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: Censorship, checkpoint, Concentration Camp, Eugenics, gaza, Genocide, Holocaust, holy war, human rights, infanticide, Israel, jews, media censorship, Military, Military Industrial Complex, muslims, occupation, Oppression, Racism, State Sponsored Terrorism, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, west bank, Zionism
Gaza in the eyes of Israelis
Filed under: army, Barack Obama, berlin wall, blockade, checkpoint, egypt, Eugenics, gaza, Genocide, holy war, human rights, infanticide, intifada, Israel, jews, Military, Military Industrial Complex, muslims, neocons, Neolibs, Netanyahu, obama, obama deception, occupation, Oppression, State Sponsored Terrorism, war crime, War Crimes, west bank, Zionism | Tags: steel wall
US offers support for anti Palestinian steel walls
Press TV
January 13, 2010
 A protester holds a symbolic piece of metal wall with a placard written in Arabic: “What is on your consciences, Egyptian leaders?” |
The United States has offered its full-fledged support for the building of a wall by Egypt to disrupt the Gaza Strip’s lifeline that moves basic items underground past the Israeli-imposed blockade.
The construction of the steel tunnel-impervious wall, believed to have started some time in November, comes in line with Israeli and Egyptian accusations that Palestinian resistance fighters use the tunnels for procuring and storing weapons for use against the Israelis.
Washington, the chief Israeli backer, echoed the allegations on Tuesday and voiced support for installing the steel walls, which are reported to be designed by US army engineers.
“We believe that weapon-smuggling should stop and that measures taken to stop that weapon-smuggling should be, could be carried out, yes,” said State Department Spokesman Gordon Duguid.
The US support and even financing of numerous Israeli walls to further suppress the Palestinians come despite their repeated boasting of having rejected the Soviet-era Berlin wall, which served a similar purpose.
The Palestinian tunnel network across the Gaza Strip border with Egypt has become an economic lifeline for the 1.5 million people in the impoverished territory who face starvation due to the crippling Israeli siege that has been imposed since 2007.
The tunnels, described as ‘food tubes’ by the Palestinians, regularly come under Israeli air strikes while the Egyptian government makes attempts to flood them with water and gas.
The Cairo government announced a ban on aid convoys bound for the Gaza Strip via its soil in the past weekend, after anti-wall protesters clashed with Egyptian border police.
“Egypt will no longer allow convoys, regardless of their origin or who is organizing them, to cross its territory,” said Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also announced plans to build a surface wall along the Egyptian border. He said the decision was aimed at blocking entry into Israel in order to secure “Israel’s Jewish character.”
Palestine Pre-1947 (Before Israel Existed)
This is Zionism
Filed under: Afghanistan, Baluchistan, big pharma, Britain, Canada, CIA, corruption, drug cartel, drug ring, drug smuggling, drug trafficking, drugs, Europe, gangsters, Hamid Karzai', heroin, Iran, karzai, mafia, medical industrial complex, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, obamas war, occupation, Opium, Pakistan, scandal, Taliban, Tehran, Troops, war crime, War Crimes, war on drugs, War On Terror, Waziristan | Tags: government drug smuggling
Iran says US, UK, Canada assist Afghan drug trade
Press TV
January 14, 2010
A senior Iranian anti-drug official has accused the US, Britain and Canada of playing a major role in Afghanistan’s lucrative drug trade.
On the sidelines of an anti-drug conference in Tehran, deputy head of Iran’s Drug Control Headquarters Taha Taheri said that Western powers are aiding the drug trade in Afghanistan.
“According to our indisputable information, the presence of the United States, Britain and Canada has not reduced the dug trade and the three countries have had major roles in the distribution of drugs,” IRIB quoted Taheri as saying on Thursday.
Iranian officials have always criticized Western countries over their policies towards Afghanistan, where poppy cultivation has drastically increased since the US-led military occupation of the country in 2001.
Taheri added that drug catalysts are being smuggled into Afghanistan through borders that are controlled by US, British and Canadian troops.
Some 13,000 tones of drug catalysts are brought into Afghanistan every year as the war-torn country is the producer of 90 percent of the world’s opium.
The UN office on drugs and crime said last month that the 2009 potential gross export value of opium from Afghanistan stood at $2.8 billion.
Iranian police officials maintain that drug production in Afghanistan has had a 40-fold increase since the US-led invasion of the country in 2001.
“More than 340 tones of drugs have been seized all over Iran in the past nine months,” IRNA quoted the commander of the drug squad, General Hamid Reza Hossein-Abadi, as saying earlier this month.
The UN has praised Tehran for its commitment to the fight against drug trafficking.
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: Eugenics, gaza, Genocide, human rights, infanticide, Israel, israel soldiers, jews, muslims, Oppression, palestine, war crime, War Crimes, west bank, white phosphorus, Zionism
The Savagery of Israel’s attack on Gaza
The brutal attack on a school in Gaza by Israeli forces in the December 2008 conflict.
