Posts Tagged ‘Al Qaeda’

Newer Entries »

U.S.: Obama Affirms New Focus on Afghanistan, Pakistan

March 28, 2009

By Jim Lobe* | Inter Press Service News

WASHINGTON, Mar 27 (IPS) – In what marks a significant escalation in U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan, President Barack Obama Friday outlined what he called a “comprehensive, new strategy” for the two countries to fight al Qaeda and its local allies.

Flanked by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Pentagon chief Robert Gates, Obama said he will send 4,000 U.S. troops to accelerate the training of Afghan security forces in addition to the 17,000 combat troops that he approved for deployment last month, bringing total U.S. military forces there to some 60,000 by the end of the summer.

He also plans a “dramatic increase” in the number of U.S. civilian officials working in Afghanistan to promote improved governance and economic development there and intends to ask Washington’s NATO partners to match U.S. efforts in that regard. He said Washington will also back a “reconciliation process in every province” designed to persuade the Taliban’s foot soldiers to renounce the group.

For Pakistan, Obama announced his support for legislation pending in Congress that would triple non-military aid – to 1.5 billion dollars for each of the next five years – and provide trade preferences for exports from key conflict zones in both countries.

He also promised increased military aid to Pakistan’s Army, conditioned on its “commitment to rooting out al Qaeda and the violent extremists within its borders… (W)e will not provide a blank cheque,” he stressed.

At the same time, he suggested, Washington reserves the right to take unilateral action – presumably in the form of Predator drone or other strikes – against specific targets operating in the tribal regions along the Afghan-Pakistani border. “(W)e will insist that action be taken – one way or another – when we have intelligence about high-level terrorist targets,” he said.

Obama’s speech marks the culmination of a two-month review overseen by a former top South Asia analyst in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Council (NSC), Bruce Riedel, on what candidate Obama last year referred to as “the central front in the war on terror,” or what has come increasingly to be called “AfPak.”

U.S. officials have become increasingly concerned over the past two years both about advances made by the Taliban and radical Islamist groups allied to it in the predominantly Pashtun areas on both sides of the two countries’ borders, as well as the continued de facto safe haven enjoyed by al Qaeda in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) where, Obama said, it “is actively planning attacks on the U.S. homeland…”

The announcement came just days before two key meetings where Washington hopes to gain critical international and regional support for its strategy.

The first, to be convened by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, will take place Mar. 31 at The Hague, and will seek commitments by states in the region, including Iran, as well as traditional donors and agencies, for stabilising and reconstructing Afghanistan. The U.S. delegation will be headed by Clinton and Obama’s special representative on “AfPak”, Amb. Richard Holbrooke.

That will be followed by the annual NATO Summit Apr. 3-4 in France and Germany, where Obama himself is expected to lobby other NATO members, who supply most of the 30,000 that make up the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), to maintain or increase their troops commitments to ISAF or, in cases where governments have already decided to draw down their forces, to contribute to Washington’s “surge” of foreign civilian expertise in Afghanistan.

The U.S. also sent an observer to Friday’s meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Moscow where Afghanistan was expected to be a central issue.

Washington’s involvement in all these meetings underlines the new administration’s view that the growing insurgencies in “AfPak” and al Qaeda must be seen as a regional problem, a point repeatedly stressed by Obama Friday, notably when he promised to work with the United Nations to “forge a new Contact Group [at The Hague] for Afghanistan and Pakistan that brings together all who should have a stake in the security of the region – our NATO allies and other partners, but also the Central Asian states, the Gulf nations, and Iran; Russia, India and China.”

In his remarks, Obama defined Washington’s goal in “AfPak” narrowly, specifically “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.”

But achieving that goal will require a “stronger, smarter and comprehensive strategy,” he stressed, that, in effect, is far more ambitious, relying as it does, on both increasing U.S. troop strength and an aid programme to, among other things, double the size of the Afghan army to some 134,000 by 2011; tackle “the booming narcotics trade” through agricultural development and other efforts; and reduce corruption for which the government of President Hamid Karzai has been increasingly criticised here and in Afghanistan.

