Peace and Justice Post

The New York Times, Feb. 22, 2008

By Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger

WASHINGTON — American officials reached a quiet understanding with Pakistan’s leader last month to intensify secret strikes against suspected terrorists by pilotless aircraft launched in Pakistan, senior officials in both governments say. But the prospect of changes in Pakistan’s government has the Bush administration worried that the new operations could be curtailed.

Among other things, the new arrangements allowed an increase in the number and scope of patrols and strikes by armed Predator surveillance aircraft launched from a secret base in Pakistan — a far more aggressive strategy to attack Al Qaeda and the Taliban than had existed before.

But since opposition parties emerged victorious from the parliamentary election early this week, American officials are worried that the new, more permissive arrangement could be choked off in its infancy.

In the weeks before Monday’s election, a series of meetings among President Bush’s national security advisers resulted in a significant relaxation of the rules under which American forces could aim attacks at suspected Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the tribal areas near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

Continued . . .

Haaretz.com, Feb. 21, 2008-02-22

By Amira Haas

Not long ago the greengrocer in Ramallah recalled – between weighing locally grown zucchini and stripped hyssop leaves – that his family owns the land on which the gas station at the old entrance to the Jewish settlement of Beit El in the West Bank is located. He would not be surprised by the figure that the Peace Now movement has succeeded in officially extracting from the defense establishment, after more than a year of fighting for the freedom of information: About one-third of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank (44 out of 120) were built on privately owned Palestinian land that was seized, by means of confiscation orders, for “security needs.”

From the data it emerges that at least 19 of the 44 settlements were built on private land, even after prime minister Menachem Begin decided in 1979 that the construction and expansion of settlements would take place only on state-owned land.

Peace Now has revealed here another act of hypocrisy, even though the Supreme Court is no longer impressed even by this: It did, after all, legitimize the construction of the settlement of Matityahu on land owned by inhabitants of Bil’in.

Continued . . .

War In Iraq
By: RIA Novosti on: 21.02.2008

MINSK, February 21 (RIA Novosti) – The Belarusian defense minister accused the United States on Thursday of using the destruction of a defunct NASA satellite to test a new space weapon.

An SM-3 missile fired at 3:26 a.m. GMT this morning from the USS Lake Erie, a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser, hit the bus-sized satellite about 247 kilometers (133 nautical miles) above the ocean to the northwest of Hawaii.

“The cruiser that launched the missile has participated in a number of missile tests, and here they have got a perfect opportunity to conduct a real launch,” Leonid Maltsev said. “Any military commander would have used such an opportunity.”

The satellite was launched in 2006 and malfunctioned almost immediately. On board was around 1,000 pounds of propellant fuel (hydrazine), a hazardous material.

President George W. Bush had authorized the destruction of the satellite using a sea-to-air missile “to mitigate the risk to human lives by engaging the nonfunctioning satellite.”

Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a news conference in the Pentagon earlier today that the missile hit the disabled spy satellite, sending it falling to Earth, but said he couldn’t rule out that hazardous material would also fall to the Earth.

“We’re very confident that we hit the satellite. We also have a high degree of confidence that we got the tank,” he said, adding that it could take at least another 24 hours to know for sure that the tank containing toxic fuel had been destroyed.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Thursday it would closely monitor the consequences of the operation.

“We will study the results of this operation,” Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy Air Force commander said. “The satellite’s trajectory was far from Russia and the Russian Federation was not threatened by the hit.”

http://en.rian.ru/world/20080221/99798634.html

Reuters

David Miliband told MPs that two CIA flights landed at the RAF air base on Diego Garcia (above)

By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor

The Independent, February 22, 2008

A British territory in the Indian Ocean was used for American “torture” flights, despite categorical denials of Britain’s involvement from both Tony Blair and Jack Straw, the Government admitted yesterday.

The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, had to make a humiliating apology to the Commons after it emerged that the US failed to tell British officials that two CIA rendition flights carrying suspected terrorists landed on the island of Diego Garcia in 2002. Six years on, one of the suspects is still being held by the US at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The other has been released.

Mr Miliband denied there was a deliberate cover-up and said he believed the US had acted “in good faith”. However, Gordon Brown, attending an EU summit in Brussels, expressed his “disappointment” and said Washington’s failure to disclose the flights earlier was “a very serious issue”.

Continued . . .

New Statesman, February 21, 2008

Chris Amis

A scribbled reference to Israel in the margin of a withheld draft of the Iraq dossier is revealed. Chris Ames who has doggedly pursued the government on the issue responds

The Guardian has today revealed the contents of the margin note that the Information Tribunal allowed to be removed when ordering the Foreign Office to publish the John Williams draft of the Iraq dossier.

It reveals that a senior government official or minister suggested at the time of the dossier (September 2002) that Israel had brazenly flouted the UN’s authority in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. A reference to Israel in the margins of the Williams draft is linked to an assertion in the text that Iraq is unique in this respect. It is clear that the author of the reference thought that the same charge might be levelled against Israel.

The Guardian has obtained a copy of the witness statement given to the Tribunal by Neil Wigan, Head of the Foreign Office’s Arab, Israel and North Africa Group. He told the Tribunal:

“I interpret this note to indicate that the person who wrote it believes that Israel has flouted the United Nations authority in a manner similar to that of the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.”

Wigan asserted that the comment would ‘seriously damage Britain’s bilateral relationship with Israel’. He stated that Israel would believe that the FCO had compared it with Saddam Hussein’s regime and that this would confirm its view that elements of the FCO are prejudiced against it.

