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Blackwater Operating in Afghanistan on Subcontract with Raytheon

May 23, 2009

After deadly shooting in Kabul, a new Blackwater subsidiary is revealed. The company is also accused of using AK47s seized from Afghan insurgents.

By Jeremy Scahill | RebelReports, May 19, 2009

For those of you who have been following the intricacies of the various ongoing Blackwater/Xe scandals (hard to keep up with indeed), the situation unfolding in Kabul is certainly on your radar. In short, four Blackwater/Xe operatives working for Paravant LLC, a subsidiary of Blackwater/Xe are alleged to have fired on a civilian car they say they saw as a threat, killing at least one Afghan civilian. According to The Wall Street Journal’s August Cole, “At least some of the men, who were former military personnel, had been allegedly drinking alcohol that evening, according to a person familiar with the incident. Off-duty contractors aren’t supposed to carry weapons or drink alcohol.”

The US military said the incident took place in Kabul on May 5. “While stopped for the vehicle accident, the contractors were approached by a vehicle in a manner the contractors felt threatening,” according to the military. At last one Afghan was killed and three others were wounded.

Now, there are many layers to this story, not the least of which is yet another allegation of Blackwater-affiliated personnel drinking and killing in a foreign war zone. (A drunken Blackwater operative was alleged to have killed a bodyguard to an Iraqi vice president on Christmas Eve 2006 inside Baghdad’s Green Zone).

What’s more, this represents the first public mention of the Blackwater/Xe subsidiary Paravant, but also the fact that its work was apparently buried in a subcontract with Raytheon, which in turn has a large US Army training contract in Afghanistan. “Raytheon’s use of Paravant is for a program called Warfighter Focus, a sweeping U.S. Army training effort valued at more than $11 billion over a 10-year period,” reports The Wall Street Journal.

“Warfighter Focus” is carried out by a Raytheon program the company describes in its contract handbook as such [PDF]:

The Raytheon-led Warrior Training Alliance (WTA) team is comprised of over 65 subcontractors with one common mission: to deliver unmatched training support services that cost-effectively meet the U.S. Army’s requirement for total warfighter readiness. The WTA’s ability to provide a comprehensive range of integrated training services will assist the Army in transitioning to a more collaborative, consolidated and streamlined training environment.

Now, the “Warfighter Focus” contract in and of itself is very intriguing and worthy of further investigation. But it is also particularly interesting given that Blackwater is under multiple investigations (DoJ, Congress, IRS, ATF, etc.) and continues to operate in Afghanistan (in part) on a subcontract through a subsidiary working for a massive defense Goliath. This is how the whole contracting scam works, particularly for companies in trouble. They hide under layers of subcontracts and subsidiaries. Blackwater/Xe of course still holds overt contracts in Afghanistan as well.

In addition to Raytheon/Paravant part of the Kabul story, there is yet another internal drama unfolding. According to the WSJ:

Paravant has terminated contracts with the four men “for failure to comply with the terms of their contract,” according to Xe spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell. “Contractual and or legal violations will not be tolerated,” she said.

The contractors were ordered not to leave Afghanistan without permission of the Defense Department, she said, and the company said it is cooperating with authorities.

A US military spokesperson confirmed this, saying, “The contracting company is cooperating with us. We have asked them to keep the individuals in-country until the investigation is complete.”

In light of all of this, I thought it appropriate to share a document that proves an interesting read. Late Friday night/early Saturday, I received an email from Callahan & Blaine— the law firm that represents the four families of the Blackwater men killed in Fallujah on March 31, 2004. That lawsuit, of course, was the first really big case against Blackwater.

Callahan & Blaine has now apparently decided to represent the four Blackwater/Xe/Paravant men involved with the May 5 Kabul shooting. The law firm claims that the men are being held against their will in Afghanistan by Blackwater/Paravant “in a safe house located in a mosque in Kabul in an 8’ x 8’ room.” The company’s alleged motivation for this according to Callahan & Blaine is as follows:

“[T]he Letter of Authorization issued by the Department of Defense to Blackwater specifically provided that the Blackwater personnel would not be armed in Afghanistan. This limitation presumably arose out of concern emanating from the September 16, 2007 shootings in Iraq which resulted in the deaths of 17 Iraqi citizens. Blackwater in knowing violation of the limited authorization issued AK47s to each of the four men. Blackwater acquired these AK47s from a cache of weapons taken from Afghan insurgents. The fact that these men had weapons probably saved their lives but also puts Blackwater’s future involvement in Afghanistan at risk.”

[…]

It is believed that Blackwater has already paid the families of the individuals that were injured or killed and is attempting to negotiate with Afghan authorities to allow Blackwater to remain in Afghanistan despite its breach of the Letter of Authorization in exchange for turning over these four Americans to the Afghanistan authorities, despite their being cleared for release.

I am providing the document below in-full for the public record and as a reference for journalists covering this case more closely than I am able to right now. I am not saying that this is what happened, but rather that it is a version that differs from that of Blackwater/Xe and publicly quoted US military spokespeople. It is from Callahan & Blaine:

FOUR AMERICANS HELD CAPTIVE IN KABUL, AFGHANISTAN

Blackwater USA, now known as Xe Company, is holding four Americans captive and against their will in Kabul, Afghanistan. The four men are being kept in a safe house located in a mosque in Kabul in an 8’ x 8’ room. These men, Mr. Chris Drotleff, Mr. Steve McClain, Mr. Justin Cannon and Mr. Armando Hamid, managed to access Blackwater’s Internet and make a Skype Internet telephone call to Dan Callahan of Callahan & Blaine, the attorney who represents the four Blackwater contractors murdered in Fallujah on March 31, 2004 and is actively involved in litigation against Blackwater.

The group has informed Mr. Callahan that the Letter of Authorization issued by the Department of Defense to Blackwater specifically provided that the Blackwater personnel would not be armed in Afghanistan. This limitation presumably arose out of concern emanating from the September 16, 2007 shootings in Iraq which resulted in the deaths of 17 Iraqi citizens. Blackwater in knowing violation of the limited authorization issued AK47s to each of the four men. Blackwater acquired these AK47s from a cache of weapons taken from Afghan insurgents. The fact that these men had weapons probably saved their lives but also puts Blackwater’s future involvement in Afghanistan at risk.