“To focus on the greatest threat to our people, America must no longer deny resources to Afghanistan because of the war in Iraq,” Obama declared in one of several scarcely veiled criticisms of the failure of the George W. Bush administration to follow up its success in evicting the Taliban from power in late 2001 with a strategy and the resources needed to prevent its comeback.

The ambitiousness of the strategy – essentially to stabilise the politics and economy of two large and historically fractious countries – reflects the apparent victory of those inside the administration who argued that Washington should go beyond a “counter-terrorist” (CT) strategy narrowly focused on eliminating the threat posed by al Qaeda, in major part by capturing or killing its leadership wherever it can be found. Rather, they have urged a “counter-insurgency” (COIN) strategy designed to provide security and other basic needs to the civilian population in order to dry up its base for recruitment and support.

According to various published reports, Vice President Joe Biden and Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg argued for the narrower strategy, while Clinton, Holbrooke, Riedel, and several Pentagon officials, including Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus – who implemented COIN strategy in Iraq – and the new undersecretary of defence for policy, Michelle Flournoy, argued much more was needed.

On Pakistan, Obama’s commitment to condition military aid on the army’s demonstrated commitment to pursue COIN against al Qaeda and its local allies marks a major shift from the Bush administration, which provided Islamabad with some 10 billion dollars of military aid since 9/11, almost all of which was spent on conventional weapons for possible war with India. Obama stressed that Washington would “pursue constructive diplomacy with both India and Pakistan.”

But whether Obama would follow through on canceling the aid if the Army does not meet the conditions remains to be seen, according to most analysts here. Just this week, the New York Times, for example, reported that operatives from Pakistan’s military intelligence agency have continued to provide support to Taliban commanders in spite of repeated promises by the civilian-led government and the Army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Pavez Kayani, that such ties have been broken. At the same time, the Army has reportedly cooperated with U.S. missile strikes against suspected Taliban and al Qaeda targets, although it has publicly condemned them.

“The toughest part of this is going to be to get the Pakistanis to do what they need to do,” said Lawrence Korb, a former senior Pentagon official at the Centre for American Progress.

Most lawmakers on Capitol Hill Friday rallied around the strategy despite the proposed 50-billion-dollar price tag for the expanded effort in Afghanistan alone over the next year and a half. “President Obama’s new strategy for Pakistan and Afghanistan is realistic and bold in a critical region where our policy needs rescuing,” said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Afghanistan, Pakistan, US policy | Leave a Comment »

Seized in Pakistan

October 9, 2008


Two 50-Year Olds Released from Guantanamo

By ANDY WORTHINGTON | Counterpunch, Oct 8, 2008

As the US courts put pressure on the government to justify the long detention of prisoners at Guantánamo without charge or trial (following the Supreme Court’s ruling, in June, that they have constitutional habeas corpus rights, and that the government must justify their imprisonment), two of Guantánamo’s oldest prisoners have been quietly repatriated: 51-year old Sudanese prisoner Mustafa Ibrahim al-Hassan, and Mammar Ameur, a 50-year old refugee from Algeria.

Al-Hassan, a 51-year old father of four — two boys and two girls — was immediately reunited with his family after he arrived home. He was held at Guantánamo for six years and two months, even though there was no basis whatsoever for his imprisonment. Like others at Guantánamo, he had traveled to Pakistan in 2002, to study his religion and to seek out business opportunities, but was seized at a checkpoint by opportunistic Pakistani soldiers who were aware that the US authorities were offering bounty rewards for “al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects,” and that foreign visitors were easy prey.

Despite the fact that he had nothing whatsoever to do with al-Qaeda or the Taliban, and was one of many innocent men seized in Pakistan without ever having set foot in Afghanistan, he reported that he was treated brutally in Pakistan custody. “When the investigators were interrogating me”, he said, “when I told them I went there to trade and I went there to study, they hit me, they tortured me. They were torturing us with electricity and they made us walk on sharp objects. They hit us a lot, and because of the pain we just said anything.”

