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, army, Barack Obama, Dictatorship, Empire, fallen soldiers, McChrystal, Military, military casualties, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, NATO, obama, obama deception, obama surge, obamas war, occupation, Stanley McChrystal, surge, Taliban, Troops, u.s. soldiers, War On Terror | Tags: General Barry McCaffrey, McCaffrey
US forces in Afghanistan ‘should expect up to 500 casualties a month’
Times Online
January 7, 2010
US forces in Afghanistan should brace themselves for up to 500 casualties a month this year, a senior retired American general has warned.
The forecast comes from General Barry McCaffrey, formerly the most decorated general in the US Army, who has conducted field assessments of the US military performance in Afghanistan at the request of the US military since 2003.
His assessment projects that US forces can expect to lose between 300 and 500 soldiers a month, either killed or wounded, this year, rising to a peak during the summer months. US military casualties during 2009 were 305 killed and 2,102 injured up to December 20. More than half of those injured have not been able to return to service.
Casualties in Afghanistan tend to peak during the summer “fighting season” between June and October and to dip, particularly in mountainous areas, during the winter.
The anticipated increase would produce around 3,000 American casualties this year, and a total for Western forces in Afghanistan of around 5,000 killed and wounded — the equivalent of seven infantry battalions.
British forces suffered 108 deaths last year, and 464 wounded in action.
General McCaffrey is an adjunct professor at the US Military Academy at West Point. While his assessment is not a government document, it was conducted at the request of General David Petraeus, the commander of US Central Command, and General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, and included comprehensive access to senior Western military officials and diplomats, including British officials.
He suggests that the Taleban deserve considerable respect for their tenacity and military capability. “We must guard against arrogance, and US and allied ground combat forces”, he warns, face “very clever fighters” with “ferocious combat capabilities”.
He cites in particular two occasions when small American bases were all but overrun by “battalion-size” Taleban units during 2009: “Only the incredible small unit leadership, fighting skill, and valour of these two small US army units — which suffered very high casualties at [Combat Outpost] Wanat and COP Keating — prevented humiliating defeat.”
Despite the stated desire of the Obama Administration to achieve a discernible improvement in Afghanistan within 18 months, and to begin a military drawdown after that time, General McCaffrey concludes: “We are unlikely to achieve our political and military goals in 18 months. This will inevitably become a three to ten-year strategy to build a viable Afghan state with their own security force that can allow us to withdraw.
“It may well cost us an additional $300 billion, and we are likely to suffer thousands more US casualties.”
A promised “US civilian surge” will not materialise, he believes: “Afghanistan over the next two to three years will be simply too dangerous for most civil agencies.”
He adds that the war can be expected to cost the US Government more than $9 billion (£5.6 billion) a month during the summer of 2010. The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is currently $377 million a day, compared with a constant-dollar equivalent of $622 million a day for the Second World War.
However, his assessment is that the mission’s goals remain possible: “We can achieve our strategic purpose with determined leadership and American treasure and blood.
“We now have the most effective and courageous military forces in our nation’s history committed to this campaign … Our focus must now not be on an exit strategy — but effective execution of the political, economic and military measures required to achieve our purpose.”
Filed under: Afghanistan, Air Force, airstrikes, alqaeda, Barack Obama, Blackwater, CIA, civilian casualties, Colonialism, Dictatorship, drone strikes, Empire, Eugenics, Genocide, Military, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, nation building, obama, obama surge, obamas war, occupation, Pakistan, pakistan casualties, Preemptive Strike, preemptive war, surge, Taliban, uav, us drone, War On Terror, Waziristan
Pakistan: Over 700 Civilians Killed in US Drone Strikes
Dawn News
January 3, 2009
PESHAWAR: Of the 44 predator strikes carried out by US drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan over the past 12 months, only five were able to hit their actual targets, killing five key Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but at the cost of over 700 innocent civilians.
According to the statistics compiled by Pakistani authorities, the Afghanistan-based US drones killed 708 people in 44 predator attacks targeting the tribal areas between January 1 and December 31, 2009.
For each Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by US drones, 140 innocent Pakistanis also had to die. Over 90 per cent of those killed in the deadly missile strikes were civilians, claim authorities.
The success percentage for the drone hits during 2009 was hardly 11 per cent. On average, 58 civilians were killed in these attacks every month, 12 persons every week and almost two people every day. Most of the attacks were carried out on the basis of human intelligence, reportedly provided by the Pakistani and Afghan tribesmen, who are spying for the US-led allied forces in Afghanistan.
Of the five successful predator attacks carried out in 2009, the first one came on January 1, which reportedly killed two senior al-Qaeda leaders – Usama al-Kin and Sheikh Ahmed Salim – both wanted by the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Kin was the chief operational commander of Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and had replaced Abu Faraj Al Libi after his arrest in 2004.
The second successful drone attack was conducted on August 5 in South Waziristan that killed the most wanted fugitive chief of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan Baitullah Mehsud along with his wife.
The US State Department had announces a $5million head money for information leading to Baitullah, making him the only Pakistani fugitive with the head money separately announced by Islamabad and Washington.
Filed under: Barack Obama, civilian casualties, Dictatorship, Empire, Guantanamo, Military, military funding, Military Industrial Complex, military spending, nation building, obama, obama deception, obama surge, obamas war, occupation, Saudi Arabia, surge, War On Terror, yemen
U.S. Pumps $70 Million in Security Aid to Yemen
Yemen Post
December 25, 2009
The U.S. pumped about $ 70 million in security aid to Yemen in 2009, with the aim to thwart the expansion of Al-Qaeda in the country amid fears by the west the Yemen may become a safe haven for terrorism, U.S. reports have noted.