On May 5, 2009, Messrs. Drotleff, McClain, Cannon and Hamid were in the second vehicle of a two vehicle convoy going through Kabul when an insurgent vehicle passed the second of the two Blackwater vehicles and crashed into the first vehicle. The second vehicle, containing these four men, stopped, and two of the men exited their vehicle to attend to the injuries of the occupants of the first vehicle. The insurgent vehicle suddenly made a u-turn and attempted to run down these Blackwater contractors. At that point, all four Blackwater contractors opened fire on the insurgent vehicle. The driver of the insurgent vehicle was killed and a pedestrian located approximately 200 meters away was wounded and is last known to be in a coma. There were two other occupants in the insurgent vehicle. The men are not sure of those individuals’ medical status.

The United States Army Criminal Investigation Command (“CID”) has investigated this shooting and has freed the men for return to the United States. Blackwater has discharged them and likewise has discharged their team leader, Carl Newman, and project manager, Johnnie Walker. Carl Newman and Johnnie Walker were allowed to leave Afghanistan and have returned to the United States.

Although the four men have been cleared to leave Afghanistan, Blackwater has detained them in a safe house in a mosque in Kabul against their will and contrary to their clearance to leave Afghanistan. It is believed that Blackwater has already paid the families of the individuals that were injured or killed and is attempting to negotiate with Afghan authorities to allow Blackwater to remain in Afghanistan despite its breach of the Letter of Authorization in exchange for turning over these four Americans to the Afghanistan authorities, despite their being cleared for release.

The individuals presently holding the men in an 8’ x 8’ room in a safe house contained within a mosque in Kabul are Tom Adams and Mike Bush, the head of Blackwater’s Afghanistan operation.

The four men told Dan Callahan that special agent Rodriguez of the CID had cleared them for release on May 12, 2009. The men were terminated on May 13, 2009 and told they could leave and since that time have been detained.

The men managed to access Blackwater’s Internet and make Skype Internet telephone calls to Dan Callahan in a request to gain their release.

The men are presently calling Dan Callahan on the hour and will continue to do so until Blackwater discovers that they have acquired this ability to place telephone calls, at which time it is expected that telephone access will be terminated.

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America’s Viceroy in Afghanistan

May 23, 2009

by Sonali Kolhatkar & James Ingalls | Z Net, May 21, 2009

In 2006 we wrote Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (Seven Stories) at a time when most Americans, even on the left, were paying little attention to Afghanistan. In light of the renewed attention on Afghanistan and the recent New York Times article, Ex-U.S. Envoy May Take Key Role in Afghan Government (May 19, 2009) about Zalmay Khalilzad and his proposed future role as “Afghanistan’s CEO,” we present an edited excerpt from our book focusing Khalilzad’s background and his role in post 9/11 Afghanistan. As we show, Khalilzad was instrumental in undermining Afghanistan’s chance for democracy and human rights, and helped instead to cement the political power of war criminals and fundamentalists.

ZALMAY KHALILZAD: AMERICA’S “VICEROY”

The Clinton administration should appoint a high-level envoy for Afghanistan who can coordinate overall U.S. policy. This envoy must have sufficient stature and access to ensure that he or she is taken seriously in foreign capitals and by local militias. Equally important, the special envoy must be able to shape Afghanistan policy within U.S. bureaucracies.

— Zalmay Khalilzad and Daniel Byman, “Afghanistan: The Consolidation of a Rogue Regime,” Washington Quarterly 23:1, 65-78, Winter 2000.

Zalmay Khalilzad is one of the few U.S. policy makers who publicly wrote his own job description and then got the job. No stranger to U.S. foreign policy circles, Khalilzad started off as an adviser to the Reagan administration on U.S. support to the Mujahideen in the 1980s, and ended up as a National Security Council staffer in the George W. Bush administration. After 9/11 he all but became the hypothetical envoy in the passage from his 2000 Washington Quarterly article with Daniel Byman, quoted above. In November 2003 he was promoted to U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan.

Continued >>

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The March of Folly, Continued

May 22, 2009

Norman Solomon  | The Huffington Post, May 22, 2009

To understand what’s up with President Obama as he escalates the war in Afghanistan, there may be no better place to look than a book published 25 years ago. The March of Folly, by historian Barbara Tuchman, is a chilling assessment of how very smart people in power can do very stupid things — how a war effort, ordered from on high, goes from tic to repetition compulsion to obsession — and how we, with undue deference and lethal restraint, pay our respects to the dominant moral torpor to such an extent that mass slaughter becomes normalized in our names.

What happens among policymakers is a “process of self-hypnosis,” Tuchman writes. After recounting examples from the Trojan War to the British moves against rebellious American colonists, she devotes the closing chapters of The March of Folly to the long arc of the U.S. war in Vietnam. The parallels with the current escalation of the war in Afghanistan are more than uncanny; they speak of deeply rooted patterns.

With clarity facing backward, President Obama can make many wise comments about international affairs while proceeding with actual policies largely unfettered by the wisdom. From the outset of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, Tuchman observes, vital lessons were “stated” but “not learned.”

As with John Kennedy — another young president whose administration “came into office equipped with brain power” and “more pragmatism than ideology” — Obama’s policy adrenalin is now surging to engorge something called counterinsurgency.

“Although the doctrine emphasized political measures, counterinsurgency in practice was military,” Tuchman writes, an observation that applies all too well to the emerging Obama enthusiasm for counterinsurgency. And “counterinsurgency in operation did not live up to the high-minded zeal of the theory. All the talk was of ‘winning the allegiance’ of the people to their government, but a government for which allegiance had to be won by outsiders was not a good gamble.”

Now, as during the escalation of the Vietnam War — despite all the front-paged articles and news bulletins emphasizing line items for civic aid from Washington — the spending for U.S. warfare in Afghanistan is overwhelmingly military.