Al-Hassan also suffered horribly in Guantánamo, and was beset by medical problems. For years he complained about stomach pains, but received no treatment. Then, in 2007, medical tests revealed the cause of the pain — a stomach ulcer that required immediate surgery. This was a source of great concern for Mustafa, as he had already had his spleen removed while he was a free man. Mustafa also suffered from liver pain in Guantánamo, and although his stomach surgery was successful, a blood test showed that he was also suffering from liver disease. In spite of this disturbing discovery, the authorities would not tell him how advanced his illness was.

Although al-Hassan’s health continued to deteriorate, he remained in Guantánamo, cruelly overlooked, even as his compatriots were freed. Last December, he was left behind after Adel Hamad and Salim Adem, two other innocent Sudanese prisoners seized in Pakistan, were released. Earlier this year, he was told that he would soon be released, but in May, when al-Jazeera journalist Sami al-Haj and two other men — Amir Yacoub al-Amir and Walid Ali — were also released, he was, inexplicably, left behind yet again.

These disappointments, added to his grave illness and the pain of separation from his family, brought Mustafa al-Hassan to the point of despair. Zachary Katznelson, one of his lawyers at the legal action charity Reprieve, recently explained, “Mustafa is a family man, but it is almost impossible to be a father from Guantánamo Bay. Mustafa is not allowed any phone calls. Mail takes months and months to arrive. When it does arrive, it is usually heavily censored, even if it contains only family news. Still, he thinks about his children all the time. He wants to protect his children as much as possible from the reality of having their father locked up so far away.”

“My children should not have to bear these troubles,” he told Katznelson during a visit at Guantánamo. “They should not feel sadness or depression, but should be allowed to be children. But their father has been taken away.”
As Katznelson left, he said, “I am innocent. I didn’t do a thing to hurt anyone. All I want is to be home with my children.”

The other released prisoner, Mammar Ameur, had been living in Pakistan since 1990, and had been a registered UN refugee since 1996. Ameur was captured at the same time and in the same building as Adel Hamad, the Sudanese hospital administrator released last December. He and his wife and their four children lived in an apartment downstairs, and Hamad and his family lived upstairs.

In his tribunal at Guantánamo, Ameur specifically refuted an allegation that his house was “a suspected al-Qaeda house.” He pointed out that it was a small, two-roomed apartment near an airport used by the military, in an area that was “full of police stations,” and indicated, with some justification, that this was not an ideal location for al-Qaeda to operate in with any degree of safety.

The allegations against Ameur were as weak as those against Hamad, who was forced to refute groundless allegations that the Saudi charity who owned the hospital he worked for, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), was a front for terrorism. Ameur was accused of being a member of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA), but he pointed out that he left Algeria before it was founded, serving as a mujahideen fighter against the Communist regime in Afghanistan from 1990-92, and stressed, “I don’t believe in this ideology because it’s against my religion. These people are criminals, like criminals everywhere.”

Unable to come up with any other allegations, the US authorities attempted to implicate him in the purported terrorist activities of the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), another huge Saudi charity that mounts enormous humanitarian aid efforts, on the spurious basis that he knew someone who worked for the organization, and with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, because of his neighbor. Cutting to the heart of this entire folly, Ameur described what he was told by one of the Pakistanis who arrested him: “I was told by Pakistan intelligence when they captured us that we were innocent … but we have to do something for the Americans. We will have to give you as a gift to protect Pakistan.” He added, however, “Americans themselves have detained me here for nothing; I thought it was a Pakistani mistake, but it was the Americans. They have fabricated allegations as reasons to keep me here.”

It is to be hoped that the Algerian authorities pay attention to Ameur’s story, and do not subject him to a show trial on his return. The pity, of course, is that the United Nations High Commission for Refugees failed to help him, and that he must now endure the dangerous vagaries of the Algerian courts, who may decide to make some kind of pointless example of him.

An even greater pity, of course, is that both he and Mustafa Ibrahim al-Hassan were ever sent to Guantánamo in the first place. Like at least 120 other prisoners seized in Pakistan, their long imprisonment never had anything to do with al-Qaeda or the war in Afghanistan, and was, instead, the direct result of opportunism on the part of the Pakistani authorities and gullibility on the part of the US military and intelligence agencies, who somehow failed to understand that, if you offer substantial bounty payments for “al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects,” you end up with nothing more than innocent men — in this case a UN refugee and an economic migrant — packaged up as Osama bin Laden’s henchmen.