The U.S. support to Yemen in the security field did not only focus on giving funds, but also sending military experts to train Yemeni troops how to counter terror as well as taking part in operations against Al-Qaeda targets, they added.
U.S. drones were said to have helped Yemeni security forces to raid Al-Qaeda hideouts and training sites in the south and north at the ends of the past two weeks, killing and arresting scores of terrorist suspects including leaders.
Many civilians were also among the dead in the internationally-hailed but locally-protested raids in Abyan, Sana’a and Shabwa.
The help from U.S. military equipment came to demonstrate an increase in the U.S. support to Yemen financially and logistically and amid reluctance by the U.S. determined to close its jail in Guantanamo, Cuba, where the Yemeni inmates make up half of the jailed there.
The U.S. support also included providing intelligence information about terrorists in Yemen that help the success of the recent raids.
The reports, citing U.S. official who paid visits to Yemen, also noted that the U.S. existence in the country is in a surge, with some unnamed officials saying all support comes under Yemen’s request.
The officials, however, distanced the U.S. from direct involvement in the war between the army and the Houthi insurgents in the far north.
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: 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, 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: Afghanistan, alqaeda, Barack Obama, Benazir Bhutto, bin laden, bush, CIA, fake alqaeda, George Bush, Gilani, gordon brown, nation building, obama, obama surge, occupation, osama, Pakistan, Robert Gates, surge, War On Terror | Tags: Leon Panetta, Yousaf Raza Gilani
Gates: No U.S. intel on Osama for ‘years’
MSNBC
December 6, 2009
The United States does not know where al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is hiding and has not had any good intelligence on his whereabouts in “years,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Saturday.
Speaking in an interview to be aired on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” program, Gates also said he could not confirm reports this week that a detainee might have seen bin Laden in Afghanistan earlier this year.
“We don’t know for a fact where Osama bin Laden is. If we did, we’d go and get him,” Gates said in excerpts released by ABC.
‘I think it’s been years’
Asked when was the last time the United States had any good intelligence on his whereabouts, Gates said, “I think it’s been years.”
The British Broadcasting Corp. reported earlier this week that a detainee in Pakistan claimed to have information that bin Laden was in Ghazni in eastern Afghanistan in January or February.
The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee released a report late last month that blamed the lack of concerted efforts by former President George W. Bush’s administration and U.S. military commanders for allowing bin Laden to escape from the Tora Bora caves of Afghanistan in late 2001.
Bin Laden not in Pakistan, says prime minister
Guardian UK
December 3, 2009
The Pakistani prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, today claimed that Osama bin Laden was not in Pakistan – just days after Gordon Brown criticised the Islamabad government for not doing enough to capture the al-Qaida leader.
Bin Laden is widely believed to be sheltering in the north of Pakistan – a belief reiterated by the CIA director, Leon Panetta, over the summer – and on Sunday Brown criticised the Islamabad government for not doing more to track him down.
But quizzed by British journalists at a joint press conference with the UK prime minister in London as to why the al-Qaida leader remained at large, Gilani said the Pakistani administration had not been provided with any “credible or actionable intelligence” as to his whereabouts.
“I don’t think Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan,” he said.
President of Pakistan: Osama Bin Laden is dead
Benazir Bhutto: Bin Laden was Murdered
Filed under: 2-party system, afghan casualties, Afghanistan, airstrikes, blackops, Blackwater, bush = obama, CIA, Coup, death squads, drone, erik prince, Iraq, left right paradigm, military strike, MSNBC, nation building, neocons, Neolibs, obama deception, obama surge, obamas war, occupation, Pakistan, pakistan casualties, Rachel Maddow, secret wars, special forces, State Sponsored Terrorism, surge, Taliban, Troops, uav, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror | Tags: Jeremy Scahill
Scahill: ‘The war is in Pakistan right now’
Military drones show no remorse on Pakistan civilians, creating U.S. hatred
Raw Story
December 4, 2009
In the wake of President Obama’s plan to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan, questions are being raised about the use of private contractors in US operations there. The acknowledgement by Eric Prince, founder of military contractor Blackwater, that he has been serving for years as a CIA asset only intensifies these concerns.
For Jeremy Scahill, author of the bestselling book Blackwater, however, the real concern is not Afghanistan but Pakistan, where according to an article in the New York Times, “the White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.’s drone program.”
“We need to view this sober reality,” Scahill told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Thursday. “The war is in Pakistan right now. There’s no question about it. The question, though, is how much it’s going to expand. … These are actions that are going to destabilize Pakistan and are going to create new enemies for the United States because of the high civilian casualties. … Here you have military operations inside a country that we don’t have a declaration of war against.”
Scahill emphasized that the most destabilizing actions come not from the CIA but from Blackwater mercenaries, whom he recently described in The Nation as working for US special forces to “plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, ‘snatch and grabs’ of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan.”
The drone attacks outsourced to Blackwater are the source of the highest numbers of civilian casualties. Scahill told Maddow that one of his sources is a “very well-placed military intelligence source [who] is offended at the idea that you have these operations happening outside of the military chain of command and with no oversight from the Congress.”
