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LAT : Suspected insurgents tortured in Afghanistan, U.N. says

2011-10-11T10:42:00.000-04:00

Suspected insurgents tortured in Afghanistan, U.N. says

The United Nations report says detainees have been subjected to beatings, shocks and other brutal abuses. The findings may complicate U.S. efforts to hand off security responsibilities.

By Laura King, Los Angeles Times | Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan | October 10, 2011

Suspected insurgents in Afghan custody have been subjected to torture including electric shocks, being hung by their hands and having their genitals twisted, the United Nations mission in Afghanistan said in a report Monday.

The 74-page report, detailing a widespread pattern of brutal abuses, will probably complicate American efforts to hand over security responsibilities to Afghan authorities as a prelude to winding down the Western combat mission in Afghanistan.

"Torture is one of the most serious human rights violations under international law, a crime under Afghan law, and strictly prohibited under both laws," said Georgette Gagnon, the director of human rights for the U.N. mission. "Accountability for torture demands prosecutions and the taking of all necessary measures by Afghan authorities to prevent and end such acts in the future."

In a preemptive move, the NATO force announced last month that it had halted prisoner transfers to more than a dozen detainee centers named in the report, a draft of which was shown to American commanders. Many of the suspected fighters who end up in detention are captured in the field by U.S. and coalition forces.

The United Nations said the abuse, while routine and systematic, was not based on Afghan government policy, but rather appeared to have been carried out at the initiative of individual jailers and security officials. It added that Afghan government ministries had cooperated in the investigation and had already moved to take action against some of the officials allegedly involved.

Nonetheless, the allegations could call into question the legality of continued Western funding of training for Afghanistan's security services — another linchpin of the U.S. pullout plan. The Obama administration is withdrawing 10,000 American troops by the end of the year, with an additional 23,000 to follow in 2012.

The report, which was researched over nearly a year, ending in August, represents a setback to enormously expensive U.S.-led efforts to bring Afghanistan's criminal justice system and security practices up to something resembling international standards. The allegations also pose an immediate day-to-day practical challenge to Western officials dealing with a backlog of security suspects who cannot be handed over to Afghan officials because of the potential for abuse.

The report, based on interviews with more than 300 detainees, cited varying degrees of abuses at nearly 50 facilities in two-thirds of Afghanistan's provinces.

Most of the security detainees were suspected of affiliation with the Taliban or other insurgent groups, and the abuse was almost always aimed at wringing confessions from them about attacks on Western and Afghan troops, or operations in the planning stages.

The detainee accounts were compelling in their consistency, the report said, with prisoners asserting that abuse often escalated from beating and slapping to spending long periods suspended by their hands, sometimes culminating in electric shocks or the detainees' genitals being twisted until the prisoners passed out.

The NATO force, responding to the formal release of the findings, reiterated that it was working to "improve detention operations" and safeguard against abuses.

laura.king@latimes.com

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

Denver Post : Coloradan Zazi's coded e-mail started agencies plan to stop N.Y. subway attack

2011-10-03T12:04:00.000-04:00

Coloradan Zazi's coded e-mail started agencies plan to stop N.Y. subway attack

By Sara Burnett | The Denver Post | October 2, 2011

Jim Davis was in his backyard drinking a beer and grilling burgers for a Labor Day barbecue when his cellphone rang.

On the line was Steve Olson, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Denver office national security branch.

Olson told his boss that authorities monitoring the e-mail of a key al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan had intercepted a chilling message about a potential attack.

Then came the really shocking news: The person who sent the e-mail, Olson said, was here in Aurora.

Over the next few days the scramble to learn just who Najibullah Zazi was and what, if anything, he had planned played out with stunning speed and overwhelming media attention.

Two years ago, the 24-year-old airport shuttle driver was arrested and charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and other charges.

Since then, new information from court proceedings and interviews with current and former FBI agents has emerged about Zazi's plan to set off bombs in the New York subway — a plot Justice Department officials have said was the most serious threat against the United States since the 9/11 attacks.

Zazi, Olson said recently, was part of the first operational al-Qaeda cell authorities knew was in the United States post- 9/11. He had direct contact with al-Qaeda leaders so high-ranking that one was killed by CIA drone strikes and another has a $5 million bounty on his head.

Zazi's attack was planned for sometime between Sept. 14 and 16, 2009 — less than 10 days from the time authorities learned of a possible plot — and was connected to another plot in the United Kingdom.

And like the mastermind of 9/11 who crashed the first plane into the World Trade Center, Zazi was trained and willing to die, said Davis, who was special agent in charge for the Denver FBI at the time.

"He looked like the little kid next door," Davis said. "And he was Mohamed Atta."

"Marriage" raised alarm

What the FBI knew about Zazi on the day the call came in from headquarters was basic. He was an Afghan immigrant living legally in the United States. He was married to his cousin, who was in Pakistan, and though he had spent most of his life in New York, he now lived with his parents and other family in an apartment on Smoky Hill Road in Aurora.

They also had three e-mails that Zazi had reportedly sent, in which he asked about "mixtures."

"The marriage is ready flour and oil," one e-mail stated, in part.

It's widely known in intelligence circles that terrorists use the word "marriage" to mean an attack or suicide bombing. To see the words "marriage" and "ready" in such close proximity, the agents knew, was cause for serious alarm.

But they didn't know what Zazi was planning, where he was planning to do it or if the threat was even real.

Early on, Davis called a meeting of his three assistant special agents in charge, the CIA, FBI supervisors and the Denver Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Davis asked them: Is there anyone here who can tell me this is not the real thing?

"I went around the room," Davis recalled. "No one said yes."

Davis closed all 10 of the office's outposts in Colorado and Wyoming and brought those agents to Denver. Agents from other states were flown in to assist the Joint Terrorism Task Force, made up of law enforcement from across the Denver metro area.

All other cases were put on hold, and the command post was opened.

An intelligence analyst at FBI headquarters dubbed it Operation High Rise — "High" for Denver, the Mile High City, and "Rise" because Zazi's e-mails referred to flour, used to bake bread.

Agents soon learned Zazi had rented a suite with a stove at an Aurora motel — the same suite he had rented nine days earlier.

When they tested the vent above the stove, they found traces of chemicals that could be used to make bombs. The chemicals didn't match anything used by the hotel's cleaning staff.

Then on Sept. 8, Zazi rented a car, again setting off alarm bells — why did a guy with access to multiple vehicles through his family's shuttle business need to rent a car?

The following morning, FBI agents followed him as he got on Interstate 70 and headed east, sometimes reaching speeds of 100 mph.

"We had no idea where he was going," Davis recalled. "But we were going to the mattresses."

At the FBI's request, a Colorado State Patrol trooper pulled Zazi's red Chevy Malibu over just east of Limon. When he asked Zazi where he was going, Zazi said he was headed to New York to take care of his coffee cart business.

It was the first time New York had entered the picture.

After the trooper let Zazi go, Zazi continued his cross-country drive, with FBI agents — unbeknown to him — tailing him the entire way.

The problem was that Zazi was rarely stopping, and he was driving fast. The FBI needed to get another tail in place. So back in Denver four agents got on an FBI plane to St. Louis. They rented a car, and using radio communication were able to take over the tail all the way to Ohio. There, agents from another field office took over.

As Zazi arrived in New York, police who had been alerted of the possible threat pulled him over, saying it was a routine stop. Later, police towed his car. On a laptop Zazi had left inside, authorities found bomb-making instructions.

A local imam who had been contacted by New York police soon tipped Zazi that authorities were asking about him. Zazi — who had been staying with a friend — got spooked and flew back to Denver on Sept. 12.

