Peace and Justice Post

The U.S. and its allies have unleashed a massive air campaign in Afghanistan, launching missiles and bombs from the sky at a rate rarely seen since the war’s earliest days. In October alone, NATO planes fired their weapons on 1,000 separate missions, U.S. Air Force statistics provided to Danger Room show. Since Gen. David Petraeus took command of the war effort in late June, coalition aircraft have flown 2,600 attack sorties. That’s 50% more than they did during the same period in 2009. Not surprisingly, civilian casualties are on the rise, as well.

NATO officials say the increase in air attacks is simply a natural outgrowth of a more aggressive campaign to push militants out of their strongholds in southern Afghanistan. “Simply put, our air strikes have increased because our operations have increased. We’ve made a concentrated effort in the south to clear out the insurgency and therefore have increased our number of troops on the ground and aircraft to support them in this effort,” Lt. Nicole Schwegman, a NATO spokesperson, tells Danger Room.

On the other hand, some outside observers believe the strikes are part of an attempt to soften up the insurgency before negotiations with them begin in earnest. But one thing is clear: it’s a strategy Petraeus has used before. Once he took over the Iraq war effort, air strikes jumped nearly sevenfold.

Next month, the Obama administration is set to review the strategy for the Afghanistan campaign. Petraeus’ newly-aggressive approach will almost certainly part of that examination. It’s a dramatic reversal from Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s strategy, which drastically restricted the use of air power — even when troops came under fire.

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by Zachary Roth, CommonDreams.org, Nov 9, 2010

Emboldened by President Obama’s political struggles, foreign-policy hard-liners are stepping up efforts to press the administration to take a tougher stance — and perhaps even launch an attack — on Iran.

Some observers see parallels with the successful multiyear campaign for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. “The theoreticians who called for war in Iraq as a way to stop Saddam acquiring weapons of mass destruction are at it again, with the same playbook,” Joel Rubin of the liberal National Security Network told The Upshot.

Of course, advocates of an aggressive foreign policy have long talked up the notion of an attack on Iran as a means of preventing the Islamic republic from acquiring a nuclear weapon — remember Sen. John McCain’s “Bomb Iran” performance from the 2008 presidential campaign? But with a weakened president, the effort to promote a military strike is “definitely going into a higher gear” of late, Matthew Duss of the liberal Center for American Progress told The Upshot.

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Alex Lort-Phillips was on board the Gaza Freedom Flotilla’s boat the Mavi Marmara when it was boarded by the Israeli Defence Force at 4am on May 31 this year.

She had first visited Gaza in January. She was moved to go by the effects of the blockade on Gaza’s people, more than half of whom are under the age of 16.

An experienced youth worker in north London, she understands the devastating effect four years of blockade has on the youth of Gaza in terms of maladjustment and instability. It was also on this earlier aid convoy that she encountered, and grew to admire, the Turkish relief organisation IHH.

So it was when she heard that IHH was planning another convoy, this time by ship as well as land, she decided to join in.

With a friend she drove a 7.5-ton truck from this country to Istanbul, where supplies were repackaged and loaded onto ships.

Turkish customs gave all their aid a completely clean bill of health. She then boarded the Mavi Marmara, which was the main passenger ship of the flotilla. It was carrying, among other things, toys for the children of Gaza. The ship set out for Cyprus, where it was joined by other ships from Greece to make up a flotilla of three passenger ships and three cargo vessels.

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Speaking today at the Jewish Federations of North America meeting, US Vice President Joe Biden vowed eternal support for the Israeli government, insisting US support for the nation would continue no matter what Israel does “forever.”

“The ties between our two countries are literally unbreakable” insisted Biden, adding that policy disagreements with the far-right government will never be “fundamental” and will never have any affect on ties. Biden insists President Obama “feels exactly the same way.”

The comments were largely in keeping with a number of top US officials over the past few decades who have pledged eternal fealty to Israel regardless of the relative merits of that government’s position on any given issue. Biden’s position is therefore a politically safe one, but is it an obsolete one?

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(New York) – The US government is wrong to not criminally prosecute CIA officials who destroyed evidence of torture, Human Rights Watch said today. The televised statements of former President George W. Bush acknowledging his personal responsibility for ordering torture demonstrate the need for the Obama administration to pursue prosecutions of senior US officials responsible for planning and authorizing the torture and ill-treatment of detainees, Human Rights Watch said.