“Blackwater has been operating under the cover of a training program,” Scahill explained. “Blackwater is training the Pakistani Frontier Corps, which is a federal paramilitary force that is hunting down high-value targets in the frontier province. A former Blackwater executive told me that the line is being crossed — that Blackwater guys are actually going out on these raids.”
Scahill also revealed a few interesting tidbits about Eric Prince’s decision to out himself as a CIA asset, saying, “I see this sort of as Eric Prince taking out an insurance policy for himself. … Eric Prince is in the cross-hairs now of the Congress, the federal investigators, and others … and it’s a way of trying to insulate himself from future attacks.”
This video is from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Dec. 3, 2009.
Filed under: 2-party system, 9/11, 9/11 hijackers, 9/11 Truth, afghan casualties, Afghanistan, alqaeda, Barack Obama, bush = obama, cheney, CIA, drone, False Flag, fearmongering, George Bush, heroin, inside job, Iraq, mccain, michael savage, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, neocons, Neolibs, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, obama surge, obamas war, occupation, Oil, Opium, Pakistan, Propaganda, Rachel Maddow, Saudi Arabia, soldiers, Soviet Union, State Sponsored Terrorism, surge, terrorist funding, terrorist training, Troops, uav, war casualties, War On Terror, WMD, WMDs
Rachel Maddow: Obama is Continuing the Bush Doctrine
NoWorldSystem.com
December 3, 2009
She’s right;
Obama “19 men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder 3,000 people. . . As we know the men belonged to alqaeda . . . Alqaeda’s base of operations were in Afghanistan.”
Actually the ’19 hijackers’ were Saudi Arabians.
Obama “(Afghanistan) is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by alqaeda, from (Afghanistan) we were attacked on 9/11, and it’s from here that new attacks are being plotted as i speak. Because we know that alqaeda and other extremist seek nuclear weapons and we have every reason to believe that they would use them.” “We have to take away the tools of mass destruction. . . “
This is precisely what the Bush administration’s rationale; “The attacks from 9/11 came from Iraq or Afghanistan so we must fight alqaeda there so they don’t come to our shores with weapons of mass destruction.”. One shouldn’t have to argue any longer that Obama is just another puppet like George W. Bush, bending-over for the royal internationalist oligarchs that want global military dominance throughout the mideast region.
Many have warned long before the 2008 elections that Obama is a war candidate and is no different from McCain, Bush or Cheney on foreign policy. Many didn’t listen, and now we are stuck in Afghanistan which will cost us financially, spiritually and not to mention many more lives of U.S. soldiers. Obama is continuing to besmirch the name of Americans, causing more tension against Americans and incubating violent hatred against the west, terrorism that supposedly Obama wants to prevent from happening.
Even the former Soviet Union is warning Obama that a war against the Taliban futile and will only create more resistance in the region.:
The same enemy that Obama says that we must fight were once U.S. allies, Osama Bin Laden worked for the United States until 9/11, and the Taliban were funded and trained by the CIA to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, the U.S. was already caught paying the Taliban not to kill U.S. troops and some are most likely on the CIA payroll.
Afghanis just want to be left alone, the entire Alqaeda/Taliban fraud is all a front for the real reasons for the war, and that is oil and heroin.
Michael Savage Reaction To Obama Afghanistan Speech
Obama ‘to expand drone strikes’ in Pakistan
Press TV
December 3, 2009
The administration of the Nobel peace laureate, President Barack Obama, has authorized an expansion of drone attacks on Pakistan’s troubled tribal regions, a new report says.
The New York Times report also says US and Pakistani officials are discussing the possibility of CIA operated drone strikes in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province for the first time.
The purported aim of the American air strikes is to target militants. But Pakistani media outlets say the raids have mostly killed civilians.
The unpopular strikes were initiated under the George W Bush administration in 2006.
Use of drones has increased since the Nobel peace laureate, Obama, became president.
Obama has repeatedly vowed to expand the controversial strikes that have raised anti-US sentiments across Pakistan.
The development also comes as Obama has announced his intention to deploy 33,000 more troops to Afghanistan and his top commander in Afghanistan says that Washington is not planning an early exit from Afghanistan.
Although nearly 110,000 foreign troops are present in Afghanistan after more than eight years of US-led invasion, they have not been able to establish stability in the war-ravaged country.
Obama’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan was condemned by Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich.
“The war is a threat to our national security. We’ll spend over $100 billion next year to bomb a nation of poor people while we reenergize the Taliban, destabilize Pakistan, deplete our army and put more of our soldiers’ lives on the line,” the Ohio congressman said in a statement.
Filed under: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, bush, George Bush, Iraq, Michael Moore, nation building, obama, obama surge, occupation, surge, veterans, War On Terror
Michael Moore: ‘Mr. Obama, you do not know war’
Raw Story
November 30, 2009
TOKYO — Filmmaker Michael Moore urged President Barack Obama on Monday not to expand the war in Afghanistan, as Washington prepares to announce a surge of US troops in the conflict-torn nation.
Moore, visiting Japan this week to promote his latest documentary “Capitalism: A Love Story,” told reporters that he had sent Obama a message from his father, a World War II veteran.
“I passed on to him a personal request from my father and his Japanese friend: ‘Mr. Obama, you do not know war. We both know war and want it no more’,” he told reporters.