By then the media was camped out in front of Zazi family's apartment.

"For that first week, every day I came in amazed at how fast things were happening," Davis said. "I felt like I was living an episode of (the television show) '24.' "

A few days later Zazi's attorney called the FBI and said Zazi wanted to come in and clear things up.

Authorities were skeptical.

"I would have bet my paycheck he wasn't coming. Why would anybody bring this guy in and let him talk to the FBI?" Olson said.

"To our absolute, complete, surprise, he showed up. Not only that, but he came back for three days."

28 hours of interviews

Special agent Eric Jergenson, a member of the international terrorism squad, was chosen to be the lead interviewer, in part because of a recent success in "flipping" a key person in a different case.

Over the next few days Jergenson, with help from other agents, spent 28 hours interviewing Zazi, who was accompanied by his attorney, Art Folsom.

The interviews started out cordial.

"Zazi clearly didn't know that we knew what we knew," Olson said. "I think he honestly thought he could tell a story and make this whole thing go away."

The agents began by asking Zazi questions they already knew the answers to, and promptly caught Zazi in several lies, Olson said.

Zazi admitted he had traveled to Pakistan and was trained by al-Qaeda, for example. But he denied any plot, and said the bomb-making instructions on his laptop must have been unintentionally downloaded from the Internet.

As the FBI showed more and more of its hand — including showing Zazi one of the nine pages of bomb-making instructions they'd found on his laptop — Zazi's tenor began to change.

Zazi became more concerned about his family, and started asking for a guarantee that they wouldn't be prosecuted for immigration violations if he talked, Olson said.

When the FBI refused, Zazi stopped talking, left the interview and said he wouldn't be coming back.

Throughout those few days, tension grew among the law enforcement working the case as to when they should arrest Zazi.

"It was stressful, and there was a lot of second-guessing," Olson recalled. "If we left him out there one second too long, people are dead. If we arrest him too soon, he may have co-conspirators we don't learn about until it's too late."

But when Zazi announced he wouldn't be cooperating anymore, the decision was made.

On Sept. 19, Zazi was arrested and charged with making false statements.

The FBI, frustrated by the many leaks they believed were coming from the New York Police Department, decided this time to use the media attention to their advantage.

A caravan of police vehicles pulled up in front of the Zazis' apartment with lights and sirens going. In a made-for-TV moment that ran completely counter to the typical low-profile FBI arrest, agents walked Zazi out in front of the media. Though it was cool outside, as they drove away with Zazi in the back seat, agents made sure to leave the windows down so the cameras could capture the scene.

"All those theatrics were done with a purpose in mind," Davis said.

Perhaps it would increase pressure on Zazi; perhaps, if there were any co-conspirators out there, those images would cause them to stop what they had planned.

Less than two weeks after learning the name Najibullah Zazi, agents had him in custody and knew his target had been the New York subway system.

But they still didn't know about his network — or just how big this case was about to get.

A bad chemist

On Sept. 22, Zazi was charged in the Eastern District of New York with more serious terrorism-related charges.

In February 2010, with charges pending in New York against his father as well, Zazi agreed to a plea deal.

By then Zazi was talking again and authorities had gathered other intelligence about the extent of the plot.

Authorities say the plot on the New York subway was organized by three al-Qaeda leaders: Saleh al-Somali, Rashid Rauf and Adnan El Shukrijumah. The men were in charge of the "external operations" program, which is focused on attacks in the United States and other Western countries.

The bomb-making instructions the FBI recovered from Zazi's e-mails showed sophistication. According to the FBI, 30 grams of the substance Zazi wrote about would be enough to blow up a concrete block. Zazi's notes indicate he intended to make up to 10 pounds — enough to blow up subway cars and everyone in them, Olson said.

"These guys were familiar with the New York subway. They knew what trains are most crowded when, and that's what they focused on." Olson added. "It would have been catastrophic."

But he was caught because, starting Aug. 28, 2009, he began trying to make the explosives in the hotel room and failed every time. He frantically e-mailed an al-Qaeda facilitator in Pak istan named Ahmad, and it was those e-mails that the FBI intercepted.

In the end, Zazi's major undoing was that he was either a bad chemist or took poor notes, Olson said.

"Had he gotten it right the first time, he never would have sent the e-mails," he added. "He would have gotten in his car and driven to New York, and we would have been investigating a terrorist attack instead."

A cooperative effort

El Shukrijumah — the man who recruited Zazi — is still at large, and the FBI has a $5 million reward out for him.

Zazi's high school friends from Queens, Zarein Ahmedzay and Adis Medunjanin, who traveled to Pakistan with him to fight alongside the Taliban but were then recruited by al-Qaeda, were also charged with terror-related crimes. Ahmedzay has pleaded guilty, while Medunjanin has said he wants to go to trial.

This past summer Zazi's father, Mohammed Zazi, was convicted of lying to authorities and conspiring to conceal evidence of the plot. He is scheduled to be sentenced in December.

Najibullah Zazi, meanwhile, has a cooperation agreement with prosecutors in New York that states he could face a term of up to life in prison. It also states that he and other unnamed individuals could at some point be placed in the witness security program.

Davis and Olson point to the Zazi case as an example of how things are supposed to work in the post- 9/11 world — with various agencies sharing information and working together.

They also said it's impossible to overplay the impact the investigation had.

"This is exactly what we've been planning for since Sept. 12, 2001 — this very scenario," Olson said. "Had we — all of us — not done our job, a lot of people would have died."

Sara Burnett: 303-954-1661 or sburnett@denverpost.com

Guardian : Dag Hammarskjöld: evidence suggests UN chief's plane was shot down

2011-08-17T15:13:00.001-04:00

Dag Hammarskjöld: evidence suggests UN chief's plane was shot down

Eyewitnesses claim a second aircraft fired at the plane raising questions of British cover-up over the 1961 crash and its causes

Julian Borger and Georgina Smith in Ndola | August 17, 2011

New evidence has emerged in one of the most enduring mysteries of United Nations and African history, suggesting that the plane carrying the UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld was shot down over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) 50 years ago, and the murder was covered up by British colonial authorities.

A British-run commission of inquiry blamed the crash in 1961 on pilot error and a later UN investigation largely rubber-stamped its findings. They ignored or downplayed witness testimony of villagers near the crash site which suggested foul play. The Guardian has talked to surviving witnesses who were never questioned by the official investigations and were too scared to come forward.

The residents on the western outskirts of the town of Ndola described Hammarskjöld's DC6 being shot down by a second, smaller aircraft. They say the crash site was sealed off by Northern Rhodesian security forces the next morning, hours before the wreckage was officially declared found, and they were ordered to leave the area.

The key witnesses were located and interviewed over the past three years by Göran Björkdahl, a Swedish aid worker based in Africa, who made the investigation of the Hammarskjöld mystery a personal quest since discovering his father had a fragment of the crashed DC6.

"My father was in that part of Zambia in the 70s and asking local people about what happened, and a man there, seeing that he was interested, gave him a piece of the plane. That was what got me started," Björkdahl said. When he went to work in Africa himself, he went to the site and began to question the local people systematically on what they had seen.

The investigation led Björkdahl to previously unpublished telegrams – seen by the Guardian – from the days leading up to Hammarskjöld's death on 17 September 1961, which illustrate US and British anger at an abortive UN military operation that the secretary general ordered on behalf of the Congolese government against a rebellion backed by western mining companies and mercenaries in the mineral-rich Katanga region.