Filed under: Afghanistan, civilian casualties, Genocide, IEDS, Jalalabad, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, NATO, occupation, Raid, State Sponsored Terrorism, Troops, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror
U.S. Troops Accused of Executing 10 Afghan Civilians During Night Raid
Afghans burn Obama effigy over civilian deaths
The Times
December 30, 2009
Afghan investigators today accused US-led troops of dragging ten civilians from their beds and shooting them dead during a night raid.
Officials said that eight children and teenagers were among the dead and all but one of the victims were from the same family.
The reports led to angry protests in Kabul and Jalalabad, with children as young as 10 chanting “Death to America” and demanding foreign forces leave Afghanistan.
President Karzai sent a team of investigators to Narang district, in Kunar province, after reports emerged of a massacre. “The delegation concluded that a unit of international forces descended from a plane on Sunday night into Ghazi Khan village in Narang district of the eastern province of Kunar and took ten people from three homes, eight of them school students in grades six, nine and 10, one of them a guest, the rest from the same family, and shot them dead,” a statement on President Karzai’s website said.
Asked if the people were shot outside their homes, the President’s spokesman Waheed Omar said: “That is our understanding.”
Local elders confirmed that ten people were killed, but their accounts of raid differed.
“Three of the children were killed in their bedroom,” said a local elder Jan Mohammed. “The other five had their hands bound, then they were killed.”
According to the presidential statement, local US forces were “unaware of the incident”.
Investigators spoke to the headmaster of the local school who confirmed that all the children – aged 11 to 17 – were his students.
A spokesman for the US-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) was not immediately available for comment on the allegations.
A senior Western military official said that US Special Forces had been conducting operations in the area, separately from Isaf.
Military officials insisted the dead were all part of a cell responsible for manufacturing improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
“This was a joint operation that was conducted against an IED cell that Afghan and US officials had been developing information against for some time,” a senior Nato source said.
Filed under: Air Force, Barack Obama, civilian casualties, Colonialism, Dictatorship, Empire, Eugenics, infanticide, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, obama, obamas war, occupation, Saudi Arabia, shia, war casualties, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, whiskey pete, white phosphorus, yemen | Tags: Houthi fighters, Shia fighter
Obama Orders Military Strike on Yemen
Press TV
December 18, 2009
Yemen’s Houthi fighters say scores of civilians, including many children, have been killed in US air-raids in the southeast of the war-stricken Arab country.
The Shia fighters on Friday reported the deaths of 63 people, including some 28 children, in the southeastern province of Abyan.
Almost 90 people were also injured in the attacks by US warplanes in the village of Bakazam, they added.
Yemen’s southern provinces have recently been the scene of US airstrikes which Washington claims to be aimed at uprooting an al-Qaeda cell operative in the Persian Gulf state.
But the residents of the area dismiss the claims that al-Qaeda members are being targeted in the US attacks, while a Yemeni lawmaker has also called for an investigation into the raids.
The US operation in southern Yemen comes on top of a joint Saudi-Yemeni military campaign in the country’s war-weary north where Sana’a and Riyadh forces are engaged in a fierce fighting against the Houthi fighters.
The Houthis, who accuse the Sunni-dominated Sana’a government of discrimination and repression against Yemen’s Shia minority, were the target of the army’s off and on attacks before the central government launched an all-out fighting against them in early August.
Saudi Arabia joined the operation later following alleged clashes between its border guards and the Houthis, carrying out regular airstrikes and ground incursions against the fighters.
On Friday, the Houthis said over 160 missiles hit regions along the border with the neighboring kingdom, which they accuse of pounding civilians in villages within the Yemeni territory.
The Saudis have conducted more than 70 air raids in less than 24 hours.
Saudi warplanes rain ‘1,011 missiles’ on Yemen
Press TV
December 19, 2009
Houthi fighters say Saudi warplanes have fired some 1,011 missiles on the borderline with Yemen where the Shia population is already under heavy state-led and US-aided bombardment.
The fighters also said on Saturday that the warplanes had carried out nearly 60 air assaults on the residential areas in the northern Al-Jabiri, Al-Dukhan and Al-Malaheet districts.
Saudi Arabia joined Sana’a’s months-long fierce armed campaign against the Shia fighters in November.
The Houthis are accused by the central government of breaking the terms of a ceasefire agreement by taking foreign visitors hostage. The Saudis, on their part, claimed that the fighters had attacked one of their border checkpoints.
The fighters denounce the offensives as a discriminatory campaign against the Shia minority under Riyadh’s auspices.
The offensives, meanwhile, have been taking their toll on the locals with the Saudis reportedly venturing beyond the Houthi positions, targeting civilian areas and using unconventional weaponry including flesh-eating white phosphorus bombs.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that since 2004, the conflict has forced up to 175,000 people in the Shia-dominated northwestern province of Sa’ada out of their homes and into overcrowded camps set up by the United Nations.