Andy Worthington is a British historian, and the author of ‘The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison’ (published by Pluto Press). Visit his website at: www.andyworthington.co.uk
He can be reached at: andy@andyworthington.co.uk

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Human rights, US policy | Leave a Comment »

POLITICS-US: Vested Interests Drove New Pakistan Policy

September 18, 2008

Analysis by Gareth Porter | Inter-Press Service News

WASHINGTON, Sep 17 – The George W. Bush administration’s decision to launch commando raids and step up missiles strikes against Taliban and al Qaeda figures in the tribal areas of Pakistan followed what appears to have been the most contentious policy process over the use of force in Bush’s eight-year presidency.

That decision has stirred such strong opposition from the Pakistani military and government that it is now being revisited. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Pakistan Tuesday for the second time in three weeks, and U.S. officials and sources just told Reuters that any future raids would be approved on a mission-by-mission basis by a top U.S. administration official.

The policy was the result of strong pressure from the U.S. command in Afghanistan and lobbying by the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and the CIA’s operations directorate (DO), both of which had direct institutional interests in operations that coincided with their mandate.

State Department and some Pentagon officials had managed to delay the proposed military escalation in Pakistan for a year by arguing that it would be based on nearly nonexistent intelligence and would only increase support for the Islamic extremists in that country.

But officials of SOCOM and the CIA prevailed in the end, apparently because Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney believed they could not afford to be seen as doing nothing about bin Laden and al Qaeda in the administration’s final months.

SOCOM had a strong institutional interest in a major new operation in Pakistan.

The Army’s Delta Force and Navy SEALS had been allowed by the Pakistani military to accompany its forces on raids in the tribal area in 2002 and 2003 but not to operate on their own. And even that extremely limited role was ended by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in 2003, which frustrated SOCOM officials.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose antagonism toward the CIA was legendary, had wanted SOCOM to take over the hunt for bin Laden. And in 2006, SOCOM’s Joint Special Operations Command branch in Afghanistan pressed Rumsfeld to approve a commando operation in Pakistan aimed at capturing a high-ranking al Qaeda operative.

SOCOM had the support of the U.S. command in Afghanistan, which was arguing that the war in Afghanistan could not be won as long as the Taliban had a safe haven in Pakistan from which to launch attacks. The top U.S. commander, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, worked with SOCOM and DO officers in Afghanistan to assemble the evidence of Pakistan’s cooperation with the Taliban. .

Despite concerns that such an operation could cause a massive reaction in Pakistan against the U.S. war on al Qaeda, Rumsfeld gave in to the pressure in early November 2006 and approved the operation, according to an account in the New York Times Jun. 30. But within days, Rumsfeld was out as defence secretary, and the operation was put on hold.

Nevertheless Bush and Cheney, who had been repeating that Musharraf had things under control in the frontier area, soon realised that they would be politically vulnerable to charges that they weren’t doing anything about bin Laden.

The July 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was the signal for the CIA’s DO to step up its own lobbying for control over a Pakistan operation, based on the Afghan model — CIA officers training and arming a local militia while identifying targets for strikes from the air.

In a Washington Post column only two weeks after the NIE’s conclusions were made public, David Ignatius quoted former CIA official Hank Crumpton, who had run the CIA operation in Afghanistan after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks, on the proposed DO operation: “We either do it now, or we do it after the next attack.”

That either-or logic and the sense of political vulnerability in the White House was the key advantage of the advocates of a new war in Pakistan. Last November, the New York Times reported that the Defence Department had drafted an order based on the SOCOM proposal for training of local tribal forces and for new authority for “covert” commando operations in Pakistan’s frontier provinces.

But the previous experience with missile strikes against al Qaeda targets using predator drones and the facts on the ground provided plenty of ammunition to those who opposed the escalation. It showed that the proposed actions would have little or no impact on either the Taliban or al Qaeda in Pakistan, and would bring destabilising political blowback.