Hammarskjöld was flying to Ndola for peace talks with the Katanga leadership at a meeting that the British helped arrange. The fiercely independent Swedish diplomat had, by then, enraged almost all the major powers on the security council with his support for decolonisation, but support from developing countries meant his re-election as secretary general would have been virtually guaranteed at the general assembly vote due the following year.

Björkdahl works for the Swedish international development agency, Sida, but his investigation was carried out in his own time and his report does not represent the official views of his government. However, his report echoes the scepticism about the official verdict voiced by Swedish members of the commissions of inquiry.

Björkdahl concludes that:

• Hammarskjöld's plane was almost certainly shot down by an unidentified second plane.

• The actions of the British and Northern Rhodesian officials at the scene delayed the search for the missing plane.

• The wreckage was found and sealed off by Northern Rhodesian troops and police long before its discovery was officially announced.

• The one survivor of the crash could have been saved but was allowed to die in a poorly equipped local hospital.

• At the time of his death Hammarskjöld suspected British diplomats secretly supported the Katanga rebellion and had obstructed a bid to arrange a truce.

• Days before his death, Hammarskjöld authorised a UN offensive on Katanga – codenamed Operation Morthor – despite reservations of the UN legal adviser, to the fury of the US and Britain.

The most compelling new evidence comes from witnesses who had not previously been interviewed, mostly charcoal-makers from the forest around Ndola, now in their 70s and 80s.

Dickson Mbewe, now 84, was sitting outside his house in Chifubu compound west of Ndola with a group of friends on the night of the crash.

"We saw a plane fly over Chifubu but did not pay any attention to it the first time," he told the Guardian. "When we saw it a second and third time, we thought that this plane was denied landing permission at the airport. Suddenly, we saw another aircraft approach the bigger aircraft at greater speed and release fire which appeared as a bright light.

"The plane on the top turned and went in another direction. We sensed the change in sound of the bigger plane. It went down and disappeared."

At about 5am, Mbewe went to his charcoal kiln close to the crash site, where he found soldiers and policemen already dispersing people. According to the official report the wreckage was only discovered at 3pm that afternoon.

"There was a group of white soldiers carrying a body, two in front and two behind," he said. "I heard people saying there was a man who was found alive and should be taken to hospital. Nobody was allowed to stay there."

Mbewe did not forward with that information earlier because he was never asked to, he said. "The atmosphere was not peaceful, we were chased away. I was afraid to go to the police because they might put me in prison."

Another witness, Custon Chipoya, a 75-year-old charcoal maker, also claims to have seen a second plane in the sky that night. "I saw a plane turning, it had clear lights and I could hear the roaring sound of the engine," he said. "It wasn't very high. In my opinion, it was at the height that planes are when they are going to land.

"It came back a second time, which made us look and the third time, when it was turning towards the airport, I saw a smaller plane approaching behind the bigger one. The lighter aircraft, a smaller jet type of plane, was trailing behind and had a flash light. Then it released some fire on to the bigger plane below and went in the opposite direction.

"The bigger aircraft caught fire and started exploding, crashing towards us. We thought it was following us as it chopped off branches and tree trunks. We thought it was war, so we ran away."

Chipoya said he returned to the site the next morning at about 6am and found the area cordoned off by police and army officers. He didn't mention what he had seen because: "It was impossible to talk to a police officer then. We just understood that we had to go away," he said.

Safeli Mulenga, 83, also in Chifubu on the night of the crash, did not see a second plane but witnessed an explosion.

"I saw the plane circle twice," he said. "The third time fire came from somewhere above the plane, it glowed so bright. It couldn't have been the plane exploding because the fire was coming on to it," he said.

There was no announcement for people to come forward with information following the crash, and the federal government did not want people to talk about it, he said. "There were some who witnessed the crash and they were taken away and imprisoned."

John Ngongo, now 75, out in the bush with a friend to learn how to make charcoal on the night of the crash, did not see another plane but he definitely heard one, he said.

"Suddenly, we saw a plane with fire on one side coming towards us. It was on fire before it hit the trees. The plane was not alone. I heard another plane at high speed disappearing into the distance but I didn't see it," he said.

The only survivor among the 15 people on board the DC6 was Harold Julian, an American sergeant on Hammarskjöld's security detail. The official report said he died of his injuries, but Mark Lowenthal, a doctor who helped treat Julian in Ndola, told Björkdahl he could have been saved.

"I look upon the episode as having been one of my most egregious professional failures in what has become a long career," Lowenthal wrote in an email. "I must first ask why did the US authorities not at once set out to help/rescue one of their own? Why did I not think of this at the time? Why did I not try to contact US authorities to say, 'Send urgently an aircraft to evacuate a US citizen on secondment to UN who is dying of kidney failure?'"

Julian was left in Ndola for five days. Before he died, he told police he had seen sparks in the sky and an explosion before the crash.

Björkdahl also raises questions about why the DC6 was made to circle outside Ndola. The official report claims there was no tape recorder in the air traffic control tower, despite the fact that its equipment was new. The air traffic control report of the crash was not filed until 33 hours afterwards.

According to records of the events of the night, the British high commissioner to the Rhodesian and Nyasaland Federation, Cuthbert Alport, who was at the airport that evening, "suddenly said that he had heard that Hammarskjöld had changed his mind and intended to fly somewhere else. The airport manager therefore didn't send out any emergency alert and everyone simply went to bed."

The witness accounts of another plane are consistent with other insider accounts of Hammarskjold's death. Two of his top aides, Conor Cruise O'Brien and George Ivan Smith, both became convinced that the secretary general had been shot down by mercenaries working for European industrialists in Katanga. They also believed that the British helped cover up the shooting. In 1992, the two published a letter in the Guardian spelling out their theory. Suspicion of British intentions is a recurring theme of the correspondence Björkdahl has examined from the days before Hammarskjöld's death.

Formally, the UK backed the UN mission, but, privately, the secretary general and his aides believed British officials were obstructing peace moves, possibly as a result of mining interests and sympathies with the white colonists on the Katanga side.

On the morning of 13 September the separatist leader Moise Tshombe signalled that he was ready for a truce, but changed his mind after a one-hour meeting with the UK consul in Katanga, Denzil Dunnett.

There is no doubt that at the time of his death Hammarskjöld‚ who had already alienated the Soviets, French and Belgians, had also angered the Americans and the British with his decision to launch Operation Morthor against the rebel leaders and mercenaries in Katanga.

The US secretary of state, Dean Rusk, told one of the secretary general's aides that President Kennedy was "extremely upset" and was threatening to withdraw support from the UN. The UK , Rusk said, was "equally upset".

At the end of his investigation Björkdahl is still not sure who killed Hammarskjöld, but he is fairly certain why he was killed: "It's clear there were a lot of circumstances pointing to possible involvement by western powers. The motive was there – the threat to the west's interests in Congo's huge mineral deposits. And this was the time of black African liberation, and you had whites who were desperate to cling on.

"Dag Hammarskjöld was trying to stick to the UN charter and the rules of international law. I have the impression from his telegrams and his private letters that he was disgusted by the behaviour of the big powers."

Historians at the Foreign Office said they could not comment. British officials believe that, at this late date, no amount of research would conclusively prove or disprove what they see as conspiracy theories that have always surrounded Hammarskjöld's death.