The US military equipment and intelligence have reportedly entered the equation in the recent days.
The US special forces have reportedly been sent to Yemen to provide the national army with training services. The US Air Force is also said to have been sporadically pounding the northern areas since Monday.
The Houthis said US attacks on Thursday killed 120 civilians, among whom were women and children. Also on Saturday, a report on the Houthis’ website said that three civilians, including a woman and a child, had been killed in fresh air raids carried out by US warplanes.
Filed under: Afghanistan, airstrikes, Barack Obama, Blackwater, CIA, deception, drone, erik prince, federal crimes, military strike, nation building, obama, obama deception, obamas war, occupation, Pakistan, scandal, uav, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror | Tags: graymailing
CIA Hired Blackwater for Pakistan Bombings, Assassinations
Is Erik Prince Graymailing The U.S. Government?
The Nation
December 6, 2009
The in-depth Vanity Fair profile of the infamous owner of Blackwater, Erik Prince, is remarkable on many levels–not least among them that Prince appeared to give the story’s author, former CIA lawyer Adam Ciralsky, unprecedented access to information about sensitive, classified and lethal operations not only of Prince’s forces, but Prince himself. In the article, Prince is revealed not just as owner of a company that covertly provided contractors to the CIA for drone bombings and targeted assassinations, but as an actual CIA asset himself.
While the story appears to be simply a profile of Prince, it might actually be the world’s most famous mercenary’s insurance policy against future criminal prosecution. The term of art for what Prince appears to be doing in the VF interview is graymail: a legal tactic that has been used for years by intelligence operatives or assets who are facing prosecution or fear they soon will be. In short, these operatives or assets threaten to reveal details of sensitive or classified operations in order to ward off indictments or criminal charges, based on the belief that the government would not want these details revealed. “The only reason Prince would do this [interview] is that he feels he is in very serious jeopardy of criminal charges,” says Scott Horton, a prominent national security and military law expert. “He absolutely would not do these things otherwise.”
There is no doubt Prince is in the legal cross-hairs: There are reportedly two separate Grand Juries investigating Blackwater on a range of serious charges, ranging from gun smuggling to extralegal killings; multiple civil lawsuits alleging war crimes and extrajudicial killings; and Congress is investigating the assassination program in which Prince and his company were central players. “Obviously, Prince does know a lot and the government has to realize that once they start prosecuting him,” says Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor and the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “In some ways, graymail is what any good defense lawyer would do. This is something that’s in your arsenal.”
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: 9/11, 9/11 mastermind, 9/11 patsies, 9/11 Truth, alqaeda, black site, CIA, Detainees, Extraordinary Rendition, federal crime, George Bush, gitmo, Guantanamo, human rights, interrogation, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, KSM, Military, Military Industrial Complex, Official 9/11 Story, Pentagon, poland, rendition, Torture, torture prison, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, White House, World Trade Center | Tags: lite, LLC
EXCLUSIVE: CIA Secret ‘Torture’ Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy in Lithuania
ABC
November 19, 2009
The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News this week.
Where affluent Lithuanians once rode show horses and sipped coffee at a café, the CIA installed a concrete structure where it could use harsh tactics to interrogate up to eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists at a time.
“The activities in that prison were illegal,” said human rights researcher John Sifton. “They included various forms of torture, including sleep deprivation, forced standing, painful stress positions.”
Lithuanian officials provided ABC News with the documents of what they called a CIA front company, Elite, LLC, which purchased the property and built the “black site” in 2004.
Filed under: 9/11, 9/11 mastermind, 9/11 patsies, 9/11 Truth, alqaeda, black site, Child Abuse, CIA, Detainees, Extraordinary Rendition, federal crime, George Bush, gitmo, Guantanamo, human rights, human rights watch, interrogation, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, KSM, Military, Military Industrial Complex, Official 9/11 Story, Pakistan, Pentagon, prison camp, red cross, rendition, Torture, torture prison, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, White House, World Trade Center | Tags: Ron Suskind
KSM’s children tortured with insects
Raw Story
April 17, 2009
Bush Administration memos released by the White House on Thursday provide new insight into claims that American agents used insects to torture the young children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
In the memos, released Thursday, the Bush Administration White House Office of Legal Counsel offered its endorsement of CIA torture methods that involved placing an insect in a cramped, confined box with detainees. Jay S. Bybee, then-director of the OLC, wrote that insects could be used to capitalize on detainees’ fears.
The memo was dated Aug. 1, 2002. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s children were captured and held in Pakistan the following month, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.
While an additional memo released Thursday claims that the torture with insects technique was never utilized by the CIA, the allegations regarding the children would have transpired when the method was authorized by the Bush Administration.
At a military tribunal in 2007, the father of a Guantanamo detainee alleged that Pakistani guards had confessed that American interrogators used ants to coerce the children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed into revealing their father’s whereabouts.