The activist director, whose latest movie targets corporate greed, held his first press conference in Japan at the Tokyo Stock Exchange, where he passionately discussed freedom and protection for the socially weak, and dished out harsh criticism against former US president George W. Bush.
Moore repeatedly praised the traditional values of Japan, but he criticised Tokyo for supporting Bush’s policies, including by sending non-combat troops to Iraq and adopting pro-market economic policies.
Filed under: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Britain, british troops, bush, bush = obama, Colonialism, Europe, France, George Bush, gordon brown, imperialism, left right paradigm, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, Neolibs, obama, obama = bush, obama surge, occupation, Sarkozy, soldiers, surge, Troops, u.s. soldiers, War On Terror
Obama orders 30-35,000 more troops for Afghanistan, surge to begin by Christmas
AP
November 30, 2009
After months of debate, President Barack Obama will spell out a costly Afghanistan war expansion to a skeptical public Tuesday night, coupling an infusion of as many as 35,000 more troops with a vow that there will be no endless U.S. commitment. His first orders have already been made: at least one group of Marines who will be in place by Christmas.
Obama has said that he prefers “not to hand off anything to the next president” and that his strategy will “put us on a path toward ending the war.” But he doesn’t plan to give any more exact timetable than that Tuesday night.
The president will end his 92-day review of the war with a nationally broadcast address in which he will lay out his revamped strategy from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. He spent part of Monday briefing foreign allies in a series of private meetings and phone calls.
Before Obama’s call to Britain’s Gordon Brown, the prime minister announced that 500 more U.K. troops would arrive in southern Afghanistan next month — making a British total of about 10,000 in the country. And French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose nation has more than 3,000 in Afghanistan, said French troops would stay “as long as necessary” to stabilize the country.
Obama’s war escalation includes sending 30,000 to 35,000 more American forces into Afghanistan in a graduated deployment over the next year, on top of the 71,000 already there. There also will be a fresh focus on training Afghan forces to take over the fight and allow the Americans to leave.
Filed under: 2-party system, Afghanistan, alqaeda, ban, Barack Obama, bush, Dictatorship, Fascism, foreign policy, George Bush, global treaty, Ian Kelly, international treaty, Iraq, landmine, landmine treaty, left right paradigm, Mine Ban Treaty, nation building, neocons, Neolibs, obama, obama deception, obama surge, obamas war, occupation, oligarchy, Russia, staying the course, surge, treaty, War On Terror, White House, world treaty | Tags: ICBL, International Campaign to Ban Land Mines
NO CHANGE: Obama Admin Refuses Landmine Treaty
Raw Story
November 24, 2009
After reviewing the Bush-era policy, the Obama White House has decided to maintain the prior administration’s refusal to sign an international treaty banning land mines, according to published reports.
“More than 150 countries have agreed to the Mine Ban Treaty’s provisions to end the production, use, stockpiling and trade in mines,” the Associated Press noted. “Besides the United States, holdouts include: China, India, Pakistan, Myanmar and Russia.”
“We made our policy review and we determined that we would not be able to meet our national defense needs, nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we sign this convention,” State Department spokesman Ian Kelly reportedly said.
Advocacy organizations like Human Rights Watch had urged administration officials to sign the treaty. The United States is the largest worldwide contributor to the recovery of undetonated mines, which still pose a severe danger to civilians in 70 countries. No land mines have been produced by the U.S. since 1997, when the Land Mine Ban Treaty took effect. The last time American forces deployed the weapon was during the 1991 invasion of Iraq.
According to the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines (ICBL), efforts undertaken in 1999 to recover mines “have saved millions of lives through the removal of more than 2.2 million emplaced antipersonnel mines, 250,000 anti-vehicle mines, and 17 million” explosive remnants of war.
Change?
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
November 25, 2009
President Barack Obama, November 24, 2009:
“It is in our strategic interests, in our national security interest to make sure that al-Qaida and its extremist allies cannot operate effectively… We are going to dismantle and degrade their capabilities and ultimately dismantle and destroy their networks… It is my intention to finish the job,”
President George W. Bush, October 11, 2006
“Stay the course also means don’t leave before the job is done. And that’s – we’re going to get the job done.”
“Finishing the job” and “staying the course” – they mean the same thing – you can take that to the bank.
Filed under: 2-party system, Afghanistan, alqaeda, army, Barack Obama, Britain, bush, bush = obama, bush surge, Colonialism, Dictatorship, Empire, George Bush, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, left right paradigm, Marines, McChrystal, middle east, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, Neolibs, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, obama surge, occupation, oligarchy, rome, Stanley McChrystal, steny hoyer, surge, Taliban, Troops, USMC, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, warhawks, White House
Obama to Announce 45,000 Troop Surge in Afghanistan
Obama tops Bush in troop buildup
AntiWar.com
October 14, 2009
The Obama Administration has reportedly told the British government that it intends to announce an escalation of another 45,000 troops in Afghanistan, potentially as soon as next week.
The report comes despite claims that the Obama Administration is continuing to hold talks about the strategy, though this seems to be more based on the question of whether to emphasize the failed battle against the Taliban or focus what will soon be over 100,000 troops on fighting the roughly 100 al-Qaeda members reportedly in the nation.
Britain announced that it intends to send another 500 soldiers to Afghanistan to bolster its 9,000-strong force. The announcement reportedly came as a result of the US assurances, and despite the growing domestic opposition to the war.