PRNewsWire : National Geographic Channel Presents Never-Before-Heard Revelations from U.S. Authorities on Plot to Blow Up Almost 10 Passenger Jets

2011-08-16T14:38:00.000-04:00

National Geographic Channel Presents Never-Before-Heard Revelations from U.S. Authorities on Plot to Blow Up Almost 10 Passenger Jets

The Liquid Bomb Plot Presents Exclusive Interviews With CIA and Homeland Security Agents on the Chilling and Tense Global Surveillance Operation That Uncovered a Plot to Kill More Than 2,000 People

August 16, 2011

The Liquid Bomb Plot Premieres This Sunday, August 21, 2011, at 9 P.M. EDT/PDT on National Geographic Channel

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In the summer of 2006, as many as 18 conspirators planned to simultaneously blow up almost 10 airplanes by bringing hydrogen peroxide-injected soda-bottles-turned-bombs onto flights bound from London to the U.S. and Canada. Now, National Geographic Channel (NGC) — with unprecedented access to undercover agents and top officials from the CIA, Homeland Security and British Counter-Terror Command — goes inside the true story behind the largest and most sophisticated terrorism plot since September 11, 2001, which changed airline security measures around the world.

The Liquid Bomb Plot details how a threat that began as a British counterterrorist investigation evolved into a global emergency. In the U.S., President Bush's administration, the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security worked feverishly to protect America from an attack on the scale of 9/11.

With remarkable access to the highest-level officials involved in foiling the terrorists — some of whom have given NGC their only interview on the plot — the complete details behind the operation are revealed. Interviews include, from the U.S., General Michael Hayden, former director, CIA; Michael Chertoff, former secretary, Department of Homeland Security; Robert Grenier, former Islamabad station chief, CIA; Kip Hawley, former director, Transportation Security Administration; and Charlie Allen, chief intelligence officer, Department of Homeland Security. Top U.K. interviews include Lord John Reid, former home secretary and former defense secretary, Britain; Andy Hayman, former assistant commissioner for specialist operations, Metropolitan Police; and Peter Clarke, OBE, former national co-coordinator of terrorist investigations, Metropolitan Police.

Now, for the first time, U.S. officials recount how they essentially forced the hand of the British to arrest the suspected terrorists ahead of schedule by making a secret trip to Pakistan. General Michael Hayden was working closely with the British government on Operation Overt, the largest surveillance operation in U.K history, with more than 200 agents involved in surveillance alone, not to mention the senior officials on both sides of the pond monitoring the situation.

General Hayden discusses on camera for the only time how he visited Pakistan and met with the head of the Pakistan Intelligence Agency without alerting the British, who had requested more time to gather evidence. During Hayden's trip, Rashid Rauf, the key Al Qaeda operative in the plot, was arrested by the Pakistani authorities, thus compelling the British to move into the "arrest phase" ahead of plan before those involved found out they might be compromised.

"The British had always suspected the Americans were behind Rauf's arrest, but this is the first and only time a senior U.S. figure has discussed the arrest publicly," explains Executive Producer Louise Norman, who worked for more than a year to gain access to the true details behind the terror plot from both the U.S. and British governments. "The Liquid Bomb Plot is by far the most comprehensive, detailed report on how this incredible terror plot was foiled. I thought I knew the full story, but what happened behind the scenes has never been fully reported until now."

The resulting arrests led to 11 terrorism-related convictions and a mountain of evidence, including 26,000 exhibits from 102 property searches, 80 seized computers and related devices, and 15,000 CDs, 500 disks and 14,000 gigs of data.

The arrests also made news around the world and changed air travel in the most substantial way since 9/11—including passengers not being allowed to go through airport security with more than 3.4 ounces of liquid.

For more information, visit www.natgeotv.com.

SOURCE National Geographic Channel

National Geographic : Pakistan Undercover * Facts

2011-08-16T13:54:00.000-04:00

Pakistan Undercover * Facts

Next Prime Time Airing Mon Aug 22

Founded in 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency remains one of America's strongest defenses against terror and foreign threats. The attacks of September 11 focused the CIA on finding the persons responsible and preventing other attacks on the nation. Learn more about the origins of the CIA and how its operations today have helped protect us:

* The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the precursor to the CIA, formed during World War II.

* The colloquial term “agent” for members of the CIA conducting clandestine operations is a misnomer; the actual term is CIA Officer. Agents are foreign nationals who are recruited by an officer and are traitors to their own countries.

* The CIA headquarters are located in an area of Virginia that was once called Langley. Although this area was renamed McLean in 1910, the neighborhood surrounding the CIA is still referred to as Langley. Initial construction on the headquarters began in 1959 and was completed in 1961.

* The Security Service, frequently referred to as MI5 (Military Intelligence section 5), is the UK's intelligence agency. Established in 1909, it underwent four name changes before becoming the Security Service in 1931.

* Human Intelligence or “humint” is a critical component of espionage, in which information is gathered and provided by human sources.

* The function of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, has been likened to that of the CIA. It was formed in the early days of Pakistan's independence in 1948. There is evidence that ISI operatives have ties with militant networks working against Western interests. Some ISI members were allegedly involved in the planning of the 2008 Indian Embassy bombing in Kabul, a claim that Pakistan denies.

* The August 6, 2001, President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US,” provides a substantive warning of threats posed by Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda a month before the attacks on 9/11. A redacted copy of the brief was made public on April 10, 2004. With the help of computer software programs, cryptographers at a conference in Switzerland suggested it was highly probable that the word ‘Egyptian’ was redacted in the following sentence: “An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an [redacted] service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike.”

* Rashid Rauf was reportedly killed in a UAV strike in 2008. However, British Intelligence sources question whether Rauf is really dead. Some sources insist that he was involved in the Easter Manchester bomb plot of April 2009.

* Waterboarding is not a new interrogation technique. In fact, the method was used as early as the Spanish Inquisition.

* Abu Zubaydah still remains in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. To date, no formal charges have been brought against him.

* The CIA has a history of interesting but failed projects. One such endeavor involved psychics who attempted “remote viewing” of covert foreign military facilities. Another operation, “Acoustic Kitty,” hoped to develop a mobile listening technique by implanting trained cats with microphones. The first such cat was released and promptly run over by a taxicab.

* The technique known as “dead drop” allows two parties to transfer goods or information without meeting in person. Former CIA officer Aldrich Ames used the method to interact with the Russian foreign intelligence agency. He made specific chalk marks on a mailbox on 37th and R St. NW. in Washington D.C., to arrange a meeting.

* A false flag operation is an intentional effort to mislead either the public or a detainee. In one account of Zubaydah's interrogation, CIA officers allegedly tricked him into thinking he had been turned over to the Saudi Arabian government.

* Some of the CIA gadgetry that exists in the movies has a real life counterpart. In 2000, the CIA built a swimming robot catfish named "Charlie." Other gadgets of interest include a remote-controlled dragonfly and pigeons fitted with cameras.

* The “liquid bomb plot” that was thwarted in August 2006 exposed a lack of readiness and detection capability for that type of explosive and ushered in a new set of security restrictions for traveling with liquids.

WaPo : Elaborate ruse behind vast Kabul Bank fraud

2011-06-30T19:52:00.000-04:00

Elaborate ruse behind vast Kabul Bank fraud

By Joshua Partlow | June 30, 2011

KABUL — The top two officials of Kabul Bank used fake names, forged documents, fictitious companies and secret records as part of an elaborate ruse to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to shareholders and top Afghan officials, according to newly obtained documents and interviews.

The scheme overseen by Sherkhan Farnood, the bank’s former chairman, and Khaililullah Frouzi, the chief executive, helped to cover up a vast disbursal of funds to Afghanistan’s ruling elite, the documents and interviews with bank insiders as well as U.S. and Afghan officials show. Among the major recipients was Mahmoud Karzai, the president’s brother, who allegedly received $22 million in loans; some parliament members, warlords and cabinet ministers, including Mohammed Fahim, Afghanistan’s first vice president, are alleged to have received smaller sums.