Perhaps overeager to assume that the context of bombing campaigns ordered by President Obama is humanitarian purpose, many Americans of antiwar inclinations have yet to come to terms with central realities of the war effort — for instance, the destructive trajectory of the budgeting for the war, which spends 10 dollars toward destruction for every dollar spent on humanitarian programs.

From the top of the current administration — as the U.S. troop deployments in Afghanistan continue to rise along with the American air-strike rates — there is consistent messaging about the need to “stay the course,” even while bypassing such tainted phrases.

The dynamic that Tuchman describes as operative in the first years of the 1960s, while the Vietnam War gained momentum, is no less relevant today: “For the ruler it is easier, once he has entered a policy box, to stay inside. For the lesser official it is better, for the sake of his position, not to make waves, not to press evidence that the chief will find painful to accept. Psychologists call the process of screening out discordant information ‘cognitive dissonance,’ an academic disguise for ‘Don’t confuse me with the facts.'” Along the way, cognitive dissonance “causes alternatives to be ‘deselected since even thinking about them entails conflicts.'”

Such a psycho-political process inside the White House has no use for the report from the Congressional Progressive Caucus that came out of the caucus’s six-part forum on Capitol Hill this spring, “Afghanistan: A Road Map for Progress.”

Souped up and devouring fuel, the war train cannot slow down for the Progressive Caucus report’s recommendation that “an 80-20 ratio (political-military) should be the formula for funding our efforts in the region with oversight by a special inspector general to ensure compliance.” Or that “U.S. troop presence in the region must be oriented toward training and support roles for Afghan security forces and not for U.S.-led counterinsurgency efforts.”

Or that “the immediate cessation of drone attacks should be required.” Or that “all aid dollars should be required to have a majority percentage of dollars tied or guaranteed to local Afghan institutions and organizations, to ensure countrywide job mapping, assessment and workforce development process to directly benefit the Afghan people.”

The policymakers who are gunning the war train can’t be bothered with such ideas. After all, if the solution is — rhetoric aside — assumed to be largely military, why dilute the potency of the solution? Especially when, as we’re repeatedly made to understand, there’s so much at stake.

During the mid-1960s, while American troops poured into Vietnam, “enormity of the stakes was the new self-hypnosis,” Tuchman comments. She quotes the wisdom — conventional and self-evident — of New York Times military correspondent Hanson Baldwin, who wrote in 1966 that U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam would bring “political, psychological and military catastrophe,” signaling that the United States “had decided to abdicate as a great power.”

Many Americans are eager to think of our nation as supremely civilized even in warfare; the conceits of noble self-restraint have been trumpeted by many a president even while the Pentagon’s carnage apparatus kept spinning into overdrive. “Limited war is not nicer or kinder or more just than all-out war, as its proponents would have it,” Tuchman notes. “It kills with the same finality.”

For a president, with so much military power under his command, frustrations call for more of the same. The seductive allure of counterinsurgency is apt to heighten the appeal of “warnography” for the commander in chief; whatever the earlier resolve to maintain restraint, the ineffectiveness of more violence invites still more — in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

“The American mentality counted on superior might,” Tuchman commented, “but a tank cannot disperse wasps.” In Vietnam, the independent journalist Michael Herr wrote, the U.S. military’s violent capacities were awesome: “Our machine was devastating. And versatile. It could do everything but stop.”

And that is true, routinely, of a war-making administration.

The grim and ultimately unhinged process that Barbara Tuchman charts is in evidence with President Obama and his approach to the Afghan war: “In its first stage, mental standstill fixes the principles and boundaries governing a political problem. In the second stage, when dissonances and failing function begin to appear, the initial principles rigidify. This is the period when, if wisdom were operative, re-examination and re-thinking and a change of course are possible, but they are rare as rubies in a backyard. Rigidifying leads to increase of investment and the need to protect egos; policy founded upon error multiplies, never retreats. The greater the investment and the more involved in it the sponsor’s ego, the more unacceptable is disengagement.”

A week ago, one out of seven members of the House of Representatives voted against a supplemental appropriations bill providing $81.3 billion to the Pentagon, mainly for warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. An opponent of the funding, Congressman John Conyers, pointed out that “the president has not challenged our most pervasive and dangerous national hubris: the foolhardy belief that we can erect the foundations of civil society through the judicious use of our many high-tech instruments of violence.”

Conyers continued: “That belief, promoted by the previous administration in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, assumes that the United States possesses the capacity and also has a duty to determine the fate of nations in the greater Middle East.

“I oppose this supplemental war funding bill because I believe that we are not bound by such a duty. In fact, I believe the policies of empire are counterproductive in our struggle against the forces of radical religious extremism. For example, U.S. strikes from unmanned Predator Drones and other aircraft produced 64 percent of all civilian deaths caused by the U.S., NATO and Afghan forces in 2008. Just this week, U.S. air strikes took another 100 lives, according to Afghan officials on the ground. If it is our goal to strengthen the average Afghan or Pakistani citizen and to weaken the radicals that threaten stability in the region, bombing villages is clearly counterproductive. For every family broken apart by an incident of ‘collateral damage,’ seeds of hate and enmity are sown against our nation. . . .

“Should we support this measure, we risk dooming our nation to a fate similar to Sisyphus and his boulder: to being trapped in a stalemate of unending frustration and misery, as our mistakes inevitably lead us to the same failed outcomes. Let us step back; let us remember the mistakes and heartbreak of our recent misadventures in the streets of Fallujah and Baghdad. If we honor the ties that bind us to one another, we cannot in good faith send our fellow citizens on this errand of folly. It is still not too late to turn away from this path.”

Norman Solomon is the author of a dozen books including “War Made Easy.”

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US: We will pay for Israel missile system

May 22, 2009

Morning Star Online, Thursday 21 May 2009

Washington has reassured Tel Aviv that it will continue to fund a costly new-generation Israeli missile system despite recent cuts to the US defence budget.

The Arrow interceptor project was launched two decades ago as part of late US president Ronald Reagan’s now-defunct star wars programme.