Several Democrats, including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, have expressed reservations about the massive escalation, particularly coming just seven months after the administration’s last escalation. Yet Rep. Hoyer urged fellow Democrats to go along with whatever President Obama decides.
Obama tops Bush in troop buildup
Bill Van Auken
WSWS
October 14, 2009
The combined US troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have now reached a higher level than existed at any time under the presidency of George W. Bush. This surge past the record set by its predecessor marks another grim milestone in the Obama administration’s escalation of American militarism.
In addition to the 21,000 US soldiers and Marines that Obama ordered deployed to Afghanistan as part of the escalation he unveiled last March, another 13,000 “support” troops are being quietly sent to the country with no official announcement, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
This stealth buildup is a replay of the methods used by the Bush administration in its Iraq surge, when it announced the deployment of an additional 20,000 combat troops while saying nothing about the 8,000 support troops sent with them.
In neither case was the failure to declare the full number an oversight. Obama, like Bush before him, recognizes that the military interventions he oversees are deeply unpopular with the majority of the American people.
According to the troop numbers provided by the Post, there are now 65,000 US troops in Afghanistan, with another 124,000 still in Iraq, for a total of 189,000 American military personnel waging two colonial-style wars and occupations. At the height of the Bush administration’s 2007 “surge” in Iraq, there were 26,000 US troops in Afghanistan and 160,000 in Iraq, for a total of 186,000.
There is every indication that the policies being pursued by the Obama White House will send these numbers significantly higher.
Over the weekend, military officials revealed to the media that the proposal for increased troop levels in Afghanistan submitted by the American commander there, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, included a high-end figure of 80,000—in addition to the 68,000 that are to be deployed by the end of this year.
The New York Times, echoing official sources, commented that this highest request was “highly unlikely to be considered seriously by the White House.” While this may well be true—for now—the leaking of the number serves a definite political purpose, making Obama’s ultimate agreement to a smaller surge—still involving tens of thousands of additional troops in Afghanistan—seem like a reasonable compromise between the White House and the Pentagon.
While visiting Britain this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stressed the US commitment to continuing the Afghanistan war. “We are not changing our strategy, our strategy remains to achieve the goal of disrupting, dismantling and defeating Al Qaeda and its extremist allies, and denying them safe haven and the capacity to strike us here in London, or New York or anywhere else,” she said in a radio interview. “One should never doubt our commitment or our leadership, we intend to pursue the goal,” Clinton continued. “We will not rest until we do defeat Al Qaeda.”
Clinton’s remarks make clear that the Obama administration, while dropping the term “war on terrorism” coined by the Bush White House, continues to embrace the methods underlying this terminology—in particular, the attempt to terrorize the American people into accepting US wars of conquest and aggression.
The claim that 68,000 US troops—with tens of thousands more likely to follow—are in Afghanistan to fight Al Qaeda and prevent another 9/11 is a transparent pretext. Top US security and military officials have concurred that there are a grand total of approximately 100 individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda presently in Afghanistan, without any means of carrying out an attack on another country. If and when McChrystal’s request for additional troops is met, there will be 1,000 or more US soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan for every Al Qaeda member.
The target of the military escalation is not Al Qaeda, but rather the people of Afghanistan. Washington is attempting to suppress growing popular resistance to the occupation and is prepared to sacrifice the lives of untold numbers of Afghans, as well as those of hundreds if not thousands more US soldiers, to that end.
The defeat of “terrorism” is no more the strategic aim pursued by Washington in Afghanistan than it is in Iraq. US military might has been unleashed in both countries to assert the hegemony of American imperialism over Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, which are the two largest sources of the world’s energy supplies.
The potential costs of this venture are immense. A report prepared by the Pentagon last January describes the stated US goal of achieving a stable client state in Afghanistan as an operation that “will last, at a minimum, decades.” Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Gen. Barry McCaffrey (ret.) was slightly more optimistic, saying that it would take “10 years of $5 billion a month,” in addition to major fighting.
In Iraq, meanwhile, there is no reason to believe that the stated deadline for pulling US troops out by 2012 will be met. On the contrary, the instability and continued resistance created by the American occupation and the destruction of Iraqi society will be used as a justification for continuing the occupation and asserting US control over the country’s oil fields.
And the threat that the US interventions will provoke new and potentially far bloodier conflicts is growing, as evidenced by the mounting crisis in Pakistan and increasing tensions throughout the Indian subcontinent flowing from the war in Afghanistan.
The debate that is now taking place in the Obama White House is over committing generations of young Americans to endless wars and occupations.
Under conditions in which resources are being denied for desperately needed jobs and basic social services, even more social wealth will be diverted to build up the US military.
Expanding the ranks of the Army is necessary if any significant escalation of the war in Afghanistan is to be sustained. The military is stretched to the breaking point by the two occupations. Even if Obama approves 40,000 more troops, nowhere near that number are immediately available.
While the American political establishment is no doubt counting on a double-digit unemployment rate driving jobless youth into the military, there is growing objective pressure for the reintroduction of conscription, with youth once again drafted to fight in colonial wars.
Millions of people voted for Barack Obama last November in the vain hope that his election would reverse the escalation of militarism initiated under Bush. Their votes, like the growing popular sentiment against the Afghan war, have been disregarded as the Obama administration continues this escalation in the interest of the financial oligarchy that it serves.