The statement was made by Ali Khan, the father of detainee Majid Khan, who gave a detailed account of his son’s interrogation at the hands of American guards in Pakistan. In his statement, Khan asserted that one of his sons was held at the same place as the young children of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
“The Pakistani guards told my son that the boys were kept in a separate area upstairs and were denied food and water by other guards,” the statement read. “They were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding.” (A pdf transcript is available here)
Khan’s statement is second-hand. But the picture he paints of his son’s interrogation at the hands of American interrogators is strikingly similar to the accounts given by numerous other detainees to the International Red Cross. The timing of the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s son — then aged seven and nine — also meshes with a report by Human Rights Watch, which says that the children were captured in September 2002 and held for four months at the hands of American guards.
“According to eyewitnesses, the two were held in an adult detention center for at least four months while U.S. agents questioned the children about their father’s whereabouts,” the report said.
The use of insects isn’t mentioned in a recently leaked International Red Cross report, in which Red Cross officials questioned detainees about their treatment at the hands of US forces and ultimately judged them to have been tortured. A second memo released Thursday, dated May 10, 2005, says the CIA told the White House insects were never actually used in interrogations.
“We understand that — for reasons unrelated to any concerns that it might violate the [criminal] statute — the CIA never used the technique and has removed it from the list of authorized interrogation techniques,” Steven Bradbury, a principal deputy assistant attorney general, wrote in a footnote.
It’s worth noting, however, that the Red Cross was denied access to individuals held at CIA black sites. Khan’s son, Majid, was among those President Bush moved from the CIA’s secret prison network to Guantanamo Bay.
The techniques Khan says were employed against his son also match those approved in the Bybee memo.
“What I can tell you is that Majid was kidnapped from my son Mohammed’s [not related Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] house in Karachi, along with Mohammed, his wife, and my infant granddaughter,” Khan said in his military tribunal statement. “They were captured by Pakistani police and soldiers and taken to a detention center fifteen minutes from Mohammed’s house. The center had walls that seemed to be eighty feet high. My sons were hooded, handcuffed, and interrogated. After eight days of interrogation by US and Pakistani agents, including FBI agents, Mohammed was allowed to see Majid.
“Majhid looked terrible and very, very tired,” Khan continued. “According to Mohammed, Majid said that the Americans tortured him for eight hours at a time, tying him tightly in stressful positions in a small chair until his hands, feet and mind went numb. They re-tied him in the chair every hour, tightening the bonds on his hands and feet each time so that it was more painful. He was often hooded and had difficulty breathing. They also beat him repeatedly, slapping him in the face, and deprived him of sleep. When he was not being interrogated, the Americans put Majid in a small cell that was totally dark and too small for him to lie down in or sit in with his legs stretched out. He had to crouch. The room was also infested with mosquitoes. The torture only stopped when Majid agreed to sign a statement that he was not even allowed to read.”
Later in his statement, Khan alleges that the Pakistani guards revealed other abuses by American agents.
“The Americans also once stripped and beat two Arab boys, ages fourteen and sixteen, who were turned over by the Pakistani guards at the detention center,” he said. “These guards told my son that they were very upset at this and said the boys were thrown like garbage onto a plane to Guantanamo. Women prisoners were also held there, apart from their husbands, and some were pregnant and forced to give birth in their cells. According to Mohammed, one woman also died in her cell because the guards could not get her to a hospital quickly enough. This was most upsetting to the Pakistani guards.”
One blogger notes, “The first indications the children may have been tortured were reported in Ron Suskind’s 2006 book The One Percent Doctrine.”
“When KSM was being held at a secret CIA facility in Thailand, apparently the revamped Vietnam War-era base at Udorn, according to Suskind, a message was passed to interrogators: ‘do whatever’s necessary,’” Kevin Fenton writes at History Commons. “The interrogators then told KSM ‘his children would be hurt if he didn’t cooperate. However, his response was, ’so, fine, they’ll join Allah in a better place.’”
Fenton has two questions: “Did the Khans invent the allegations or garble them in some way and then ‘get lucky’ two years later, when it was revealed the CIA was, at least, contemplating the techniques they alleged it used at the time in question?” and “Given that nobody heard of the CIA using insects for another two years, why would they invent these specific allegations, which sounded bizarre when they were made?”
New Gitmo Video: Child Detainee Cries During Interrogation
Filed under: Afghanistan, Anti-War, Colonialism, Dictatorship, Dissent, Empire, IED, impirialism, mrap, nation building, obama surge, obamas war, occupation, Protest, Soviet Union, Taliban, Troops, u.s. soldiers, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror
U.S. Soldier: ‘The Afghans Just Want To Be Left Alone’
Filed under: Afghanistan, Anti-War, Barack Obama, Colonialism, Dictatorship, Dissent, Empire, Europe, free speech, impirialism, london, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, obama, obama deception, occupation, Protest, Troops, United Kingdom, veterans, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror | Tags: court martial, Joe Glenton, Ministry of Defence, Stop the War Coalition
British soldier faces 10 years in jail after being arrested during anti-war demonstration
UK Daily Mail
November 11, 2009
A soldier facing charges of desertion for refusing to return to Afghanistan has been arrested and charged with five further offences after joining an anti-war demonstration.
