of their overall expenditure. The US formerly provided both military and civilian aid, but it has since been folded entirely into military aid, at Israel’s request.
The money is not a blank check, however. The US requires that Israel spend at least 75% of the money given in military aid with US military contractors, effectively using the foreign aid budget to subsidize domestic weapon-makers.
In addition to military aid, the US also provides $3.148 billion in loan guarantees to Israel, part of a Treasury Department program aimed at keep Israel’s debt manageable. Ironically, though the US budget is spiraling out of control and America’s own debt continues to rise, there was no serious debate of reducing aid to Israel.
The budget also pledges $500 million in American aid to the Fatah Party’s Palestinian Authority. This aid is contingent on certain requirements, including that the group recognize Israel. This funding is distinct from any funding the CIA may give the Palestinian Authority’s security forces, which would be secret.
Filed under: 2-party system, Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Colonialism, contracting, contractors, DEBT, deception, DoD, ductatorship, Economy, Empire, endless war, Iraq, left right paradigm, middle class, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, obama, obama deception, obama surge, obamas war, occupation, private contractors, soldiers, surge, Taxpayers, Troops, US Economy, War On Terror
U.S. pays $57,077 a minute in Afghanistan
Asia Times
December 19, 2009
The sum of US$57,077.60. That’s what the United States is paying per minute. Keep that in mind – just for a minute or so.
After all, the surge is already on. By the end of December, the first 1,500 of 30,000 additional US troops will have landed in Afghanistan, a nation roughly the size of Texas, ranked by the United Nations as second-worst in the world in terms of human development.
Women and men from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, will be among the first to head out. It takes an estimated $1 million to send each of them surging into Afghanistan for one year. So a 30,000-person surge will be at least $30 billion, which brings us to that $57,077.60. That’s how much it will cost the US taxpayer, for one minute of that surge.
By the way, add up the yearly salary of one US Marine Corps soldier from Camp Lejeune with four years of service, throw in his or her housing allowance, additional pay for dependents, and bonus pay for hazardous duty, imminent danger, and family separation, and you’ll still be many thousands of dollars short of that single minute’s sum.
DOD: Obama’s Afghan Surge Will Rely Heavily On Private Contractors
TPM Muckraker
December 15, 2009
Private contractors will make up at least half of the total military workforce in Afghanistan going forward, according to Defense Department officials cited in a new congressional study.
As President Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan unfolds, the number of contractors will likely jump by between 16,000 and 56,000, adding up to a total of 120,000-160,000, according to an updated study from the Congressional Research Service.
DOD officials who spoke with the study’s author said contractors would make up 50-55 percent of the total workforce — troops plus contractors — in the future. This would actually be a significant reduction from the last two years, when contractors have averaged 62 percent of the total.
As we’ve reported, many questions about the army of contractors, which outnumbers the size of the U.S. troop force, remain unanswered and underexamined. We don’t have up to date numbers on how much the United States spends on private contracts, and the DOD does not break down the services done by contractors in Afghanistan (it does for Iraq).
As of September 2009, contractors providing security, transportation, and logistical services numbered 104,100 in Afghanistan and 113,700 in Iraq, according to the military. Most of the contractors in Afghanistan are local nationals, according to the military.
Filed under: Afghanistan, alqaeda, army, contracting, contractors, DoD, fake alqaeda, House, Iraq, John Tierney, Military, Military Industrial Complex, mujahideen, nation building, occupation, Pakistan, private contractors, protection money, soldiers, State Sponsored Terrorism, Taliban, terrorist funding, terrorist hoax, Troops, War On Terror
Congress to probe ‘U.S. funding of Taliban’
Raw Story
December 17, 2009
A House committee has launched an investigation into claims that US military contractors in Afghanistan are paying the Taliban to guarantee the safety of their transportation convoys, an allegation that could mean American taxpayers are indirectly funding the insurgency that has killed more than 900 American soldiers so far.
“Serious allegations have been [made] that private security providers for US transportation contractors in Afghanistan are regularly paying local warlords and the Taliban for security,” said Rep. John Tierney (D-MA), chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs. “After a preliminary inquiry, it has been determined these reports warrant a full-scale subcommittee investigation.”
Tierney said that if the allegations are proven to be true, “it would mean that the United States is unintentionally engaged in a vast protection racket and, as such, may be indirectly funding the very insurgents we are trying to fight.”