Filed under: 2-party system, afghan casualties, Afghanistan, airstrikes, Guantanamo, Henry Kissinger, Iran, Iraq, iraq casualties, iraq war, left right paradigm, Military, Military Industrial Complex, military strikes, nation building, Neolibs, Nuke, obama deception, obama surge, occupation, Pakistan, peace prize, Russia, russia today, Saber Rattling, surge, Tehran, Torture, Troops, war casualties, war crime, War Crimes
War President Obama Wins ‘Peace Prize’
Filed under: Afghanistan, army, Barack Obama, Colonialism, Joe Scarborough, Marines, McChrystal, Military, Military Industrial Complex, MSNBC, nation building, NATO, obama, obama surge, occupation, Stanley McChrystal, surge, Troops, u.s. soldiers, USMC, War Crimes, War On Terror
Classified McChrystal Report: 500,000 Troops Will Be Required Over Five Years in Afghanistan
Tom Andrews
Global Research
September 25, 2009
Embedded in General Stanley McChrystal’s classified assessment of the war in Afghanistan is his conclusion that a successful counterinsurgency strategy will require 500,000 troops over five years.
This bombshell was dropped by NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday:
The numbers are really pretty horrifying. What they say, embedded in this report by McChrystal, is they would need 500,000 troops – boots on the ground – and five years to do the job. No one expects that the Afghan Army could step up to that. Are we gonna put even half that of U.S. troops there, and NATO forces? No way. [Morning Joe, September 23, 2009]
Filed under: 2-party system, army, Barack Obama, Colonialism, Dictatorship, George Bush, left right paradigm, McChrystal, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, neocons, Neolibs, obama, obama deception, obama surge, obamas surge, obamas war, occupation, surge, Troops, War On Terror
U.S. To Pump Thousands Of Combat Enablers Into Afghanistan
Antiwar
September 16, 2009
Top US defense officials say that roughly 3,000 additional troops, which are classified not as combat troops but rather “combat enablers,” will be deployed to Afghanistan in the coming days.
Officials say the decision was made roughly two weeks ago, which puts it at about the same time that the Pentagon was publicly announcing that it was pulling 14,000 support troops from the nation to add 14,000 more “trigger pullers” to the conflict.
Rather, it now seems that the non-combat troops are being replaced by the combat troops, and then new non-combat troops are being added as well, effectively an escalation of the number of troops involved in the conflict under the guise of adding “non-combat” troops. This escalation comes in addition to the expected request of another 20,000 troops from Gen. McChrystal.
The US escalation on the ground comes amid growing evidence that the war is being lost, both in real terms and popular terms. But though the Obama Administration has made much of a promised “civilian surge” to bring stability to the war zone, it is now being conceded that little is going to result from it. The focus seems pretty much entirely on combat at this point, whether enabling it or engaging in it.
Filed under: afghan election, Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Censorship, Coup, Dictatorship, election, election fraud, Empire, government control, government takeover, Hamid Karzai', karzai, media blackout, media censorship, Media Manipulation, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, obama, obama surge, occupation, soldiers, surge, Troops, u.s. soldiers, vote scam, voter fraud, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror | Tags: Hamid Karzai'
Fake Afghan Poll Sites Favored Karzai, Officials Assert
NY Times
September 6, 2009
Afghans loyal to President Hamid Karzai set up hundreds of fictitious polling sites where no one voted but where hundreds of thousands of ballots were still recorded toward the president’s re-election, according to senior Western and Afghan officials here.
The fake sites, as many as 800, existed only on paper, said a senior Western diplomat in Afghanistan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political delicacy of the vote. Local workers reported that hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of votes for Mr. Karzai in the election last month came from each of those places. That pattern was confirmed by another Western official based in Afghanistan.
“We think that about 15 percent of the polling sites never opened on Election Day,” the senior Western diplomat said. “But they still managed to report thousands of ballots for Karzai.”
Besides creating the fake sites, Mr. Karzai’s supporters also took over approximately 800 legitimate polling centers and used them to fraudulently report tens of thousands of additional ballots for Mr. Karzai, the officials said.
The result, the officials said, is that in some provinces, the pro-Karzai ballots may exceed the people who actually voted by a factor of 10. “We are talking about orders of magnitude,” the senior Western diplomat said.
The widening accounts of fraud pose a stark problem for the Obama administration, which has 68,000 American troops deployed here to help reverse gains by Taliban insurgents. American officials hoped that the election would help turn Afghans away from the Taliban by giving them a greater voice in government. Instead, the Obama administration now faces the prospect of having to defend an Afghan administration for the next five years that is widely seen as illegitimate.
“This was fraud en masse,” the Western diplomat said.
Most of the fraud perpetrated on behalf of Mr. Karzai, officials said, took place in the Pashtun-dominated areas of the east and south where officials said that turnout on Aug. 20 was exceptionally low. That included Mr. Karzai’s home province, Kandahar, where preliminary results indicate that more than 350,000 ballots have been turned in to be counted. But Western officials estimated that only about 25,000 people actually voted there.
Waheed Omar, the main spokesman for Mr. Karzai’s campaign, acknowledged Sunday that there had been cases of fraud committed by different candidates. But he accused the president’s opponents of trying to score political points by making splashy accusations in the news media. “There have been cases — we have reported numerous cases — and our view is the only place where discussion can be held is in the Election Complaints Commission,” he said.
American officials have mostly kept a public silence about the fraud allegations. A senior American official said Sunday that they were looking into the allegations behind the scenes. “An absence of public statements does not mean an absence of concern and engagement on these issues,” the official said.