Lance Corporal Joe Glenton led a protest in London last month against the continued presence of British troops in Afghanistan.
He was already facing a court martial but according to the Stop the War Coalition the new charges carry a maximum of 10 years imprisonment.
The group’s convener Lindsey German said last night : ‘This is not about breach of military regulations. In the last few days a range of military personnel have been speaking in the media in defence of this appalling war. I doubt if any of them have been arrested.
‘This is about the persecution of a soldier who believes in telling the truth in accordance with his conscience.
‘He is saying what the majority of the population believes – that this war is unwinnable and immoral. The anti-war movement will be doing everything possible to get him released.’
Lance Corporal Glenton, 27, from the Royal Logistic Corps, addressed a rally of more than 5,000 anti-war protesters packed into London’s Trafalgar Square in October.
He told the crowd he had witnessed sights during his time in Afghanistan that forced him to question the morality of his role.
The married soldier, from Norwich, told onlookers: ‘I’m here today to make a stand beside you because I believe great wrongs have been perpetrated in Afghanistan.
‘I cannot, in good conscience, be part of them. I’m bound by law and moral duty to try and stop them.
‘I’m a soldier and I belong to the profession of arms. I expected to go to war but I also expected that the need to defend this country’s interests would be legal and justifiable. I don’t think this is too much to ask.
‘It’s now apparent that the conflict is neither of these and that’s why I must make this stand.’
The Ministry of Defence refused to comment when asked about the further charges.
But spokesman confirmed Lance Corporal Glenton is currently subject to disciplinary action. He said: ‘I can confirm that disciplinary action against a serving soldier from the Royal Logistic Corps is currently in progress.
‘As this matter is subject to court martial proceedings, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.’
The soldier, based in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, is facing a court martial, adjourned to January, for alleged desertion after going absent without leave in 2007.
He is charged with disobeying a lawful command. He joined the Army in 2004.
If convicted, he faces two years in prison.
Speaking during last month’s rally, he said: ‘The occupation in Afghanistan is at best dubious in terms of legality and morality.
‘I can’t be involved in it on that basis and, not only that, I am also bound to try and stop it, try and change things.
‘That’s the law, the occupation of a country like that, regime change, these things are all illegal.’
He said military personnel told him not to appear at the rally.
But despite the threat of prison, he said he was determined to speak out.
He said: ‘People keep telling me I’m brave but I don’t feel brave at all – I feel fairly terrified. It’s not going to stop me, I’m going to keep going.
‘I won’t be silenced. I’ll keep talking and doing what I think is right.
‘I have to or I’ll have to live with this forever if I don’t.’
Filed under: 9/11, Afghanistan, brainwashing, christiane amanpour, civilian casualties, CNN, Conditioning, Coup, Dictatorship, Empire, fallen soldiers, friendly fire, gulf war, impirialism, Iraq, journalism, kuwait, manipulation, Media, media blackout, media censorship, Media Manipulation, mediaopoly, Military, military casualties, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, occupation, Propaganda, psychological operations, Psyops, public manipulation, Seymour Hersh, Troops, Uncategorized, Vietnam, war casualties, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror
Media Coverup: Why Illegal Wars Last Forever
Filed under: afghan pipeline, Afghanistan, alqaeda, bin laden, CIA, craig murray, Detainee, Dictatorship, Extraordinary Rendition, fake alqaeda, human rights, Oppression, rape, rendition, Torture, Uzbekistan, war crime, War Crimes
Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be ‘raped with broken bottles’
Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
November 5, 2009
The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.
Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK’s ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.
“I’m talking of people being raped with broken bottles,” he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. “I’m talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I’m talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on.”
Human rights groups have long been raising the alarm about the legal system in Uzbekistan. In 2007, Human Rights Watch declared that torture is “endemic” to the country’s justice system.
Murray said he only realized after his stint as ambassador that the CIA was sending people to be tortured in Uzbekistan, country he describes as a “totalitarian” state that has never moved on from its communist era, when it was a part of the Soviet Union.
Suspects in Uzbekistan’s gulags “were being told to confess to membership in Al Qaeda. They were told to confess they’d been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes.”
“I was absolutely stunned — it changed my whole world view in an instant — to be told that London knew [the intelligence] coming from torture, that it was not illegal because our legal advisers had decided that under the United Nations convention against torture, it is not illegal to obtain or use intelligence gained from torture as long as we didn’t do the torture ourselves,” Murray said.