Acting US Attorney John Durham, who is also in charge of an ongoing investigation into improper interrogations of detainees, announced today that he would not pursue criminal charges for the destruction of CIA videotapes showing interrogations of terrorism suspects. “It is beyond shocking that a former US president can publicly claim responsibility for torture and the next day the US government can say it will not pursue charges for destroying evidence of that torture,” said Joanne Mariner, Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program director at Human Rights Watch. “It sends the ugly message that there are no legal consequences in the United States for committing the most heinous of international crimes.”

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by César Chelala, CommonDreams.org, Nov 10, 2010

In his recently published memoirs called Decision Points, and in interviews publicizing those memoirs, former President Bush makes it clear his stand on what many consider a basic human rights violation: the use of waterboarding as a torture technique. With characteristic insouciance, Mr. Bush expresses his unqualified support for torture.

Waterboarding is one of the most cruel torture techniques, used in many countries worldwide. The technique has been practiced, among others, by the Spanish Inquisition and by the French paratroopers in Algeria. It has been also used by American soldiers in Vietnam and by the British Army in Northern Ireland.

During waterboarding, the subject is immobilized keeping his back with the head inclined downwards. Water is then poured over the face and then it goes into breathing passages and triggers a reflex causing the subject to experience the sensation of drowning. CIA officers who volunteered to experience the technique have lasted an average of 14 seconds before capitulating.

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Speaking today in Malaysia, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates raised the prospect of the Obama Administration keeping the Iraq War going past the 2011 deadline negotiated by the Bush Administration in the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA).

“We’re ready to have that discussion if and when they want to raise it with us,” Gates said, adding that the “initiativ clearly needs to come from the Iraqis; we are open to discussing it.”

Though President Obama made much of the fake ends to the Iraq War in August, some 50,000 US troops remain on the ground, and despite being formally renamed “non-combat” troops they continue to engage in combat missions and receive combat pay.

Of course the real roadblock to this plan of keeping the war going is that Iraq doesn’t actually have a government right now – eight months after the election they still have a caretaker government with no authority to ask the US to continue its occupation. Gates says he expects the new government, assuming one is formed, to wait a few months before asking the US to stay.

Former president of the UN General Assembly, calls to free Tariq Aziz

Video

Appeal to the UN made on 3-11-2010 (full text below), by Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, former president of the UN General Assembly to free Mr. Tariq Aziz, Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq before 2003 invasion. The appeal was shown at the end of a joint NGO side-event which took place during the Universal Periodic Review of the United States at the United Nations in Geneva.

Posted November 09, 2010

FULL TEXT:
I am, to put it merely, extremely sad and angry to see yet another great injustice perpetrated by the United States, who, in my country alone Nicaragua, recently promoted, directed, armed and financed an undeclared war of aggression that resulted in the death of 50000 people.

This time, the action that I am referring too was taken against a very dear friend of mine, a fellow Christian, with whom I often went to church, Tareq Aziz, former prime minister of Iraq.

By willfully insuring an unfair trial the US is responsible for the now planned summary and extrajudicial execution of Tareq Aziz. In so doing, the USA has committed a great breach of the 3rd and 4th Geneva Convention which cynically enough the United States claims to be committed to searching for, persecuting and punishing individuals who commit those serious international crimes.

In compliance with what the United Nations Working Group on arbitrary detention has noted concerning the illegal nature, lack of due process and fairness in the trial of Tareq Aziz, the US has the moral and legal obligation to see that Tareq Aziz is immediately set free.

We are sick and tired of cases where the butchers persecute and accuse their victims.

Ewen MacAskill and Chris McGreal in Washington, The Guardian, Nov 8, 2010

George Bush – ‘Whatever the verdict on my presidency, I’m comfortable with the fact that I won’t be around to hear it’. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

George Bush ordered the Pentagon to plan an attack on Iran‘s nuclear facilities and considered a covert attack on Syria, the former president reveals in his memoirs.

Bush, in the 497-page Decision Points, a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian in advance of its publication in the US tomorrow, writes of Iran: “I directed the Pentagon to study what would be necessary for a strike.” He adds: “This would be to stop the bomb clock, at least temporarily.”

Such an attack would almost certainly have produced a conflagration in the Middle East that could have seen Iran retaliating by blocking oil supplies and unleashing militias and sympathisers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

Bush also discussed with his national security team either an air strike or a covert special forces raid on an alleged Syrian nuclear facility at the request of Israel.

The book, which is published in the US tomorrow, seeks to rebuild Bush’s reputation, giving his side of the story on the most controversial issues of his presidency, which include Iraq, Afghanistan, hurricane Katrina, the Wall Street meltdown and torture at Guantánamo.

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