Farnood and Frouzi were detained Wednesday night in the first high-level arrests since the scandal began. Both deny responsibility, and neither has been charged with a crime, but Afghanistan’s attorney general, Mohammed Ishaq Aloko, said in a brief interview that the evidence against them is “quite clear.’’

The documents, from the Afghan government and from the bank, provide the most detailed account yet of how the fraud was carried out in the years before it was discovered in 2010, forcing the Afghan government to take over the bank, split it in two, dissolve the shareholders’ assets and spend more than $800 million to bail it out.

The crisis at Kabul Bank has shaken confidence in Afghanistan’s financial system and caused the lapse of the International Monetary Fund’s line of credit, which has stymied tens of millions of dollars of foreign aid to the country. Now the job of recovering as much as possible of the $912 million in loans amounts to perhaps the most serious task for President Hamid Karzai’s government outside of fighting the Taliban.

Without a successful resolution of Kabul Bank’s problems, said one senior U.S. official, Afghanistan could face “the collapse of the banking sector.”

Senior prosecutors in Afghanistan announced the arrests of Farnood and Frouzi several days after a special commission, established by President Karzai last year to investigate charges of improper loans and financial mismanagement at the bank, completed its work and forwarded its findings privately to the government. The chairman of Afghanistan’s Central Bank, Abdul Qadir Fitrat, fled to Virginia this week and declared that his life was in danger because he had revealed the names of prominent loan recipients.

Frouzi could not be reached for comment for this article. But in an interview in May in Kabul Bank headquarters, Farnood called himself a “scapegoat” for a broader conspiracy of government and business leaders in which, he said, Frouzi had played a big part. Farnood, a world-class poker player, acknowledged that the bank had gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent Afghanistan’s Central Bank from discovering the extent of the unsecured insider lending.

To ensure that Central Bank regulators remained compliant and incurious, Farnood and another former executive said, Frouzi had paid monthly bribes to central bank officials.

But Farnood, who asserts that the illegal loans and bribes took place without his knowledge when he was out of Afghanistan, said others also bore significant responsibility. “People need to know who were the real criminals here,” he said. “At the end of the day, people need to know where the money has gone.”

Following the money

After the crisis broke out last August, Kabul Bank’s employees combed through bank records in an effort to document who received Kabul Bank’s money.

After reviewing these records, the Afghan government alleged that Farnood illegally received loans totaling $497.1 million in the name of 163 companies, while Frouzi took $79.6 million associated with 37 companies, according to government documents obtained by The Washington Post. (Farnood said that he did not end up with the vast majority of the money but that bank loans in his name were given to other people.)

To facilitate these transactions, Kabul Bank relied on Shaheen Exchange, a Dubai-based money transfer business that Farnood owned before starting Kabul Bank and that had representatives inside the bank’s headquarters. To skirt regulations about loans to insiders such as shareholders that exceeded legal limits, the bank issued loans in various names and transferred money to Shaheen Exchange, which would then reroute the money back to Afghanistan and keep records of the actual recipients, according to several former bank executives and shareholders.

Among the recipients, the documents show, was Mahmoud Karzai. The documents show that the $22.2 million he borrowed was recorded as 10 separate loans under names such as Abdul Rahim, Dawood and Sultan Mohammad Hafizullah LTD.

Mahmoud Karzai has acknowledged receiving loans, but said that he was unaware of the misleading practices and that he has now paid back all he owes, about one-third of the $22 million. He said he is not responsible for about $14 million because the sum includes a villa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, owned by Farnood and shares of Kabul Bank that the government has stripped from him.

“They were probably thinking I was not supposed to get a loan so they put in these different names. They did this illegal stuff for all the loans,” Mahmoud Karzai said in an interview.

These lending practices raised red flags within the bank at least two years before the Central Bank takeover last August. Employees in the credit department regularly encountered loan files with missing documents, including absent business licenses and audited financial reports and sent warnings to the leadership about the problems.

Managers ignored the procedures for determining borrowers’ risks. “Whenever I sent any file with a high-risk rating,” one former bank employee recalled, “they’d send it back and say I had to change it to medium or low. So I did that.”

Internal warnings

To create a veneer of legitimacy to fictional loans, financial documents were fabricated for front companies, according to two former bank employees.

In February 2010, six months before the Central Bank would take action, an internal memo addressed to Farnood called the loan portfolio “less than satisfactory.” The memo described the loans as sanctioned “without any proper scrutiny” and said that they were serving “vested, influential, and [concocted] interested parties which needs to be scrutinized at the highest level possible.”

The depth of the bank’s problems, first reported in The Post in February 2010, spooked the bank’s leadership and shareholders. The day after the article, Frouzi’s own Kabul Bank account reached its apex, $19 million. By July 4, it had been largely emptied, never again exceeding $3,000.

Despite the internal turmoil, the loans kept flowing. On July 20, 2010, an employee in the credit department wrote to Farnood about his concerns over being pressured to issue 71 loans that had no documentation. Farnood was warned that such loans were illegal and put “the bank at great risk and in particular me.”

The employee asked Farnood to instruct management to block the loans. “Please treat this mail in good spirit and take necessary action as these practices will lead to collapse of Kabul Bank, Officials and the Banking Industry,” he wrote.

Farnood did not write back. In his defense, Farnood said he was rarely in Kabul and left all authority for day-to-day operations to Frouzi.

Several people involved with the bank disagreed, saying the two men made all key decisions together. The shareholders did not hold meetings. One former executive said: “Sherkhan’s attitude was very simple, it’s like the mafia. ‘I’m the boss. I call you and tell you and you execute.’ You become an integral part of his activities.”

“He is the main perpetrator,” Mahmoud Karzai said of Farnood. “He is the architect of the entire episode.”

The daunting challenge

Among other prominent Afghan officials listed in bank documents as having received loans is Fahim, who is the first vice president and is identified as “Marshal Fahim,” and is said to have received $373,928. Others listed include Zalmai Rasoul, the foreign minister, $105,190; and Younis Qanooni, the former parliament speaker, $1.27 million.

Farnood did not dispute the figures but said they painted an incomplete picture, as bribes and other payments to officials were often recorded as expenses and the recipients not identified in the books by name.

The officials all denied they benefited illegally from Kabul Bank; those who acknowledged receiving loans said they paid them back. A person close to Fahim said that the Kabul Bank money was used to finance his vice presidential campaign in 2009 but that he has not received any money since. An aide to Fahim who uses only a first name, Gulbuddin, said “by no means has he borrowed any money from Kabul Bank or any other bank.’’

Rasoul said through a spokesman that he borrowed money from the bank but paid it back on time. He did not disclose the amount. An aide denied that Qanooni took the $1.27 million from Kabul Bank and said Qanooni would not be available for comment. Qanooni has said in the past that he did not receive gifts but received some donations from Kaubl Bank executives for his parliamentary campaign.

The challenge of fixing Kabul Bank has posed a daunting task for the Afghan government. It has responded, under international pressure, by stripping the shareholders of their ownership, putting the bank into receivership and breaking it into two parts: the “New Kabul Bank” for depositors and functioning loans, and another part functioning as a collection agency for the bad loans.

Under a warrant from the attorney general’s office, Interpol last month put Shokrullah Shokran, a cousin of Farnood’s who was the former deputy chief executive and has left Afghanistan, on a wanted list. In an attempt to follow the money amid competing versions by bank executives, an outside firm has also begun a forensic audit of the bank.