Filed under: afghan casualties, Afghanistan, civilian casualties, Indiana, Iraq, iraq casualties, iraqistan, Iraqnam, kabul, Military, military casualties, military deaths, military industrial comples, military suicide, nation building, national guard, occupation, PTSD, soldiers, Troops, u.s. military, u.s. soldiers, Vietnam, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror | Tags: Jacob W. Sexton
US soldier commits suicide in Indiana movie theater
WSWS
October 20, 2009
A National Guard soldier home on a 15-day leave from the war in Afghanistan committed suicide in a Muncie, Indiana, movie theater October 12. Jacob W. Sexton, a 21-year-old from rural Farmland, Indiana, shot himself in the head, approximately 20 minutes into the violent comedy Zombieland, with friends and siblings sitting around him. The suicide underscores once again the psychological damage done to soldiers charged with carrying out the brutal colonial occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sexton’s death came as a shock to his family and military cohorts, who told the Muncie Star Press they had not seen any symptoms of suicidal behavior or post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet the young man’s behavior before the film showing revealed that the war’s violence was on his mind. When asked by the theater manager for identification proving the group was of age to see the movie, Sexton reportedly snapped at him, “I shot 18 people and you want to see my identification?”
Sexton’s father, Jeffrey Sexton, told the Associated Press, “We just need to watch these boys and the girls coming back home. Something’s just not right. Too much is happening.”
Like many active-duty military members, Sexton had served multiple tours in both Middle East occupations. After serving one tour of duty in Iraq, where he drove Humvees, he volunteered for another tour in Afghanistan. There he was a member of Alpha Company, Second Battalion, in the 151st Infantry Regiment, a unit that responds to attacks on military installations and convoys in the Kabul area.
According to the Star Press, Sexton was in a firefight his first week in Afghanistan and witnessed others during his time there. The area around Kabul is the scene of intense fighting that has resulted in high coalition casualties and untold numbers of deaths and injuries of Afghans. Sexton doubtless experienced the constant threat of violence in Iraq, as well, where Humvee drivers are at constant risk of injury and death from IEDs planted in the road.
Read Full Article Here
Filed under: 2-party system, afghan casualties, Afghanistan, airstrikes, alqaeda, Barack Obama, Censorship, CIA, civilian casualties, Colonialism, George Bush, george w. bush, ISI, left right paradigm, Mainstream Media, Media, media blackout, media censorship, Military, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, nation building, neocons, Neolibs, obama, obama deception, occupation, Pakistan, Pentagon, Preemptive Strike, Propaganda, Taliban, Troops, uav, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, White House
Obama Steps Up Drone Bombings Despite Civilian Deaths
Sherwood Ross
Prisonplanet.com
October 20, 2009
“Even if a precise account is elusive,” writes Jane Mayer in the October 26th The New Yorker, “the outlines are clear: the C.I.A. has joined the Pakistani intelligence service in an aggressive campaign to eradicate local and foreign militants, who have taken refuge in some of the most inaccessible parts of the country.”
Based on a study just completed by the non-profit, New America Foundation of Washington, D.C., “the number of drone strikes has risen dramatically since Obama became President,” Mayer reports.
In fact, the first two strikes took place on Jan. 23, the President’s third day in office and the second of these hit the wrong house, that of a pro-government tribal leader that killed his entire family, including three children, one just five years of age.
At any time, the C.I.A. apparently has “multiple drones flying over Pakistan, scouting for targets,” the magazine reports. So many Predators and its more heavily armed companion, the Reaper, are being purchased that defense manufacturer General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, of Poway, Calif., can hardly make them fast enough. The Air Force is said to possess 200.
Mayer writes, “the embrace of the Predator program has occurred with remarkably little public discussion, given that it represents a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force.” Today, Mayer writes, “there is no longer any doubt that targeted killing has become official U.S. policy.” And according to Gary Solis, who teaches at Georgetown University’s Law Center, nobody in the government calls it assassination. “Not only would we have expressed abhorrence of such a policy a few years ago; we did,” Solis is quoted as saying.
David Kilcullen, a counter-insurgency warfare authority who co-authored a study for the Center for New American Security, of Washington, D.C., has suggested the drone attacks have backfired. As he told The New Yorker, “Every one of these dead non-combatants represents an alienated family, a new revenge feud, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as drone strikes have increased.”
And because of the C.I.A. program’s secrecy, Mayer writes, “there is no visible system of accountability in place, despite the fact that the agency has killed many civilians inside a politically fragile, nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. is not at war.”
The New Yorker further reports the Obama Administration has also expanded the sphere of authorized drone assaults in Afghanistan. An August Senate Foreign Relations Committee report said the Pentagon’s list of approved terrorist targets held 367 names and included some 50 Afghan drug lords “who are suspected of giving money to help finance the Taliban,” Mayer reports. She quotes the Senate report as stating, “There is no evidence that any significant amount of the drug proceeds goes to Al Qaeda.”