The development cost for the coming year is expected to hit $100 million (£64 million).

Israeli officials had been worried that the project would be axed by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who scrapped several high-profile weapons programmes last month.

But Israeli media reported on Wednesday that Washington has pledged to continue to pay the full cost of the development and production of the Arrow 3 system.

According to the Ynet website, US Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Michelle Flournoy made the assurances at a session of the annual US-Israeli Strategic Dialogue in Washington this week.

The Arrow 3 will be a longer-range version of the Arrow defence system currently deployed by Israel.

Israel and the US are also developing David’s Sling, a missile defence system with a range between 43.5 and 155 miles against medium-range missiles.

On Wednesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that the Islamic republic had successfully test-fired a new medium-range missile.

US Defence Secretary Gates said that the test appeared to have been successful.

Later this year, the Israeli military will hold an unprecedented massive exercise with the US military to test three different ballistic missile defence systems, the Israeli-made Arrow and the US THAAD and Aegis, which will be brought to Israel for the war games.

The drill, which will span several days, is called “Juniper Cobra.”

Elsewhere, Israeli security forces demolished a minor settlement outpost in the West Bank yesterday, three days after US President Barack Obama had told visiting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he must halt settlement activity.

Israeli peace activist Dror Etkes said that dismantling Maoz Esther, one of the newest, smallest outposts, which consisted of just seven huts, was a token gesture that changed little.

“It is far, far away from being something significant in changing the reality in the West Bank,” Mr Etkes said.

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Barack Obama: From anti-war law lecturer to warmonger in 100 days

May 21, 2009

It didn’t take long for President Barack Obama to swing behind targeted assassinations and bombing raids, says Alexander Cockburn

By Alexander Cockburn | The First Post, May 19, 2009

How long does it take a mild-mannered, anti-war, black professor [lecturer] of constitutional law, trained as a community organiser on the South Side of Chicago, to become an enthusiastic sponsor of targeted assassinations, ‘decapitation’ strategies and remote-control bombing of mud houses at the far end of the globe?

There’s nothing surprising here. As far back as President Woodrow Wilson, in the early 20th century, American liberalism has been swift to flex its imperial muscle and whistle up the Marines. High-explosive has always been in the hormone shot.

The nearest parallel to Obama in eager deference to the bloodthirsty counsels of his counter-insurgency advisors is John F. Kennedy. It is not surprising that bright young presidents relish quick-fix, ‘outside the box’ scenarios for victory.

Obama’s course is set and his presidency is already stained the familiar blood-red

Whether in Vietnam or Afghanistan the counsel of regular Army generals tends to be drear and unappetising: vast, costly deployments of troops by the hundreds of thousands, mounting casualties, uncertain prospects for any long-term success ­ all adding up to dismaying political costs on the home front.

Amid Camelot’s dawn in 1961, Kennedy swiftly bent an ear to the advice of men like Ed Lansdale, a special ops man who wore rakishly the halo of victory over the Communist guerillas in the Philippines and who promised results in Vietnam.

By the time he himself had become the victim of Lee Harvey Oswald’s ‘decapitation’ strategy, brought to successful conclusion in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, on November 22, 1963, Kennedy had set in motion the secret counter-insurgency operations, complete with programs of assassination and torture, that turned South-East Asia and Latin America into charnel houses for the next 20 years.

Another Democrat who strode into the White House with the word ‘peace’ springing from his lips was Jimmy Carter. It was he who first decreed that ‘freedom’ and the war on terror required a $3.5bn investment in a secret CIA-led war in Afghanistan, plus the deployment of Argentinian torturers to advise US military teams in counter-insurgency ops in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

Obama campaigned on a pledge to ‘decapitate’ al-Qaeda, meaning the assassination of its leaders. It was his short-hand way of advertising that he had the right stuff. Now, like Kennedy, he’s summoned the exponents of unconventional, short-cut paths to success in that mission.

Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal now replaces General David McKiernan as Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan. McChrystal’s expertise is precisely in assassination and ‘decapitation’. As commander of the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for nearly five years starting in 2003, McChrystal was in charge of death squad ops, his best advertised success being the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The phrase ‘sophisticated networks’ tends to crop up in assessments of McChrystal’s Iraq years. Actually there’s nothing fresh or sophisticated in what he did. Programmes of targeted assassination aren’t new in counter-insurgency. The most infamous and best known was the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, designed to identify and eliminate cadres of Vietnam’s National Liberation Front, informally known as the Viet Cong, of whom, on some estimates, at least 40,000 were duly assassinated.

In such enterprises two outcomes are inevitable. Identification of the human targets requires either voluntary informants or captives. In the latter instance torture is certain, whatever rhetorical pledges are proclaimed back home. There may be intelligence officers who rely on patient, non-violent interrogation, as the US officer who elicited the whereabouts of al-Zarqawi claims he did.

But there will be others who will reach for the garden hose and the face towel. (McChrystal, not uncoincidentally, was involved in the prisoner abuse scandal at Baghdad’s Camp Nama. He also played a sordid role in the cover-up of the friendly-fire death of ex-NFL star and Army Ranger Pat Tillman.)

Whatever the technique, a second certainty is the killing of large numbers of civilians in the final ‘targeted assassination’. At one point in the first war on Saddam Hussein in the early 1990s, a huge component of US air sorties was devoted each day to bombing places where US intelligence had concluded Saddam might be hiding. Time after time, after the mangled bodies of men, women and children had been scrutinised, came the crestfallen tidings that Saddam was not among them.

Already in Afghanistan public opinion has been inflamed by the weekly bulletins of deadly bombardments either by drones or manned bombers. Still in the headlines is the US bombardment of Bala Boluk in Farah province, which yielded 140 dead villagers torn apart by high explosives, including 93 children. Only 22 were male and over 18.

Perhaps ‘sophisticated intelligence’ had identified one of these as an al-Qaeda man, or a Taliban captain, or maybe someone an Afghan informant to the US military just didn’t care for. Maybe electronic eavesdropping simply screwed up the coordinates. If we ever know, it won’t be for a very long time. Obama has managed a terse apology, even as he installs McChrystal, thus ensuring more of the same.