But a different Western official in Kabul said that there were divisions among the international community and Afghan political circles over how to proceed. This official said he believed the next four or five days would decide whether the entire electoral process would stand or fall. “This is crunch time,” he said.
Adding to the drumbeat, on Sunday the deputy director of the Afghan Independent Election Commission said that the group was disqualifying all the ballots cast in 447 polling sites because of fraud. The deputy director, Daoud Ali Najafi, said it was not clear how many votes had been affected, or what percentage they represented of the total. He gave no details of what fraud had been discovered.
With about three-quarters of the ballots counted in the Aug. 20 election, Mr. Karzai leads with nearly 49 percent of the vote, compared with 32 percent for his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent, the election goes to a runoff.
Officials in Kabul say it will probably take months before the Election Complaints Commission, which is dominated by Westerners appointed by the United Nations, will be able to declare a winner. Such an interregnum with no clear leader in office could prove destabilizing for a country that is already beset by ethnic division and an increasingly violent insurgency.
One opposition candidate for president, Ashraf Ghani, the former finance minister, said that the scale of the fraud on Election Day had deeply damaged the political process that was being slowly built in Afghanistan.
“For five years Mr. Karzai was my president,” he said in an interview at his home in Kabul. “Now how many Afghans will consider him their president?”
Since ballots were cast last month, anecdotal evidence has emerged of widespread fraud across the Pashtun-dominated areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan, where Mr. Karzai has many allies. Many of the allegations come from Kandahar Province, where Mr. Karzai’s younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is the chairman of the provincial council and widely regarded as the most powerful man in the region. Last week, the governor of Shorabak District, which lies in Kandahar Province, claimed that Hamid Karzai’s allies shut down all the polling centers in the area and falsified 23,900 ballots for Mr. Karzai.
Two provincial council candidates in Kandahar, both close to the government, confirmed that widespread pro-Karzai fraud had occurred, in particular in places where poor security prevented observers and candidates’ representatives from watching.
“Now people will not trust the provincial council and the government system,” said Muhammad Ehsan, the deputy head of the provincial council, who was running for re-election. “Now people understand who has come to power and how.”
Hajji Abdul Majid, 75, the chief of the tribal elders council in Argestan District, in Kandahar Province, said that despite the fact that security forces opened the town’s polling place, no one voted, so any result from his district would be false.
“The people know that the government just took control of the district center for that day of the elections,” he said. “People are very frustrated. They don’t believe in the government.”
He added: “If Karzai is re-elected, people will leave the country or join the Taliban.”
Filed under: 2-party system, activists, Afghanistan, Anti-War, Barack Obama, David Petraeus, fallen soldiers, George Bush, gordon brown, Iraq, left right paradigm, nation building, neocons, Neolibs, obama, obama surge, obamas surge, obamas war, occupation, Pentagon, Robert Gates, soldiers, Stanley McChrystal, surge, Troops, war casualties, War Crimes, War On Terror, White House | Tags: Sir David Richards, Stanley McChrystal, Tommy Vietor, war of necessity
Obama Urged to Rally Support for War
Wall Street Journal
September 7, 2009
The White House is facing mounting pressure from lawmakers to work harder to rally flagging public support for the war in Afghanistan.
With casualties rising, the administration is struggling to persuade voters that the war can be won or is worth the human and financial costs. Afghanistan is President Barack Obama’s top foreign-policy priority, but recent polls show that a majority of voters oppose the war for the first time since the conflict began eight years ago.
The politics of the war are getting trickier for key American allies as well. A junior minister in Britain’s Ministry of Defense resigned Thursday, criticizing his government’s strategy in Afghanistan on the eve of a major speech by Prime Minister Gordon Brown about Britain’s efforts there.
In the U.S., a growing number of lawmakers say that Mr. Obama needs to make the case for Afghanistan more forcefully — and more frequently — than he has done to date.
“The president, unfortunately, because of the crush of everything else, hasn’t talked about Afghanistan all that much,” said Sen. Bob Casey, a centrist Democrat from Pennsylvania, in an interview. “There’s so much on his plate that it has an adverse impact on his ability to spend enough time on Afghanistan.”
The president’s most extensive recent comments about Afghanistan came in an Aug. 17 speech to a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Phoenix, where he devoted less than three minutes of a half-hour speech to a conflict he described as “a war of necessity.” Since then, most of Mr. Obama’s public remarks have focused on health care.
White House officials said there were no plans for Mr. Obama to address the Afghan war in a major speech in the near future. Tommy Vietor, an administration spokesman, said that “the president talks about Afghanistan all the time.”
“There are a lot of critical issues the president deals with every day, and a lot of critical issues he talks about,” Mr. Vietor said. “Afghanistan is on the top of his list.”
Still, a raft of recent polls shows that support for the war is falling rapidly, especially among Mr. Obama’s core Democratic and independent constituencies. A CNN/ORC poll late last month found that 74% of Democrats and 57% of independents opposed the war, dragging overall support for the conflict down to 42%.
The CNN poll found that Republican support for the conflict was holding solid at 70%, highlighting the awkward fact that Mr. Obama’s strongest allies on the war are Republican lawmakers who oppose most other parts of his agenda.
“If the president asks for more troops based on the recommendation of the commanders in the field, I expect virtually every House Republican would support the increase,” said a GOP leadership aide. “This is a fight that will be almost entirely among Democrats.”