In January 2006, the CIA had launched a missile strike on a residential compound in Damadola, near the Afghan border, on the basis of erroneous intelligence that Ayman al-Zawahiri would be there. The destruction killed as many 25 people, according to local residents interviewed by The Telegraph, including 14 members of one family.

Some 8,000 tribesmen in the Damadola area protested the killing, and in Karachi tens of thousands more rallied against the United States, shouting “Death to America!”

Musharraf later claimed that the dead included four high-ranking al Qaeda officials, including al-Zawahiri’s son-in-law. The Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock reported last week, however, that U.S. and Pakistani officials now admit that only local villagers were killed in the strike.

It was well known within the counter-terrorism community that the U.S. search for al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan was severely limited by the absence of actionable intelligence. For years, the U.S. military had depended almost entirely on Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, despite its well-established ties with the Taliban and even al Qaeda.

One of the counter-terrorism officials without a direct organisational stake in the issue, State Department counterterrorism chief Gen. Dell L. Dailey, bluntly summed up the situation to reporters last January. “We don’t have enough information about what’s going on there,” he said. “Not on al Qaeda, not on foreign fighters, not on the Taliban.”

A senior U.S. official quoted by the Post last February was even more scathing on that subject, saying “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then.”

Meanwhile, the Pakistani military, reacting to the U.S. aim of a more aggressive U.S. military role in the tribal areas, repeatedly rejected the U.S. military proposal for training Frontier Corps units.

The U.S. command in Afghanistan and SOCOM increased the pressure for escalation early last summer by enlisting visiting members of Congress in support of the plan. Texas Republican Congressmen Michael McCaul, who had visited Afghanistan and Pakistan, declared on his return that was “imperative that U.S. forces be allowed to pursue the Taliban and al Qaeda in tribal areas inside Pakistan.”

In late July, according to The Times of London, Bush signed a secret national security presidential directive (NSPD) which authorised operations by special operations forces without the permission of Pakistan.

The Bush decision ignored the disconnect between the aims of the new war and the realities on the ground in Pakistan. Commando raids and missile strikes against mid-level or low-level Taliban or al Qaeda operatives, carried out in a sea of angry Pashtuns, will not stem the flow of fighters from Pakistan into Afghanistan or weaken al Qaeda. But they will certainly provoke reactions from the tribal population that can tilt the affected areas even further toward the Islamic radicals.

At least some military leaders without an institutional interest in the outcome understood that the proposed escalation was likely to backfire. One senior military officer told the Los Angeles Times last month that he had been forced by the “fragility of the current government in Islamabad,” to ask whether “you do more long-term harm if you act very, very aggressively militarily”.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

(END/2008)

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Pakistan, US policy | Leave a Comment »

Raids into Pakistan: What U.S. authority?

September 15, 2008

Bush’s orders to send special forces after Taliban militants have roots in previous presidencies.

Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, Sept 15, 2008

Page 1 of 2

Reporter head shot

Reporter Howard LaFranchi talks about the US military’s raids inside Pakistan, looking for terrorists.

WASHINGTON – Orders President Bush signed in July authorizing raids by special operations forces in the areas of Pakistan controlled by the Taliban and Al Qaeda and undertaking those raids without official Pakistani consent, have roots stretching back to the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

In an address to a joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11, President Bush said, “From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”

But even before that declaration, two key steps had been taken: One, Congress had authorized the use of US military force against terrorist organizations and the countries that harbor or support them. Two, Bush administration officials had warned Pakistan’s leaders of the dire consequences their country would face if they did not unequivocally enlist in the fight against radical Islamist terrorism.

What Mr. Bush’s July orders signify is that, after seven years of encouraging Pakistan to take on extremists harbored in remote areas along its border with Afghanistan and subsidizing the Pakistani military handsomely to do it, the US has become convinced that Pakistan is neither able nor willing to fight the entrenched Taliban and Al Qaeda elements. Indeed, recent events appear to have convinced at least some in the administration that parts of Pakistan’s military and powerful intelligence service are actually aiding the extremists.