Obama is bidding to be as sure-footed as Bush in trampling on constitutional rights

The logic of targeted assassinations was on display in Gaza even as Obama worked on the uplifting phrases of his inaugural address in January. The Israelis claimed they were targeting only Hamas even as the body counts of women and children methodically refuted these claims and finally extorted from Obama a terse phrase of regret.

He may soon weary of uttering them. His course is set and his presidency already permanently stained the ever-familiar blood-red tint. There’s no short-cut in counter-insurgency. A targeted bombing yields up Bala Boluk, and the incandescent enmity of most Afghans. The war on al-Qaeda mutates into the war on the Taliban, and 850,000 refugees in the Swat Valley in Pakistan.

The mild-mannered professor is bidding to be as sure-footed as Bush and Cheney in trampling on constitutional rights. He’s planning to restore Bush’s kangaroo courts for prisoners at Guantanamo who’ve never even been formally charged with a crime! He’s threatening to hold some prisoners indefinitely in the US without trial.

He’s even been awarded a hearty editorial clap on the back from the Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Obama deserves credit for accepting that civilians courts are largely unsuited for the realities of the war on terror. He has now decided to preserve a tribunal process that will be identical in every material way to the one favoured by Dick Cheney.”

It didn’t take long. But it’s what we’ve got ­ for the rest of Obama-time.

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Panetta and Washington’s endless war

May 20, 2009
Bill Van Auken | wsws.org, 20 May 2009
After a week of bitter recriminations between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi over what she was told about torture, CIA Director Leon Panetta sought to put a stop to this public discussion, employing language that echoed the rhetoric of the Bush administration.

Giving his first public speech since he was tapped by Obama to head the CIA, Panetta described the US as “a nation at war” and insisted that the crimes of the Bush administration not become a distraction from current operations by the US military and intelligence apparatus.

“I don’t deny them the opportunity to learn the lessons from that period,” Panetta told his audience at the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles. “But…we have to be very careful that we don’t forget our responsibility to the present and to the future. We are a nation at war. We have to confront that reality every day. And while it’s important to learn the lessons of the past, we must not do it in a way that sacrifices our capability to stay focused on…those who threaten the United States of America.”

“We are a nation at war.” This phrase was invoked hundreds if not thousands of times by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Gonzales and others to justify military atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan, torture, extraordinary rendition, illegal domestic spying and an imperial presidency’s arrogation to itself of unprecedented powers.

Earlier this year, White House aides indicated to the media that the Obama administration was dropping references to the “global war on terrorism,” the Bush administration’s all-purpose justification for its wars abroad and assault on democratic rights at home.

What is becoming ever clearer, however, is that the methods introduced under Bush are being maintained largely intact by the new Democratic administration, while its dishonest rhetoric justifying them is sounding more and more like that of its predecessor.

What does it mean to say America is “a nation at war”? The US Congress has not issued a declaration of war against any country.

America is a nation at war only in the sense that its military is perpetually employed in carrying out illegal invasions, colonial-style occupations, bombings, assassinations by predator drones and other acts of violence against peoples unfortunate enough to find themselves in the way of American capitalism’s plundering of the world’s resources and markets.

The enemy’s identity in this never-ending war is deliberately kept vague as the targets for US military aggression are ever changing. Thus, Panetta refers only to “those that would threaten the United States of America.”

To call this Orwellian is not hyperbole. The perpetual state of war imposed upon the oppressed citizens of Oceania in Orwell’s “1984” could have been written as an allegory for modern US state policy under both Bush and Obama.

Panetta left little to the imagination about the political implications of this supposed state of war.

The CIA director said that he wouldn’t “deny them,” meaning the US Congress, “the opportunity to learn the lessons from that period.” However, he cautioned that any investigation must be done in a “very careful” manner. Probing the war crimes of the past must not interfere with the war crimes of the present and the future.

This warning about circumscribing the scope of any investigation of torture—and above all preventing any top official from being held accountable for this crime—follows Panetta’s public rebuttal of Pelosi’s claim last week that the CIA had lied to her in 2002 about its use of waterboarding in the interrogation of detainees.

Pelosi’s complicity in the policy of torture notwithstanding, it is extraordinary that Panetta, an unelected appointee of the president, felt no compunction about publicly rebuking the elected speaker of the house, who constitutionally is the second in line for succession to the presidency.

When Panetta was first nominated as CIA director, Republicans and some Democrats pointed to his lack of any intelligence experience. In the end, however, he was confirmed by the unanimous consent of the Senate.

He is a man clearly trusted by America’s ruling elite to protect its interests. First a Republican aide to the Nixon administration, he became a Democratic congressman and then chief of staff to President Clinton. Afterward he pursued profitable relations with the centers of corporate and financial power, while remaining deeply involved in state policy. In 2006, he joined the Iraq Study Group, which was formed to effect a tactical shift in US war policy. In 2008, he was paid more than $830,000 in consulting fees and honorariums by the likes of the BP Corporation, Merrill Lynch and the Carlyle Group.

Panetta speaks for the state-within-the-state, the permanent apparatus of the military and the intelligence agencies that dominate the US government no matter which party is in power.

These layers are pushing back following the limited exposure of the Bush administration’s crimes with the release of the torture memos last month. This was further indicated in an article that appeared Tuesday in the Washington Post by Walter Pincus, who enjoys close ties to the CIA. It cited concerns by “agency personnel” that they would not be able to “conduct interrogations effectively,” given new proscriptions against torture, and that “other operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan will come under review.”

The Democrats are cowering before these pressures. Obama’s press secretary has refused to utter a word about the clash between Pelosi and Panetta, while Democrats in Congress are shying away from the debate on torture, treating it increasingly as a distraction.

The Obama administration is acting to perpetuate and politically legitimize the criminal policies initiated under Bush, while shielding those responsible. The two wars launched to assert US hegemony over the Persian Gulf and Central Asia are continuing with bipartisan support, and Obama is responsible for his own war crimes, including this month’s bombing that slaughtered 150 civilians in Afghanistan. Domestic spying, extraordinary rendition and military commissions have all been upheld by the administration. The resumption of torture is inevitable and in all likelihood has already begun.