Some Republicans say they wish Mr. Obama would make a stronger case for the U.S. role in Afghanistan. Asked recently on CNN’s “State of the Union” whether the president had sufficiently explained U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, Sen. Richard Lugar (R., Ind.) said, “No.”
“The president really has to face the fact that his own leadership here is critical,” said Mr. Lugar, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations panel.
The Afghan war’s shifting political fortunes could make it harder for the administration to sell the public on the need for further expanding the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.
Mr. Obama has already agreed to send 21,000 American reinforcements, pushing U.S. troop levels there to a record 68,000, and the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is expected to ask for tens of thousands of additional troops later this month.
Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert Gates sounded more amenable to such a request than he has in the past. “I’m very open to the recommendations and certainly the perspective of Gen. McChrystal,” Mr. Gates said.
The White House’s relative silence on Afghanistan comes as a surprise to many military and civilian officials at the Pentagon, who witnessed firsthand in 2007 and 2008 how the Bush administration employed Gen. David Petraeus as an effective public advocate for the Iraq war.
Gen. Petraeus, then the top U.S. commander in Iraq, testified at high-profile congressional hearings and regularly addressed large audiences at think tanks and other public venues.
The appearances helped to shore up flagging congressional support for the Bush administration’s handling of the conflict, and to prevent lawmakers from making a serious push to force a drawdown of troops.
“There’s a blueprint for how to do this,” a senior defense official who began serving in the Pentagon during the Bush administration said in an interview. “The Bush team knew that Petraeus was a great public face for the war, and they put him out there as often as they could.”
A second senior military official said he believed the Obama administration erred earlier this week by failing to publicly release a new strategic assessment of Afghanistan prepared by Gen. McChrystal. The official argued that a public presentation of the new commander’s strategic vision would have helped rally support for the war effort.
“Americans want to see a plan and how we’re going to achieve success,” the official said. “We owe it to them.”
Gen. McChrystal’s gloomy assessment was classified only at the “confidential” level, rather than the more sensitive “secret” or “top secret” classifications, meaning it could have been easily scrubbed for public release.
Mr. Gates told reporters that he was comfortable with the administration’s efforts to rally support for the war, and said Mr. Obama’s public explanations of his strategy for the conflict had been “crystal clear.”
“The nation has been at war for eight years,” he said. “The fact that Americans would be tired of having their sons and daughters at risk and in battle is not surprising.”
Filed under: 2-party system, activists, Afghanistan, Anti-War, Barack Obama, Britain, british troops, code pink, Congress, Dissent, fallen soldiers, George Bush, Iraq, IVAW, left right paradigm, london, nation building, neocons, Neolibs, obama, obama surge, obamas surge, obamas war, occupation, Pentagon, poll, Protest, protests, rally, soldiers, Stanley McChrystal, surge, Troops, Uncategorized, United Kingdom, veterans, War Crimes, War On Terror | Tags: Sir David Richards, war of necessity
Anti-war groups turn against Obama after Afghan surge
UK Telegraph
August 31, 2009
There is rising disillusion among liberals and peace activists that a president who built his campaign on his opposition to the war in Iraq now views America’s other conflict as a “war of necessity”.
Mr Obama has already added 21,000 extra troops to the 38,000 stationed there by George W Bush. In the next few weeks, he is likely to receive requests from the Pentagon for more when Gen Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, submits a report on the progress of the war.
It is expected to paint a grim picture and offer the president three options for action: increase troop numbers dramatically, increase them less dramatically or leave them as they are.
Some organizations that campaigned against the Iraq war are biding their time or are more inclined to side with the president’s argument that a stronger counter-insurgency effort in Afghanistan is in US national interests.
But others have run out of patience, and though they know they will not yet fill city centre streets with protestors, they plan to hold marches and smaller events such as forums with war veterans and troops’ families, as well as lobbying members of Congress.
“As progressives feel more comfortable protesting against the Obama administration and challenging Democrats as well as Republicans in Congress, then we’ll be back on track,” Medea Benjamin of the anti-war group Code Pink said.
Perry O’Brien, president of the New York chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War, said: “In the next year, it will more and more become Obama’s war. He’ll be held responsible for the bloodshed.”
Though public opinion in the US has not turned against the war as sharply as in Britain, for the first time a majority of respondents (51 per cent) in a recent Washington Post-ABC poll said the war was not worth the fight. Among liberals, strong approval of the war plummeted by 20 per cent.
On Friday the Pentagon confirmed that August was the deadliest month for US troops since the start of the war in October 2001 to remove the Taliban government, which had refused to hand over Osama bin Laden after the September 11 attacks.
Two thirds want British troops home from Afghanistan
UK Telegraph
August 29, 2009
The public’s growing opposition to the conflict comes after the number of British deaths in Afghanistan rose above 200 earlier this month.
Yesterday, Gen Sir David Richards took over as Chief of the General Staff and vowed to get better equipment for troops and improved care for those injured fighting for Britain.
A Daily Telegraph/YouGov poll showed 62 per cent of people opposed British troops staying in Afghanistan, while 26 per cent were in favour.
Previous polls had shown that most people backed the conflict in Afghanistan, unlike the war in Iraq. They accepted the argument espoused by ministers and the opposition that it was part of the fight against terrorism that could be exported to British streets.
But increasingly voters appear unwilling to accept that claim.
noworldsystem.com 