It is the military’s version of the drone assaults that operates in Afghanistan and Iraq, while the C.I.A.’s drones hunt terror suspects in countries where U.S. troops are not based and is “aimed at terror suspects around the world,” Mayer writes. The C.I.A. effort was launched by Obama’s predecessor, and a former aide to President George W. Bush says Obama has left nearly all the key personnel in place.
Running the C.I.A. program is a team of operators that handle Predator flights off runways in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Once aloft, the Predators are passed over to controllers at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., who maneuver joysticks and monitor events from a live video feed from the drone’s camera.
The magazine article reports the government plans to commission “hundreds more” of the drones, including “new generations of tiny ‘nano’ drones, which can fly after their prey like a killer bee through an open window.”
Obama tops Bush in troop buildup
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, Afghanistan, Barack Obama, bush = obama, Colonialism, George Bush, Iraq, iraq surge, left right paradigm, Mainstream Media, McChrystal, Media, media blackout, media censorship, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, NATO, Neolibs, obama, obama = bush, obama surge, occupation, Pentagon, Stanley McChrystal, Troops, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror
Obama Approved 13K More Troops To Afghanistan Unannounced
AFP
October 13, 2009
In an unannounced move, President Barack Obama is dispatching an additional 13,000 US troops to Afghanistan beyond the 21,000 he announced publicly in March, The Washington Post reported Monday.
The additional forces are primarily support forces — such as engineers, medical personnel, intelligence experts and military police — the Post said, bringing the total buildup Obama has approved for the war-torn nation to 34,000.
“Obama authorized the whole thing. The only thing you saw announced in a press release was the 21,000,” a defense official familiar with the troop-approval process told the daily.
The report, posted on the newspaper’s website late Monday, came as Obama weighs a request from the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, for more combat, training and support troops, with several options including one for 40,000 more forces.
But the newspaper noted that the maximum number of US service members expected in Afghanistan by year’s end — 68,000 — would remain the same.
Major deployments of support troops have not been publicized by the Pentagon and the White House in the past. When former president George W. Bush announced a US troop increase in Iraq, he only mentioned 20,000 combat troops and not the accompanying 8,000 support troops.
The troop increase approved by Obama brought the level of US forces deployed in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters to a total greater than during the peak of the surge in Iraq in late 2007 and early 2008.
At the start of this month, some 65,000 US forces are currently in Afghanistan and about 124,000 in Iraq, compared to around 26,000 US troops in Afghanistan and 160,000 in Iraq at the height of the Iraq surge, according to a troop count by the Post.
Filed under: 9/11, airstrikes, Bloggers, bush surge, George Bush, george w. bush, Iraq, journalism, Military, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, nation building, neocons, occupation, Ronald Reagan, Shock and Awe, Texas, Troops, war crime, War Crimes | Tags: Family of Secrets, Herskowitz, Karen Hughes, media in crisis, Mickey Herskowitz, Russ Baker, William Morrow
Governor Bush told Houston Journalist: If Elected. “I’m Going to Invade Iraq”
Global Research
June 2, 2009
Two years before the 9/11 attacks on America, George W. Bush told a Houston journalist if elected president, “I’m going to invade Iraq.”
Bush made the comments about starting an aggressive war to veteran Houston Chronicle reporter Mickey Herskowitz, then working with Bush on his book “A Charge To Keep,” later brought out by publisher William Morrow.
This disclosure was uncovered by Russ Baker, an award-winning investigative reporter when he interviewed Herskowitz for his own book, “Family of Secrets” (Bloomsbury Press) about the Bush dynasty. However, Baker says, when he approached The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times with the potentially devastating story to President Bush prior to the 2004 presidential election, they declined to publish it.
In a new book, “Media In Crisis”(Doukathsan), Baker quotes Herskowitz as telling him: “He (Bush) said he wanted to do it(invade Iraq), and the reason he wanted to do it is he had been led to understand that you could not really have a successful presidency unless you were seen as commander-in-chief, unless you were seen as waging a war.”
Bush told Herskowitz that his father (President George H.W. Bush) knew that from Panama and (President Ronald)Reagan knew that from Grenada and…(UK Prime Minister)Maggie Thatcher knew this from the Falklands.”
According to Baker, Bush told Herskowitz, “The ideal thing was a small war, and this is why Bush said nobody was going to be killed in Iraq because he thought it would be small war.”
Bush co-authored his book “A Charge To Keep” with Karen Hughes. In his introduction to the work, Bush wrote, “I thank Mickey Herskowitz for his help and work in getting the project started.”
Baker said he believed if a major daily ran his Herskowitz interview it “could have changed the election” but “I could not get it published.” The story was turned down by both The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. He described the Post as “scared because of the Dan Rather thing, and they said to me, ‘What do you have in the way of evidence?’” Baker replied, “Here’s a tape of Mickey Herskowitz, who’s published 20-some books, long-time journalist of the Houston Chronicle, friend of the Bush family, telling me this story.” The Post said, “It’s not enough. In this climate, we need Bush on tape saying this.” Expressing his disappointment over the rejection, Baker said, “Well, that standard has never applied anywhere.”