In the end, this entire process exposes the futility of elections under America’s two-party system. Those who take office—Obama no less than Bush—are accountable not to the American people, but to a narrow constituency consisting of the financial oligarchy, the military command and the intelligence agencies, those who really rule America.

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Spanish Investigation Reveals ‘An Approved Systematic Plan of Torture’ Under Bush

May 19, 2009

While Obama and the US Congress refuse to hold Bush-era torturers accountable, a Spanish judge fights for accountability and uncovers more US atrocities.

By Jeremy Scahill | RebelReports, May 18, 2009

On Friday, I wrote a piece for AlterNet on how the Obama administration is continuing to use a notorious military police unit at Guantanamo that regularly brutalizes unarmed prisoners, despite Obama’s pledge to uphold the Geneva Convention. This force officially known as the Immediate Reaction Force (IRF) has been labelled the “Extreme Repression Force” by Gitmo prisoners. Its members were also characterized as the “Black Shirts of Guantanamo” by human rights lawyer Michael Ratner. The IRF force is “an extrajudicial terror squad that has regularly brutalized prisoners outside of the interrogation room, gang beating them, forcing their heads into toilets, breaking bones, gouging their eyes, squeezing their testicles, urinating on a prisoner’s head, banging their heads on concrete floors and hog-tying them — sometimes leaving prisoners tied in excruciating positions for hours on end.”

There has been very little public attention focused on this force. But, as I noted in my story, this unit could potentially be subjected to legal scrutiny, even if the Congress and Justice Department refuse to do their jobs. That’s because one of the men brutalized by this force is a primary figure in the (largely ignored by the US media) Spanish investigation—a British resident named Omar Deghayes. (See my article, “Little Known Military Thug Squad Still Brutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama,” for more on this story.)

Deghayes’s torture, including under the IRF Teams at Guantanamo, was highlighted in Spanish Judge Balthazar Garzon’s criminal investigation into the US torture program. A total of five Spanish citizens or residents were held by the US at Guantanamo. Testimony of four of those men is cited by the Spanish investigators. In addition to Deghayes, the men are: Hamed Abderraman Ahmed, Lahcen Ikassrien and Jamiel Abdulatif Al Banna. (An English translation of the Spanish writ was recently released by the Center for Constitutional Rights and can be accessed here.)

All of the victims cited in the Spanish investigation were moved to various locations where they were allegedly tortured before ultimately being transferred to Guantanamo where the torture continued and intensified. The torture, according to the Spanish investigation, “all” occurred “under the authority of American military personnel”  and was sometimes conducted in the presence of medical professionals.

The Spanish writ does not name specific defendants or suspects in its investigation, but rather seeks to investigate the role of those who planned, coordinated and implemented the torture of its citizens and residents. “This systematic plan may point to the existence of a coordinated action for the commission of a multiplicity of torture crimes… a plan that would seem to approximate an official level and that, therefore, would give rise to criminal liability for the various schemes of committing, ordering, designing, and authorizing this systematic plan of torture.” On April 29, Garzon gave the green light to the investigation citing Spain’s Universal Jurisdiction law.

While Deghayes’s case appears to include the most extreme case of torture among the five cited by the Spanish investigation, the others contain some pretty gut-wrenching stories. According to the Spanish investigation,

Hamed Abderraman Ahmed was captured in November 2001 in Pakistan and was handed over to the US military in Kandahar, Afghanistan two months later and was then taken to Guantanamo in January 2002. At Camp X-Ray, he was confined to a metal mesh “chicken wire” cell that exposed him to the extreme heat of the Caribbean sun and “left him little more than a half-meter by half-meter of space to move in.” Additionally, the cells were lit with electric lights around the clock, which “produced vision and sleep disorders.” For over a year, he says he and other prisoners were allowed to leave their cells for two 15-minute periods a week. Ahmed also says the US constantly blared “American patriotic songs.” Ahmed was released to Spanish custody by the US in February 2004 and was acquitted by Spain’s Supreme Court.

Lhacen Ikassrien, who is a Moroccan citizen and a 13 year resident of Spain was taken from Afghanistan to Guantanamo in February 2002. He claims US personnel “never explained to him why he had been deprived of freedom.” At Guantanamo, Ikassrien claims he “Received blows to his testicles,” according to the Spanish investigation. “He relates that they inoculated him through injection with ‘a disease for dog cysts.’” Ikassrien and other former prisoners claim the US prison authorities “introduced into the cell very cold air and chemical substances that affected his breathing and joints.” Ikassrien was handed over to Spain in July 2005 and was also acquitted.

A Palestinian citizen, Jamiel Abdelatif al Banna was taken by the US military in Gambia in November 2002 and was ultimately transferred to Guantanamo in January 2003 where he remained until December 2007. Before arriving at Guantanamo, al Banna says US personnel  took him to Afghanistan for a brief period where he was kept “underground in total darkness for three weeks with deprivation of food and sleep, and, forced him to witness torture carried out on other prisoners in Afghanistan,” according to the Spanish investigation. He also “received strong blows to the head with a loss of consciousness.”

Once he arrived at Guantanamo, al Banna was “under a regimen of total isolation for one year, permanently bound with shackles.” During his time at Guantanamo, he was “subjected to some one thousand interrogations in sessions lasting from 2-10 hours per day.” He was also “held by shackles on the hands and feet (wrists and ankles), in forced positions, seated on the floor with his body doubled forward and with pressure from the interrogators on his back to increase the pain until it made him scream and rendered him unable to stand upright on his feet for several hours afterwards.” Al Banna was also “subjected to threats of death by poisoning or by drowning in the sea.” Like Ikassrien, al Banna described chemicals placed in his environment that caused “coughing fits and respiratory problems.” His mesh wired cell allegedly “produced asthenopia (eyestrain) in him and in other prisoners, to the point of rendering him incapable of reading.” Al Banna also describes being attacked by the Immediate Reaction Force teams. “In one of these attacks, Al Banna suffered injuries to the ring finger of his right hand, left side of his forehead and the back part of his left knee,” according to the investigation.