I attended the Tribunal hearing in December and was aware that Wigan was giving evidence in secret. When the Tribunal issued its decision last month it ordered that the note should be removed from the document, which was finally published on Monday. It also kept secret its reason for doing so, although it stated that it related to the exemption under Section 27 of the Freedom of Information Act, that publication would damage international relations.

When Jack Straw, then Foreign Secretary, originally blocked my 2005 FOI request for the Williams draft, he made no mention of this exemption, relying instead on the Section 36 exemption relating to government confidentiality.

The Foreign Office has refused to say who wrote the marginal note, saying that it does not comment on leaked documents. It is clear from documents on the Hutton Inquiry website that Straw was one of a small number of people within the Foreign Office who followed the drafting of the dossier at this time. He almost certainly saw the Williams draft, which the FCO described as ‘advice to ministers’.

Labour MP Lynne Jones said: “The Government’s timid refusal to make an accurate reference to Israel’s flouting of UN authority over its WMD shows their lack of objectivity on breaches of international law, which damages our Country’s moral authority.

“The reticence over this issue is mirrored by the unwillingness to push for enforcement of human rights provisions of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.”
Plus don’t miss Martin Bright’s analysis The truth is more tawdry than the lies

War In Iraq | By various on: Feb. 20, 2008

(2104 bytes) [c]

Three U.S. soldiers killed in Baghdad-army

Baghdad – Voices of Iraq
Wednesday , 20 /02 /2008 Time 10:13:19

Baghdad, Feb 20, (VOI)- The U.S. army said on Wednesday three service members were killed when their patrol vehicle was struck with a roadside bomb in northwestern Baghdad.

“Three Multi-National Division – Baghdad Soldiers were killed at approximately 10:30 p.m. Feb. 19 when their vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device in northwestern Baghdad,” the U.S. army said in a statement received by Aswat al-Iraq- Voices of Iraq- (VOI).
The press release gave no further details.
The deaths bring the number of the U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 to 3,966, according to statistics released by the U.S. army.
Of this number, 20 U.S. soldiers have been killed so far in February 2008.
November 2004, which witnessed fierce battles between U.S. forces and armed groups in Falluja city, Anbar province, remains the month that saw the highest U.S. death toll with 137.
April 2004 comes second with 135, followed by May 2007 during which 126 U.S. soldiers were killed.
SK

http://www.aswataliraq.info/look/english/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrArticle=70232&NrIssue=2&NrSection=1

Palestinian Information Center

December 20, 2008

GAZA, (PIC)– The Israeli leftist movement Peace Now reported that the two and a half months since the Annapolis conference had witnessed a big increase in the Zionist settlement activity in occupied eastern Jerusalem compared with the past five years.

Peace Now quoted senior Israeli officials as saying that the IOA would still publish many bids for the construction of thousands of settlement units.

The movement said in its report that since the holding of Annapolis conference last November, the Israeli government had issued many bids for building a number of major settlement projects in eastern Jerusalem including 44 units in Talbiot, 300 units in Har Homa and 50 units in Gilo.

In another context, Dr. Yousef Al-Mansi, the minister of endowments and religious affairs in the caretaker government in Gaza, strongly denounced the PA unconstitutional government in Ramallah for its decision to allow foreigners to purchase Palestinian lands, considering anyone involved in such sale an accomplice in high treason.

Dr. Mansi highlighted that the whole land of Palestine is an Islamic endowment until the day of resurrection and it is not Islamically permissible to sell or relinquish an inch of it.

Aitzaz Ahsan, leader of the lawyers’ movement, says the sacked Supreme Court judges must be reinstated © AP

By Andrew Buncombe in Islamabad and Omar Waraich in Lahore

The Independent, Feb. 21, 2008

The US and Britain are pressing Pervez Musharraf’s victorious opponents to drop their demands that he resign as president and that the country’s independent judiciary be restored before forming a government.

In a strategy some Western diplomats admit could badly backfire, the Bush administration has made clear it wishes to continue to support Mr Musharraf even after Monday’s election in which the Pakistani public delivered a resounding rejection of his policies. “[The US] does not want some people pushed out because it would lead to instability. In this case that means Musharraf,” said one Western diplomat.

Officials say the policy is driven by concern about possible instability in the aftermath of the election in which the president’s parliamentary allies were soundly beaten. In such circumstances US and its Western allies are urging the election’s winners – the late Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N)- to quickly move forward and form a coalition that includes all “moderate” elements.

Continued . . .

The Nation, Feb. 20, 2008
Ross Tuttle

Secret evidence. Denial of habeas corpus. Evidence obtained by waterboarding. Indefinite detention. The litany of complaints about the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay is long, disturbing and by now familiar. Nonetheless, a new wave of shock and criticism greeted the Pentagon’s announcement on February 11 that it was charging six Guantánamo detainees, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, with war crimes–and seeking the death penalty for all of them.

Now, as the murky, quasi-legal staging of the Bush Administration’s military commissions unfolds, a key official has told The Nation that the trials have been rigged from the start. According to Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo’s military commissions, the process has been manipulated by Administration appointees to foreclose the possibility of acquittal.

Colonel Davis’s criticism of the commissions has been escalating since he resigned in October, telling the Washington Post that he had been pressured by politically appointed senior Defense officials to pursue cases deemed “sexy” and of “high interest” (such as the 9/11 cases now being pursued) in the run-up to the 2008 elections. Davis, once a staunch defender of the commissions process, elaborated on his reasons in a December 10, 2007, Los Angeles Times op-ed. “I concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system,” he wrote. “I felt that the system had become deeply politicized and that I could no longer do my job effectively.”

Continued . . .