“We’ve moved beyond the message stage here. I think the US has had it with messages that don’t get any action, and that is why the president authorized this,” says Kamran Bokhari, director of Middle East analysis for Stratfor, an intelligence consulting firm in Washington. “This says loud and clear, ‘We’re fed up.’ ”

Even before the July order, the US had undertaken covert operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Moreover, the CIA over the past year has stepped up missile attacks by the unmanned Predator drones it operates to hit targets in the region. That increase has coincided with a deterioration of the war in Afghanistan, where the Afghan Army and NATO forces have come under increasing attack from militants crossing over the rugged and lawless border from Pakistan.

But Bush’s orders, first reported in The New York Times Thursday, mean that operations against insurgent sanctuaries will become overt and probably more frequent. A Sept. 3 ground assault involving US commandos dropped from helicopters targeted a suspected terrorist compound. Missile attacks by the CIA’s unmanned drones, including one Friday reported by Pakistani officials to have killed at last 12 people, are also on the rise.

Precedence for the orders authorizing the attacks on terrorist havens can be found in President Bill Clinton’s authorization of retaliatory attacks in 1993 (against Iraqi intelligence facilities) and in 1998 (against terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Sudan), and in President Ronald Reagan’s bombing of Libya, legal scholars say.

The administration has debated the use of commando raids in Pakistan for years, but the tipping point came in July, as relations with Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders deteriorated, intelligence sources say. The “kicker,” according to one source who requested anonymity over the sensitivity of the issue, was two July events: the bombing of India’s embassy in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, an act that US intelligence officials concluded was aided by Pakistani intelligence operatives; and a July 13 attack on a US military outpost in eastern Afghanistan that killed nine US soldiers. The outpost attack was carried out by Taliban militants who had crossed over the nearby border from Pakistan.

Continued . . .

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Pakistan, US policy | Leave a Comment »

9/11 and the American Inquisition

September 11, 2008
Prof.  Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, September 11, 2008
Email this article to a friend
Print this article

Today’s “Global War on Terrorism” is a modern form of inquisition. It has all the essential ingredients of the French and Spanish inquisitions.

Going after ” Islamic terrorists”, carrying out a Worldwide preemptive war to ” protect the Homeland” are used to justify a military agenda.

“The Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) is presented as a “Clash of Civilizations”, a war between competing values and religions, when in reality it is an outright war of conquest, guided by strategic and economic objectives.

The GWOT is the ideological backbone of the American Empire. It defines US military doctrine, including the preemptive use of nuclear weapons against the “state sponsors” of terrorism. 

The preemptive “defensive war” doctrine and the “war on terrorism” against Al Qaeda constitute essential building blocks of America’s National Security Strategy as formulated in early 2002. The objective is to present “preemptive military action” –meaning war as an act of “self-defense” against two categories of enemies, “rogue States” and “Islamic terrorists”, both of which are said to possess weapons of mass destruction.

The logic of the  “outside enemy” and the evildoer, responsible for civilian deaths, prevails over common sense. In the inner consciousness of Americans, the attacks of September 11, 2001 justify acts of war and conquest:

“As was demonstrated by the losses on September 11, 2001, mass civilian casualties is the specific objective of terrorists and these losses would be exponentially more severe if terrorists acquired and used weapons of mass destruction.” (National Security Strategy, White House, Washington, 2002)

America’s Inquisition

The legitimacy of the inquisition is not questioned. The “Global War on Terrorism” justifies a mammoth defense budget at the expense of health and education. It requires “going after” the terrorists, using advanced weapons systems. It upholds a preemptive religious-like crusade against evil, which serves to obscure the real objectives of military action.

The lies underlying 9/11 are known and documented. The American people’s acceptance of this crusade against evil is not based on any rational understanding or analysis of events.

America’s inquisition is used to extend America’s sphere of influence and justify military intervention, as part of an international campaign against “Islamic terrorists”. Its ultimate objective, which is never mentioned in press reports,  is territorial conquest and control over strategic resources.