Judge Garzon says the treatment of these men, combined with recently declassified US documents show “an approved systematic plan of torture and ill-treatment on persons deprived of their freedom without any charge and without the basic rights of all detainees as set out and required by applicable international treaties.”

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights has said it “is conceivable that arrest warrants have already been issued or will be soon. Indictments will almost surely follow. The torture team’s travel options are narrowing.”

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US Chiefs Can’t be Sued for ‘Terror Torture

May 19, 2009

By Robert Barnes | The Washington Post, Tuesday, May 19, 2009

The Supreme Court ruled today that former attorney general John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller may not be sued by Arab Muslims who were seized in this country after the 2001 terrorist attacks and allege harsh treatment because of their religion and ethnicity.

The court ruled 5 to 4 that the top officials are not liable for the actions of their subordinates absent evidence that they ordered the allegedly discriminatory activity. The decision followed the court’s ideological split between conservatives and liberals, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy siding with the conservatives and writing the opinion.

In a separate decision, the court ruled that women who worked for companies whose maternity leave policies were discriminatory cannot sue under today’s laws that make such policies illegal. In a case involving AT&T, the court ruled 7 to 2 that such policies were “bona fide” at the time, and women may not challenge them retroactively.

The suit against Ashcroft and Mueller was brought by a Pakistani citizen living legally in the country when he was arrested in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Javaid Iqbal was held in solitary confinement in a section of a Brooklyn prison known as Admax-Shu, for “administrative maximum special housing unit,” where he said he was subjected to numerous beatings and strip searches. He was convicted of document fraud and deported to Pakistan but cleared of any involvement in terrorism. An Egyptian Muslim who was also part of the suit, Ehad Elmaghraby, settled with the government for $300,000. Similar suits are pending.

Iqbal’s case names prison guards, FBI agents, the warden of the prison — who was the subject of a critical report from the Justice Department inspector general — up to Ashcroft, who was attorney general at the time of the attack. Iqbal says policies formulated by Ashcroft and Mueller singled him out as a suspect of “high interest” solely because of his nationality and religion.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York acknowledged that top government officials carry immunity but decided it was at least “plausible” that Ashcroft and Mueller were responsible for, or knew about, the discriminatory actions Iqbal alleges.

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AIPAC’s Hidden Persuaders

May 18, 2009
The Israel lobby is aiming to soften up US public opinion for an attack on Iran. Americans should resist its propaganda

by Richard Silverstein | The Guardian, UK, May 18, 2009

Despite the ballyhoo of the recent Aipac national policy conference in Washington, when Israel-US bonds were feted, relations between the two countries are currently more strained than at any time since 1991. That was when the elder George Bush, as US president, fiercely lobbied Yitzchak Shamir to join in the Madrid peace conference. Relations then reached their nadir when James Baker uttered his infamous remark about Israel’s American-Jewish supporters: “Fuck the Jews, they don’t even vote for us.”

If relations continue to deteriorate in coming months, we might have to go back in time to the Suez crisis of 1956 to find a time when relations were this fraught.

A case in point is Iran. That bogey-nation was everywhere at the Aipac conference. Every keynote speech – if they weren’t directly written by that group’s staff – seemed unmistakably scripted and “on message”, dedicated to the existential threat that Iran poses not just to Israel, but the entire world.

A glossy brochure distributed at the Aipac meeting showed a map (pictured below) centred on Iran and beyond, with a dark ominous ring around Iran’s neighbours and as far away as India, Russia, Africa and eastern Europe. The message: these are the countries under imminent threat of Iranian ballistic missiles.

Aipac map
A map contained in a brochure distributed at an Aipac meeting

The brochure copy even intimates that the next step for Iran is “building a missile with range to reach US territory”. (Never mind that Iran doesn’t yet have any ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear weapon, nor will it have the bomb itself for anywhere from a year to five years depending on which you source you choose to believe.)

Israel is in the midst of a massive diplomatic, political and intelligence campaign, both public and covert, that could lead – if those officials behind it have their way – towards a military strike on Iran. It is a war for the hearts and minds of Americans. Or you might call it the war before the war. In intelligence circles, this Israeli project is known as perception management and defined by the department of defence as:

Actions to convey and/or deny information … to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives and objective reasoning as well as to intelligence systems and leaders … ultimately resulting in foreign behaviours and official actions favourable to [US] objectives. In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception and psychological operations.

The Israelis are following the template of the Bush administration’s run-up to the Iraq war. First, the US government advocated half-hearted efforts at diplomatic engagement. Then it ratcheted up pressure through sanctions and UN resolutions. That is where the Israeli campaign stands now.

Aipac’s members carried a unified message to Capitol Hill during their lobbying of US senators and members of Congress. They demanded that Congress pass the most draconian sanctions ever proposed against Iran. They demanded that Iran be offered a limited time in which to respond to an ultimatum insisting it drop its nuclear programme.

What then? If you review Aipac’s literature and the various commentaries published either by Israeli diplomats or their supporters in the US media, they don’t specify what comes next. But any sensible person can guess that the final step will be war: “Israeli leaders have … hinted at pre-emptive military strikes if they decide that diplomacy has failed.”

The Israelis surely know that the Obama administration will never go to war against Iran. In fact, they know that Obama would not approve of Israel doing so. But I’ve become convinced, in doing the research and speaking to knowledgeable sources, that Israel is prepared at some date in the near future to attack Iran itself, even against the wishes of the US.

This of course will put Obama in an untenable position: do US forces attack the Israelis (in effect defending the Iranians) and risk the fallout that would occur in relations between the Democratic administration and American Jews? Or does he allow the Israelis to carry on to their targets and bomb Iran, accepting the bloodletting and mayhem that will inevitably result? If Israel wishes for the latter outcome, they must lay the groundwork here in the US for tacit acceptance by the American people of a third-party attack on Iran.