Some borrowers have refused repayment, and the government has collected less than $100 million. The arrests of Farnood and Frouzi on Wednesday were the most significant sign yet that the government was serious about prosecution.

“It’s a ridiculous situation,” said Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai, the deputy justice minister who is on a committee to look into Kabul Bank’s problems. “You can’t trust anybody.”

Correspondent Pamela Constable and special correspondents Javed Hamdard and Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report.

NYT : 3 Men Draw 25-Year Terms In Synagogue Bomb Plot

2011-06-29T23:26:00.000-04:00

3 Men Draw 25-Year Terms In Synagogue Bomb Plot

By BENJAMIN WEISER | June 29, 2011

Three of the four men convicted in a plot to bomb synagogues in Riverdale in the Bronx were sentenced to 25 years in prison on Wednesday by a judge in Manhattan, who rejected the government’s request for life sentences.

In doing so, the judge, Colleen McMahon of United States District Court, imposed the minimum sentence. She also reiterated concerns that the government’s investigation had raised troubling questions about its tactics and its use of a cooperating witness who posed as a terrorist.

But the judge, who had refused to dismiss charges on grounds of government misconduct, said the men were “prepared to do real violence,” even though the plot had been a government-created sting operation that resulted in no injuries or deaths.

“What you attempted to do was beyond despicable,” she said. There was no doubt in her mind, she added, that whatever religious or political intent they had had was minor compared with their desire for money.

“You were not religious or political martyrs,” she said. “You were thugs for hire, pure and simple.”

The three defendants who were sentenced were James Cromitie, 45; Onta Williams, 35; and David Williams IV, 30, all of Newburgh, N.Y.

The sentencing of a fourth defendant, Laguerre Payen, has been postponed pending the result of a psychiatric review.

All four men were convicted in October 2010 in a case that relied on a government informer who, posing as a Pakistani terrorist, spent months recording discussions with the defendants about placing bombs outside synagogues in the Riverdale neighborhood, and firing Stinger missiles at military transport planes at Stewart International Airport near Newburgh.

The charges related to the missiles carried the 25-year mandatory minimum prison term. Other counts, including conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States, carried maximum life sentences.

Mr. Cromitie first met the informer, Shahed Hussain, in June 2008 outside a mosque in Newburgh; at some point, Mr. Cromitie made anti-Semitic remarks, and indicated he wanted to do “something” to America, prosecutors have said. Mr. Cromitie, they said, later recruited the other defendants to assist in the plot.

The men were arrested on May 20, 2009, after Mr. Cromitie, with the others acting as lookouts, placed what they thought were bombs — they were fakes — outside two Riverdale synagogues.

In asking that Judge McMahon impose life sentences, a federal prosecutor, David Raskin, cited evidence that the defendants believed ball bearings would be used in the bombs to make them more lethal.

“These defendants held those ball bearings in their hands and marveled at them,” Mr. Raskin said in court, calling their crimes “as serious a set of offenses as is imaginable.”

Judge McMahon, in her May ruling, found that Mr. Cromitie ultimately “became an enthusiastic jihadist” who, while not wanting to blow himself up, “showed no compunction” about placing bombs at the synagogues.

Mr. Cromitie apologized to the judge on Wednesday for “letting myself be caught up in a sting like this one.”

“I’ve never been a terrorist and I never will be a terrorist,” he said.

The two other men also apologized. “I’m sorry I ruined my life,” Onta Williams said.

Lawyers for all three men, who had claimed entrapment, said they would file appeals. Mr. Cromitie’s lawyers had portrayed him as an impoverished, disaffected, unsophisticated man who had a long criminal record and “a big mouth.” They contended he was incapable of carrying out such a crime, and had been motivated by the informer’s promises of financial reward.

Judge McMahon called Mr. Cromitie “utterly inept” before she sentenced him.

“Only the government could have made a ‘terrorist’ out of Mr. Cromitie, whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in its scope,” she said. At one point, she also referred to Mr. Cromitie’s “fantasy terror operation.”

The judge refused defense requests that she ask the Federal Bureau of Prisons not to imprison the men in the same kind of extremely restrictive setting that is typically used for terrorists, as in the so-called Supermax prison in Florence, Colo.

Judge McMahon said that the nature of the men’s crimes and the length of their sentences “virtually guarantee” that they would be imprisoned under the harshest possible conditions.

“I imagine that you will be far from here, and quite isolated,” she said. “I doubt that you will receive any training or rehabilitative treatment of any sort. Your crimes were terrible. Your punishment will indeed be severe.”

Moreover, she added, “25 years in the sort of conditions I anticipate you are facing is easily the equivalent of life in other conditions.”

APN : For Activists, Architects, 9/11 Questions Linger Ten Years Later

2011-04-30T21:04:00.002-04:00

For Activists, Architects, 9/11 Questions Linger Ten Years Later

By GLORIA TATUM | April 30, 2011

With additional reporting by Matthew Cardinale, News Editor.

(APN) ATLANTA -- It will be ten years since September 11, 2001, in just a few months. And yet some of the most basic and fundamental questions about what happened that day--based upon physics and the forensic science of structural engineering--in the collapse of three towers at the World Trade Center in New York, still linger.

Groups such as Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (A&E), founded by Richard Gage; and We Are Change Atlanta want to re-examine the evidence regarding the collapse of all three buildings.

First, the group is especially interested in new evidence of un-ignited fragments of nano-engineered thermitic pyrotechnics found in debris from the Twin Towers. The presence of these fragments would be consistent with explosives having been used in a controlled demolition.

Second, the group is also troubled that, in their view, official reports by the US government appear to defy the fundamental laws of physics.

[Before delving into these two sets of issues, an editorial note is in order. The purpose of this article is not to hypothesize what the real story behind the Towers' collapse is, but to address what we find to be reasonable and compelling questions about the government's official account.]

These issues will be addressed at an upcoming event in Atlanta. Gage; former US Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA); Luke Rudkowski, founder of We Are Change; and April Gallop, Pentagon survior will speak at First Iconium Baptist Church in East Atlanta on May 21, 2011, from 4-9pm.

DISCOVERY OF NANO-THERMITE

First, the discovery of thermite and nano-thermitic composites in the dust and debris following the collapse of the three buildings was published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal in 2009, as proof that explosives were used in the destruction of the Twin Towers.

Jeremy Lynes, We Are Change Atlanta, explained nano-thermite to Atlanta Progressive News, "Thermite has been around over a century and refers to aluminum's highly energetic reaction to iron when in a certain form. When ignited, thermite releases large amounts of energy and will destroy iron's integrity fast. Nano refers to the modern technology of constructing materials much smaller, on the supra-molecular scale, than previously possible, creating chemical reactions never-before imaginable. Nano-thermite is an advanced type of thermite which is more explosive and gives a faster complete burn."

The 2009 article was titled "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe," and was written by Niels Harrit, Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, Denmark; Jeffrey Farrer, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Brigham Young University; Steven Jones; Kevin Ryan; Frank Legge; Daniel Farnsworth; Gregg Roberts; James Gourley; and Bradley Larsen.

"The destruction of three skyscrapers (WTC 1, 2 and 7) on September 11, 2001 was an immensely tragic catastrophe that not only impacted thousands of people and families directly, due to injury and loss of life, but also provided the motivation for numerous expensive and radical changes in domestic and foreign policy. For these and other reasons, knowing what really happened that fateful day is of grave importance," the authors wrote.

The collapse of the towers generated a surprisingly large amount of fine, toxic dust. Four different Manhattan residents took samples of this dust and later responded to a call for such samples.