The GWOT dogma is enunciated and formulated by Washington’s neoconservative think tanks. It is carried out by the military-intelligence establishment. It is embodied in presidential speeches and press conferences:

“We’ve been warned there are evil people in this world. We’ve been warned so vividly. … And we’ll be alert. Your government is alert. The governors and mayors are alert that evil folks still lurk out there. As I said yesterday, people have declared war on America and they have made a terrible mistake. … My administration has a job to do and we’re going to do it. We will rid the world of the evil-doers,” (George W. Bush, CNN, September 16, 2001)

The objective of the “Global War on Terrorism” launched in September 2001 is to galvanize public support for a Worldwide campaign against heresy. In the eyes of public opinion, possessing a “just cause” for waging war is central. A war is said to be Just if it is waged on moral, religious or ethical grounds.

The Demonization of Muslims and the Battle for Oil

The US led war in the broader Middle East Central Asian region consists in gaining control over extensive reserves of oil and natural gas. The Anglo-American oil giants also seek to gain control over oil and gas pipeline routes out of the region. (See table and maps below).

Muslim countries possess 66 percent of total oil reserves. (Michel Chossudovsky, The “Demonization” of Muslims and the Battle for Oil, Global Research, Jannuary 4, 2007). In contrast, the United States of America has barely 2 percent of total oil reserves. Iraq has five times more oil than the United States.

Demonization is applied to an enemy, which possesses more than 60 percent of the world’s oil reserves. “Axis of evil”, “rogue States”, “failed nations”, “Islamic terrorists”: demonization and vilification are the ideological pillars of America’s Inquisition. They serve as a casus belli for waging the battle for oil.

The Battle for Oil requires the demonization of those who possess the oil. The enemy is characterized as evil, with a view to justifying military action including the mass killing of civilians. (Ibid)

Historical Origins of the Inquisition

The objective is to sustain the illusion that “America is under attack” by Al Qaeda. Under the American inquisition, Washington has a self-proclaimed holy mandate to extirpate Islamic fundamentalism and “spread democracy” throughout the world.

“Going after Bin Laden” is part of a consensus. Fear and insecurity prevail over common sense. Despite the evidence, the White House, the State Department, the two Party system, cannot, in the minds of Americans, be held responsible for a criminal act resulting in the deaths of American civilians.

What we are dealing with is an outright and blind acceptance of the structures of power and political authority.

In this regard, the American Inquisition as an ideological construct, is, in many regards, similar to the inquisitorial social order prevailing in France and Spain during the Middle Ages. The inquisition, which started in France in the 12th century, was used as a justification for conquest and military intervention.

Continued . . .

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, US policy, War Criminals | Leave a Comment »

Revealed: Britain’s secret propaganda war against al-Qaida

August 26, 2008

BBC and website forums targeted by Home Office unit

A Whitehall counter-terrorism unit is targeting the BBC and other media organisations as part of a new global propaganda push designed to “taint the al-Qaida brand”, according to a secret Home Office paper seen by the Guardian.

The document also shows that Whitehall counter-terrorism experts intend to exploit new media websites and outlets with a proposal to “channel messages through volunteers in internet forums” as part of their campaign.

The strategy is being conducted by the research, information and communication unit, [RICU] which was set up last year by the then home secretary, John Reid, to counter al-Qaida propaganda at home and overseas. It is staffed by officials from several government departments.

The report, headed, Challenging violent extremist ideology through communications, says: “We are pushing this material to UK media channels, eg a BBC radio programme exposing tensions between AQ leadership and supporters. And a restricted working group will communicate niche messages through media and non-media.”

The disclosure that a Whitehall counter-terrorism propaganda operation is promoting material to the BBC and other media will raise fresh concerns about official news management in a highly sensitive area.

The government campaign is based upon the premise that al-Qaida is waning worldwide and can appear vulnerable on issues such as declining popularity; its rejection by credible figures, especially religious ones, and details of atrocities.

The Whitehall propaganda unit is collecting material to target these vulnerabilities under three themes. They are that al-Qaida is losing support; “they are not heroes and don’t have answers; and that they harm you, your country and your livelihood”.

Continued . . .