Indeed, they are already a good deal of the way toward this goal, as the latest polling from Rasmussen Report reveals. According to it, 49% of Americans believe that if Israel attacks Iran then the US should help Israel.

Some readers may say this is alarmist. Before I learned some of the information I gathered from sources both public and not, I also would have labelled this as overly dramatic. But Israel hasn’t shrunk, for example, from drafting opinion columns for US newspapers on the menace posed by Iran, and telling the editor that a local Jewish community leader would be attaching his name to it.

Within the US Israel exploits a willing circle of Likudist advocacy groups and thinktanks – such as the Washington Institute for Near East Peace, the Israel Project, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs as well as Aipac itself – that are closely scripted and co-ordinate their political message with Israeli diplomats. While some of these groups deny such a close affiliation, there is proof of scripting and amplification of the Israeli government’s agenda. And of course there may be cases in which the organisations know the needs of their patron so well that they need no prompting.

In another example, Israeli diplomats monitored and encouraged a member of Congress to host an anti-Iranian conference that would advocate Israel’s message of sanctions (and more).

Israel, along with enablers like Aipac, has not shrunk from hounding its critics. One peace activist in the US so angered Israeli authorities that he was driven from a job through a whispering campaign in the community, which also included a disparaging article leaked to a willing reporter.

The level of hubris necessary to pull this off is astonishing. Fresh off the dismissal of the Rosen-Weissman spy charges involving its own employees, Aipac is flexing its political muscle and reminding the world of its resurgence. It does this through a combination of manipulation, public lobbying and punishment of its enemies.

We in the US must be prepared to resist. We must protect ourselves from Israel’s propaganda offensive ginning up war with Iran. We must encourage President Obama to stay strong in his commitment to Israeli-Arab peace, whether or not Israel is a willing partner. Keeping our eyes on the prize of peace is going to be the hardest challenge of all, because the Netanyahu government is doing everything it can to divert the world’s attention.

© 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

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American warmongers stir a hornet’s nest in Pakistan

May 17, 2009

By ERIC MARGOLIS | winnipegsun.com, May 17, 2009

PARIS — Pakistan finally bowed to Washington’s angry demands last week by unleashing its military against rebellious Pashtun tribesmen of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) — collectively mislabelled “Taliban” in the West.

The Obama administration had threatened to stop $2 billion US annual cash payments to bankrupt Pakistan’s political and military leadership and block $6.5 billion future aid, unless Islamabad sent its soldiers into Pakistan’s turbulent NWFP along the Afghan frontier.

The result was a bloodbath: Some 1,000 “terrorists” killed (read: mostly civilians) and 1.2 million people — most of Swat’s population — made refugees.

Pakistan’s U.S.-rented armed forces have scored a brilliant victory against their own people. Too bad they don’t do as well in wars against India. Blasting civilians, however, is much safer and more profitable.

Unable to pacify Afghanistan’s Pashtun tribes (a.k.a. Taliban), a deeply frustrated Washington has begun tearing Pakistan apart in an effort to end Pashtun resistance in both nations. CIA drone aircraft have so far killed over 700 Pakistani Pashtun. Only 6% were militants, according to Pakistan’s media, the rest civilians.

Pashtun, also improperly called Pathan, are the world’s largest tribal people. Fifteen million live in Afghanistan, forming half its population. Twenty-six million live right across the border in Pakistan. Britain’s imperialists divided Pashtun by an artificial border, the Durand Line (today’s Afghan-Pakistan border). Pashtun reject it.

Many Pashtun tribes agreed to join Pakistan in 1947, provided much of their homeland be autonomous and free of government troops. Pashtun Swat only joined Pakistan in 1969.

As Pakistan’s Pashtun increasingly aided Pashtun resistance in Afghanistan, U.S. drones began attacking them. Washington forced Islamabad to violate its own constitution by sending troops into Pashtun lands. The result was the current explosion of Pashtun anger.

I have been to war with the Pashtun and have seen their legendary courage, strong sense of honour and determination. They are also hugely quarrelsome, feuding and prickly.

One quickly learns never to threaten a Pashtun or give him ultimatums. These are the mountain warriors who defied the U.S. by refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden because he was a hero of the anti-Soviet war and their guest. The ancient code of “Pashtunwali” still guides them: Do not attack Pashtun, do not cheat them, do not cause them dishonour. To Pashtun, revenge is sacred.

HAM-HANDED

Now, Washington’s ham-handed policies and last week’s Swat atrocity threaten to ignite Pakistan’s second worst nightmare after invasion by India: That its 26 million Pashtun will secede and join Afghanistan’s Pashtun to form an independent Pashtun state, Pashtunistan.

This would rend Pakistan asunder, probably provoke its restive Baluchi tribes to secede and tempt mighty India to intervene militarily, risking nuclear war with beleaguered Pakistan.

The Pashtun of NWFP have no intention or capability of moving into Pakistan’s other provinces, Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan. They just want to be left alone. Alarms of a “Taliban takeover of Pakistan” are pure propaganda.

Lowland Pakistanis repeatedly have rejected militant Islamic parties. Many have little love for Pashtun, whom they regard as mountain wild men best avoided.

Nor are Pakistan’s well-guarded nukes a danger — at least not yet. Alarms about Pakistan’s nukes come from the same fabricators with hidden agendas who brought us Saddam Hussein’s bogus weapons.

THE REAL DANGER

The real danger is in the U.S. acting like an enraged mastodon, trampling Pakistan under foot, and forcing Islamabad’s military to make war on its own people. Pakistan could end up like U.S.-occupied Iraq, split into three parts and helpless.

If this continues, at some point patriotic Pakistani soldiers may rebel and shoot the corrupt generals and politicians on Washington’s payroll.

Equally ominous, a poor people’s uprising spreading across Pakistan — also mislabelled “Taliban” — threatens a radical national rebellion reminiscent of India’s Naxalite rebels.

As in Iraq, profound ignorance and gung ho military arrogance drive U.S. Afghan policy. Obama’s people have no understanding what they are getting into in “AfPak.” I can tell them: An unholy mess we will long regret.

eric.margolis@sunmedia.ca

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