The authors conduct a variety of highly technical tests upon the small red and gray chips they found in the dust, to conclude as follows: "Based on these observations, we conclude that the red layer of the red/gray chips we have discovered in the WTC dust is active, unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology, and is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material."

The publication of this article was highly controversial, leading to the resignation of editor-in-chief, Marie-Paule Pileni, who had no specific scientific rebuttal to the article. And for many activists, architects, and engineers who had already believed that explosives were involved in the collapse of the three towers, it confirmed their suspicions.

ARCHITECTS, ENGINEERS SEE CONTROLLED DEMOLITION

The US government's official explanation of how terrorists came to hijack two planes and fly them into two buildings is provided in the 9/11 Commission Report. But its explanation of how those two plane collisions led to the buildings later collapsing into their own footprint is provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The NIST official report on 9/11 states that a "total progressive collapse or disproportionate collapse" occurred in WTC 1, 2, and 7, as in each case the entire building above the damaged area moved downward as a single unit.

Three buildings collapsed on 9/11, although only two were hit by a plane.

A growing chorus of activists, scholars, architects, and engineers--including several groups and activists in Atlanta--have been questioning the official account by NIST of how the three towers fell.

In WTC 1, NIST states fires weakened the core columns and caused the floors on the south side to sag. Other neighboring columns became overloaded and columns on the south wall buckled causing the top section of the building to tilt and begin its descent.

In WTC 2, NIST states fires caused the floors on the east side of the building to buckle and sag, which pulled neighboring columns and caused them to buckle causing the top section to tilt and begin its descent.

In WTC 7, NIST states fire-induced thermal expansion of the floor system surrounding column 79 led to the collapse of floor 13 which triggered a cascade of floor failures.

Last September, Derek Johnson, Structural Steel Inspector & Mechanical Engineer, visited Atlanta to make a multi-media presentation at the historic Plaza Theater on Ponce de Leon Avenue in Midtown, which called into question the official government report on the collapse of WTC 1, 2, and 7. 250 people attended the event hosted by We Are Change Atlanta.

Johnson's presentation blasted holes in NIST's report of a fire-induced total progressive collapse.

"NIST's conclusion of a fire-induced collapse of building 7 is based on computer simulation and not on physical evidence that can be tested and confirmed by others. NIST manipulated the computer inputs by using unrealistic values for the weight, strength, and flexibility of steel and concrete in their model," Johnson said.

"The model NIST used was more representative of Lincoln Logs that fall like a house of cards than the very strong welted and bolted large steel beams used throughout WTC 7," Johnson explained.

"The three buildings that were destroyed on 9/11 were designed and built using fire resistance plans that were thorough and continually updated, and that ensured the buildings could not fail from fires," Johnson said.

WTC 7 was not hit by a plane and received only minor damage from the falls of WTC 1 and 2. WTC 7 did exhibit all the characteristics of classic controlled demolition with explosives, such as rapid onset of collapse, sounds of explosions, free-fall acceleration, and collapsing completely in its own footprint with expanding pyroclastic dust clouds.

WTC 7 housed Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) files relating to numerous Wall Street investigations including Enron, Citigroup, and WorldCom. All files and evidence from government agencies in WTC7 such as the CIA, Secret Service, DOD, and INS were destroyed.

Other high-rise building with much larger, hotter, and longer-lasting fires have never collapsed. WTC 4, which was next to WTC 2, was destroyed by tons of falling and buring debris with large permanent deformations and sagging of many beams, but it did not collapse.

WTC 5 was also destroyed by extensive fire-related damage, but it did not collapse.

Johnson reported "NIST would not release over three thousand documents on their investigation of the collapse of WTC 7 to Ron Brookman, a structural engineer... NIST's reason for refusing to release the documents was that it might jeopardize public safety."

"This is the first time in history that a steel and concrete framed building has collapsed due to office fires where one damaged column caused a total progressive collapse of the entire building at near free fall speed," Mike Smith, an Atlanta-based electrical engineer and member of A&E, said.

"If the official story of the collapse of the towers is true," Mr. Lynes said, "then the top floors, above the plane's impact, acted like a pile driver of incredible pressure, forcing its way to the ground through the other ninety floors at free fall speed--impossible, according to laws of conservation of energy. Therefore, after this demolishing, the top twenty or thirty stories would be sitting atop the rubble intact. Since they were not, it shows they were not the cause of the collapse."

The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 am and the North Tower collapsed at 10:28 am, while building 7 collapsed at 5:21 pm. The WTC7 collapsed in under seven seconds, while The Twin Towers collapsed somewhere between 8.5 and fifteen seconds.

"The accelerated speeds of collapses evident in videos of all three buildings prove that these are not progressive collapses as the government contends. In a progressive collapse a failed structure will encounter resistance--thousands of tons of steel and concrete--and exhibit jolts which will slow down, not accelerate, its decent and will not disintegrate symmetrically into its own footprint. The government's miraculous steel and concrete disintegration theory is fraudulent science. Only in a controlled implosion, using explosives to remove the internal support system, will you get the free-fall speed and vertical decent leaving only a pile of dust and rubble," Smith said.

"The rate of free fall or the gravitational acceleration of Earth is 9.8 meters per second per second, or 9.8/s^2 without air friction coefficients or drag. It is impossible for a gravitational collapse to proceed so destructively through a path of such great resistance in anywhere near free-fall time of 8.5 to 15 seconds," Smith explained.

In addition to the speed and symmetry of the collapse of WTC 7 and the Twin Towers, many eye witnesses, firefighters, and police officers reported hearing violent explosions from all three building before they fell.

"Amazing, incredible... For the third time today, it's reminiscent of those pictures we've all seen too much on television before where a building was deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite to knock it down," Dan Rather of CBS News said, for example, according to a clip posted widely on Youtube.

LOCAL 9/11 TRUTH ACTIVISM

The Pink Elephant Collective, a group of local artists, painted a 9/11 Pink Elephant Mural on the wall at Euclid and Colquitt Avenues in Atlanta's Little Five Points during the summer of 2010. The mural shows several pink elephants drudging through oil, with the words "9-11 Truth" and "Nano-thermite?"

Camron Wiltshire, a member of the Pink Elephant Collective, said, "We painted the mural as a means to connect directly with people on the street and to have an authentic discussion of the facts. It is a visual invocation to awaken the heroic within us all and look at the evidence being brought forward by concerned citizens all over the world."

"The US is now immersed in two illegal wars of occupation and 9/11 is given as the righteous precedence, for our invasion, destruction, and occupation of these sovereign countries. Over one million innocent Iraqi men, women, and children have been murdered by our tax funded military occupation, not to mention the thousands of US soldiers and public servants. If we can be brave and look for ourselves at the evidence, we can begin fixing our country," Wiltshire said.

"The mainstream media is not willing to look at the evidence and spends much of its efforts demonizing or smearing anyone who is speaking out," Wiltshire said.

A CODE OF SILENCE

Since 9/11, there has been a code of silence surrounding any questions towards the accuracy of the US government's official account. This code of silence has been antithetical to the very values of freedom of speech, democracy, and open inquiry which are fundamental to our country.

Indeed, when former US Rep. McKinney asked in a 2002 radio interview what the President knew and when he know it, she was viciously attacked, and this led to her electoral defeat by former US Rep. Denise Majette (D-GA) in 2002.

A February 2010 article in the American Behavioral Scientist, “Beyond Conspiracy Theory: Patterns of High Crime in American Government,” by Lance deHaven-Smith, Professor of Public Administration at Florida State University, examines the characteristics of what he refers to as State Crimes Against Democracy (SCAD). SCAD is a term intended to replace the term conspiracy theory, because government agencies frequently engage in illegal conspiracies as a proven fact.