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Commentary | Leave a Comment »

The Ticking Iraqi Clock

August 5, 2008

The Huffington Post, August 4, 2008 | 02:54 PM (EST)

John Bruhns

This underscores the genesis of this disaster when we forgot about Osama bin Laden and refocused the war on terror to Saddam Hussein who didn’t have WMDs, did not want war with us, and posed no threat to the United States. So while recognizing the success that the surge had from tactical military standpoint, I remain strongly opposed to the war.

I will never dismiss the falsehoods of why we went to Iraq as a moot point. Too many people have suffered and died for the sane and rational to have the cavalier opinion of “to hell with it, forget why we are there, we just need to win.”

I’ll leave that to the people who will forever buy the Bush mantra hook, line, and sinker. They can’t be reached and luckily they are in the lowest of the minority. Their main argument: we have to fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here. Really? Or is that just a way to legitimize sending another soldier or Marine back to Iraq for his fourth or fifth deployment? As if the Iraqi insurgents could possibly come “over here” in the masses to invade America — give me a break. We are fighting the Iraqis “over there” because we are in Iraq — plain and simple.

It’s crucial for us all understand the Iraqi insurgency has been disguised by the Bush Administration as AQI — Al Qaeda in Iraq . Catchy name isn’t it — and oh what a convenient excuse to keep the war going. Let’s justify the last 5+ years of death and destruction by lumping the violent reaction of the Iraqi people to an occupation of their land into the same category as those who orchestrated and carried out 9/11.

This very same crowd living in a “fools paradise” continuously attempt to latch onto some illusion that this tragic episode in American/Iraqi history was a colossal failure that falls on the back of U.S. intelligence agencies. Come on, Bush was going in regardless of what the CIA told him.

Now the latest propaganda being formulated by those in a perpetual state of denial is that the Bush Administration initiated this war and occupation as philanthropists for the Iraqi people. Explain that philanthropy to the 4.5 million Iraqi refugees, the families of the uncountable number of dead Iraqi civilians, and the U.S. troops who had to bear witness to it and died in the process.

The same Iraqi government elected by its people who President Bush proclaims such compassion for are asking us to set a timeline to leave. Why is the blatantly obvious impossible for the average warmonger to grasp? The reality is that their numbskulls deny them the humility to admit it.

I’m well aware that this sounds irresponsible. But if the Iraqis want to do it “John Wayne” style from here on out — why should we interfere? After all, according to the Iraqi government they are just so close to standing up so we can stand down. Sound familiar?

We have tried so many military strategies in Iraq in an effort to clean up President Bush’s mess. The only road we haven’t explored is the road home. Just something to think about.

As an Iraq veteran it’s very hard for me to grip the strong possibility that the troop surge in Iraq was all for naught. So recently I have been focusing on the successes of the surge in Iraq without political or ideological blinders. I recently wrote a piece to touch on a different angle than my usual argument that the war is unjustified and illegal in the eyes of millions of Americans and the world community. However, this was all based on a hypothetical scenario that we actually had a compelling reason to invade and occupy Iraq in the first place.

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Iraq, US policy | Leave a Comment »

FBI was told to blame Anthrax scare on Al Qaeda by White House officials

August 5, 2008

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Daily News, Saturday, August 2nd 2008, 6:32 PM

WASHINGTON – In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda, but investigators ruled that out, the Daily News has learned.

After the Oct. 5, 2001, death from anthrax exposure of Sun photo editor Robert Stevens, Mueller was “beaten up” during President Bush‘s morning intelligence briefings for not producing proof the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, according to a former aide.

“They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East,” the retired senior FBI official told The News.

On October 15, 2001, President Bush said, “There may be some possible link” to Bin Laden, adding, “I wouldn’t put it past him.” Vice President Cheney also said Bin Laden’s henchmen were trained “how to deploy and use these kinds of substances, so you start to piece it all together.”

But by then the FBI already knew anthrax spilling out of letters addressed to media outlets and to a U.S. senator was a military strain of the bioweapon. “Very quickly [Fort Detrick, Md., experts] told us this was not something some guy in a cave could come up with,” the ex-FBI official said. “They couldn’t go from box cutters one week to weapons-grade anthrax the next.”jmeek@nydailynews.com

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in War Criminals | Leave a Comment »

Newer Entries »