Filed under: alqaeda, brainwashing, CIA, Detainees, fake alqaeda, indoctrination, inside job, Iraq, Military, Military Industrial Complex, mujahideen, shiites, State Sponsored Terrorism, sunni, terrorist funding, terrorist recruiting, Troops, War On Terror | Tags: camp bucca
Terrorists Were Free to Teach Detainees in U.S. Jail
Filed under: Afghanistan, al-qaeda, Al-Qaeda Tapes, alqaeda, Ayman al Zawahiri, Barack Obama, Benazir Bhutto, bin laden, bin laden dead, Bin Laden Tapes, bush, CIA, Col. Bob Pappas, Dick Cheney, donald rumfeld, fake alqaeda, fearmongering, George Bush, inside job, IntelCenter, Iraq, John Kerry, McChrystal, Media Fear, Media Manipulation, Military Industrial Complex, Mullah Omar, nation building, obama, obama deception, obama surge, occupation, osama, osama dead, Pakistan, Propaganda, psychological operations, Psyops, Robert Gates, Saudi Arabia, scam, Stanley McChrystal, State Sponsored Terrorism, surge, tora bora, War On Terror
U.S. Openly Accepts Bin Laden Long Dead
Veterans Today
December 5, 2009
Conservative commentator, former Marine Colonel Bob Pappas has been saying for years that bin Laden died at Tora Bora and that Senator Kerry’s claim that bin Laden escaped with Bush help was a lie. Now we know that Pappas was correct. The embarassment of having Secretary of State Clinton talk about bin Laden in Pakistan was horrific. He has been dead since December 13, 2001 and now, finally, everyone, Obama, McChrystal, Cheney, everyone who isn’t nuts is finally saying what they have known for years.
However, since we lost a couple of hundred of our top special operations forces hunting for bin Laden after we knew he was dead, is someone going to answer for this with some jail time? Since we spent 200 million dollars on “special ops” looking for someone we knew was dead, who is going to jail for that? Since Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney continually talked about a man they knew was dead, now known to be for reasons of POLITICAL nature, who is going to jail for that? Why were tapes brought out, now known to be forged, as legitimate intelligence to sway the disputed 2004 election in the US? This is a criminal act if there ever was one.
In 66 pages, General Stanley McChrystal never mentions Osama bin Laden. Everything is “Mullah Omar” now. In his talk at West Point, President Obama never mentioned Osama bin Laden. Col. Pappas makes it clear, Vice President Cheney let it “out of the bag” long ago. Bin Laden was killed by American troops many many years ago.
America knew Osama bin Laden died December 13, 2001. After that, his use was hardly one to unite America but rather one to divide, scam and play games. With bin Laden gone, we could have started legitimate nation building in Afghanistan instead of the eternal insurgency that we invented ourselves.
Without our ill informed policies, we could have had a brought diplomatic solution in 2002 in Afghanistan, the one we are ignoring now, and spent money rebuilding the country, 5 cents on the dollar compared to what we are spending fighting a war against an enemy we ourselves recruited thru ignorance.
The bin Laden scam is one of the most shameful acts ever perpetrated against the American people. We don’t even know if he really was an enemy, certainly he was never the person that Bush and Cheney said. In fact, the Bush and bin Laden families were always close friends and had been for many years.
What kind of man was Osama bin Laden? This one time American ally against Russia, son of a wealthy Saudi family, went to Afghanistan to help them fight for their freedom. America saw him as a great hero then. Transcripts of the real bin Laden show him to be much more moderate than we claim, angry at Israel and the US government but showing no anger toward Americans and never making the kind of theats claimed. All of this is public record for any with the will to learn.
Gates: No U.S. intel on Osama for ‘years’
Was Bin Laden’s Last Video Faked
Osama Bin Laden Believed Dead by Pak Int.
Probe into ‘Bin Laden death’ leak
Benazir Bhutto Confirms that Osama Bin Laden is Dead (Video)
Israeli intelligence: Bin Laden is dead, heir has been chosen
Bin Laden may be dead, but living on through old sound bites
Osama bin Laden: A dead nemesis perpetuated by the US government
Filed under: 2-party system, Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, Barack Obama, bush, bush = obama, Child Abuse, child torture, civil liberties, civil rights, Detainees, DOJ, Extraordinary Rendition, Geneva Convention, George Bush, gitmo, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, human rights, interrogation, Iraq, john yoo, left right paradigm, nation building, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, obamas war, occupation, rendition, Torture, War Crimes, War On Terror
Obama Protecting Bush’s “Testicle Crusher” Attorney
San Francisco Chronicle
December 8, 2009
The Obama administration has asked an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing former Bush administration attorney John Yoo of authorizing the torture of a terrorism suspect, saying federal law does not allow damage claims against lawyers who advise the president on national security issues.
Such lawsuits ask courts to second-guess presidential decisions and pose “the risk of deterring full and frank advice regarding the military’s detention and treatment of those determined to be enemies during an armed conflict,” Justice Department lawyers said Thursday in arguments to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Other sanctions are available for government lawyers who commit misconduct, the department said. It noted that its Office of Professional Responsibility has been investigating Yoo’s advice to former President George W. Bush since 2004 and has the power to recommend professional discipline or even criminal prosecution.
The office has not made its conclusions public. However, The Chronicle and other media reported in May that the office will recommend that Yoo be referred to the bar association for possible discipline, but that he not be prosecuted.
Yoo, a UC Berkeley law professor, worked for the Justice Department from 2001 to 2003. He was the author of a 2002 memo that said rough treatment of captives amounts to torture only if it causes the same level of pain as “organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death.” The memo also said the president may have the power to authorize torture of enemy combatants.
noworldsystem.com 