The story about Bush’s comments to Herskowitz is one of many about the frustrations journalists face in getting the truth to the public that appear in “Media In Crisis.” The book contains the comments of five Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, among others, and officials of various journalism foundations, as well as veteran broadcasters. The book also covers the economic woes of daily newspapers and their future, the rise of Internet bloggers and other news-purveying media, the quality of reporting, and the quality of instruction in journalism schools.
Filed under: 2-party system, 9/11, 9/11 Truth, Afghanistan, airstrikes, alqaeda, Barack Obama, bin laden, bush = obama, east africa, Europe, George Bush, global war on terror, Iran, Iraq, left right paradigm, military strike, nation building, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, occupation, osama bin laden, Pakistan, Pentagon, preemptive war, proxy war, State Sponsored Terrorism, Tehran, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror | Tags: National Counterterrorism Center
U.S. Will Disregard Borders In Terrorist Hunt Says Obama
Press TV
October 7, 2009
Afghanistan and Pakistan are not the Pentagon’s sole targets in its war on terror, says Obama adding that the US will not hesitate to attack anywhere it deems a threat.
US President Barack Obama, speaking at the Counterterrorism Center in McLean Virginia on Tuesday, pledged that the US would target al-Qaeda “wherever they take root” and do everything to wipe out safe havens, where Osama bin Laden’s network can plot against the United States.
“The United States and our partners have sent an unmistakable message: We will target al-Qaida wherever they take root,” he said, Xinhua reported.
The US president cited East Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe and the Persian Gulf in addition to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as the hotbeds for terrorist activities and what he called threats against Washington.
Obama’s speech was reminiscent of his predecessor George W. Bush’s notorious ‘Bush doctrine’, which says the United States has ‘the right’ to launch preemptive strikes on countries that pose a threat to the US security.
“We will not yield in our pursuit; and we are developing the capacity and the cooperation to deny a safe haven to any who threaten America and its allies,” said Obama.
With its primary mission to synchronize the fight on terrorism, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) was established in 2001 on the hills of the 9/11 attacks on the US soil.
The center, a government agency under the Director of National Intelligence, coordinate and share data with US government departments and agencies and US foreign partners.
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: Ahmadinejad, airstrikes, Barack Obama, benjamin netanyahu, Britain, Coup, Europe, european union, False Flag, federal crimes, Genocide, Iran, iran nuclear facilities, iran nuclear proliferation, Iraq, iraq war, Israel, israeli jets, israeli troops, jimmy carter, John Bolton, Military, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, Mossad, navy, neocons, Netanyahu IAEA, NPT, nuclear war, Nuke, obama, Preemptive Strike, preemptive war, Propaganda, proxy war, saudi, Saudi Arabia, Shock and Awe, Tehran, UN, United Kingdom, united nations, USS Liberty, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, WMD, WW3, ww4, zbigniew brzezinski, Zionism
Brzezinski Suggests U.S. Shoot Down Israeli Jets To Prevent Iran War
The Cutting Edge
September 28, 2009
In a recent interview with the Daily Beast last week, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Adviser from the Carter administration and adviser to President Barack Obama, made a highly contentious statement regarding the U.S.-Israeli alliance. When asked how the U.S.would respond to Israeli jets using Iraqi airspace in order to stage an attack on Iran, Brzezinski was quoted as saying: “We are not exactly impotent little babies. They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch? … We have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a Liberty in reverse.”
“A liberty in reverse” is a reference to the controversial encounter between Israeli jets and the American vessel U.S.S. Liberty in 1967that resulted in the sinking of the U.S. Navy ship.
Brzezinski who is said to have a reputation for such rhetoric, found his calls for “a Liberty in reverse” dimly viewed by many in Jewish leadership.
For example, Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham H Foxman, responded to Brzezinski’s quip with this: “Here is an international legal expert and he doesn’t even know that the US does not control sovereignty over Iraqi airspace. Putting that aside, Zbigniew Brzezinski has always had a nasty streak when it came to Israel…. it is better that we can now see it, and it is out in the open.”
The Obama administration quickly distanced itself from any association with Brzezinski quite some time ago. Former Ambassador Dennis Ross, senior adviser on Middle East affairs to the Barack Obama campaign, told New Jersey Jewish News in October of 2008,“Brzezinski is not an adviser to the campaign… there is a lot of disinformation that is being pushed, but he is not an adviser to the campaign. Brzezinski came out and supported Obama early because of thewar in Iraq. A year or so ago they talked a couple of times. That’s the extent of it, and Sen. Obama has made it clear that on other Middle Eastern issues, Brzezinski is not who he looks to. They don’t have the same views.”
http://pimpinturtle.com/2009/09/28..
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