DeHaven-Smith includes 9/11 as a suspected SCAD in a list of actual and suspected SCADs.

SCADs involve high-level government officials, often in combination with private interests, that engage in covert activities for political advantages and power, according to deHaven-Smith. Proven SCADs since World War II include McCarthyism, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in effort to discredit Ellsberg, the Watergate break-in, Iran-Contra, Florida’s 2000 Election (felon disenfranchisement program), and fixed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to justify the US invasion of Iraq.

“Research shows that people are far less willing to examine information that disputes, rather than confirms, their beliefs... pre-existing beliefs can interfere with SCADs inquiry, especially in regards to September 11, 2001," Psychologist Laurie Manwell, University of Guelph, wrote, also in an article in the same February 2010 issue of ABS.

Professor Steven Hoffman, visiting scholar at the University of Buffalo, expanded upon this in his ABS article, “There Must Be a Reason: Osama, Saddam and Inferred Justification.”

“Our data shows substantial support for a cognitive theory known as ‘motivated reasoning,’ which suggests that rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe. In fact, for the most part people completely ignore contrary information," Hoffman wrote.

The present APN article is intended to increase citizens' awareness of the lingering questions, architectural analyses, and new physical evidence as it relates to 9/11. It is hoped that this article may advance public discourse and lead to an open conversation, including in the comments section of this article.

Views and News from Norway : Terror cell probe hits crucial phase

2011-02-07T09:35:00.000-05:00

Terror cell probe hits crucial phase

February 7, 2011

An international probe of a terrorism case connecting Norway with the UK and the US is coming to a head, with authorities keen to gain access to US evidence related to an alleged Norwegian terror cell.

Newspaper Aftenposten reports that the Norwegian police intelligence service (Politiets sikkerhetstjeneste, PST) has requested information from the US’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that they believe links Mikael Davud, a Norwegian accused of heading a terrorist group in the country, to Abid Naseer, a Briton facing extradition to the US who allegedly coordinated attacks on targets in Britain, the US and Norway during 2009. Davud, Naseer and Najibullah Zazi, who has admitted involvement in the foiled attempt to bomb the New York metro system, are all thought to have maintained contact with the same Al-Qaida operatives in Pakistan.

Contact in code

E-mails found on computers owned by the suspects suggest they maintained contact with Al-Qaida members, and apparently used a code in which discussion of weddings, marriage and the weather disguised plans for acts of terrorism. The Americans believe British Al-Qaida commander Rashid Rauf and another senior member, Saleh al-Somali – both of whom were later killed in drone attacks in Pakistan – led the plans of Davud, Naseer and Zazi. The three men are also believed to have been trained in Pakistan.

Norwegian authorities, though, face difficulties in using evidence from foreign security services in court. “There are almost sacred rules for the use of such information,” PST’s Janne Kristiansen told newspaper Aftenposten over the weekend. “It cannot be used in court without permission. If we still use it without permission from the cooperating service, it will hurt further collaboration.”

An Oslo court gave PST eight more weeks in January to question Davud, who reportedly has not been cooperative. The ruling emphasized the testimony of another of the accused, Shawan Bujak, which suggests that the Norwegian terror cell’s target was the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which published controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Davud himself has only mentioned the Chinese embassy in Oslo as a possible target, as revenge for Chinese oppression suffered by his family, but this has been rejected by investigators, who have confirmed that the accused did not know the location of the Chinese embassy in Oslo when questioned.

‘No firm plans’

Aftenposten reports that Davud’s own lawyer, Arild Humlen, also confirms this, suggesting that his client had no firm plans for an attack. He believes this weakens the prosecution’s case because “there isn’t any new evidence that strengthens the accusation that the three defendants had entered into any association” with each other. Indeed, documents revealed by Wikileaks, which detail discussions between the US embassy and Norwegian authorities, suggest that PST had, in January, no leads that illuminate the goal of any eventual attack.

In order to convict Davud, Bujak and their other alleged colleague, David Jakobsen, who was released from custody last fall, the prosecutors must convince the court that the men knowingly entered into an alliance with the intention of committing one or more acts of terrorism. After a further custody hearing in March, PST would have until the summer holidays at the latest to conclude their investigation, after which the public prosecutor will decide whether to indict the three suspects.

Long War Journal : US official explains National Counterterrorism Center's view of the enemy

2010-09-23T15:41:00.000-04:00

US official explains National Counterterrorism Center's view of the enemy

By Thomas Joscelyn | September 23, 2010

In testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee yesterday, Michael Leiter provided an overview of how his National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) sees the terrorist threat. Leiter highlighted three types of threats: al Qaeda in northern Pakistan, al Qaeda affiliates around the world, and “homegrown” extremists who are inspired by al Qaeda’s “narrative” but do not necessarily receive guidance or assistance from senior al Qaeda leaders.

Leiter said the “range” of terrorist plots over the past year “suggests the threat against the West has become more complex and underscores the challenges of identifying and countering a more diverse array of Homeland plotting.”

Al Qaeda central

Leiter claimed that al Qaeda in Pakistan is “weaker today than at any time since the late 2001 onset of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.” Still, al Qaeda “remains intent” on “attacking the West and continues to prize attacks against the US Homeland and our European allies above all else.”

Al Qaeda launched a plot against the New York City subways last year. In Europe, there have been five “disrupted plots during the past four years,” Leiter told Senators in his written testimony. These include “a plan to attack airliners transiting between the UK and US, a credible plot in Germany, disrupted cells in the UK and Norway, and the disrupted plot to attack a newspaper in Denmark.”

Leiter also cited al Qaeda’s “propaganda efforts” as a substantial threat since “they are intended to inspire additional attacks by motivating sympathizers worldwide to undertake efforts similar to Nidal Hassan’s attack on Fort Hood last fall.”

Al Qaeda’s affiliates

Leiter cited al Qaeda’s “personnel losses” as one reason the core of al Qaeda has been weakened in recent years. Indeed, al Qaeda has lost key leaders due to America’s ongoing drone attacks in northern Pakistan. However, Leiter’s testimony also indicates why al Qaeda has been able to remain a serious threat despite these losses.

If al Qaeda is defined as only Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, and their immediate followers in northern Pakistan, then the threat they pose would still be worrisome but not nearly a global menace.

Unfortunately, al Qaeda’s power reaches beyond this narrow band of individuals. Leiter’s testimony confirms, once again, that al Qaeda is the tip of the jihadist spear – the vanguard of a global jihadist movement that shares a common ideology, goals, and resources.

Afghanistan-Pakistan

Inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, al Qaeda’s senior leadership forged close relations with the heads of various jihadist organizations, thereby providing al Qaeda with strategic depth. For example, while Leiter cited the disrupted plot against a newspaper in Denmark as a success against al Qaeda, which is undoubtedly true, he noted that the plot was organized by Mohammed Ilyas Kashmiri, a commander in Harakat-ul Jihad Islami (HUJI).

HUJI was originally forged by jihadists committed to fighting the Soviets in the 1980s in Afghanistan. They received support from the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, as did most if not all Pakistan-based jihadist organizations. In the 1990s, HUJI expanded its sphere of activity to India and Bangladesh, reportedly with assistance from Osama bin Laden.

Today, senior HUJI leaders such as Kashmiri actually work with and for bin Laden’s al Qaeda in the global jihadist struggle against America and her allies in Central and South Asia and beyond. In fact, Kashmiri is now a senior al Qaeda commander responsible for external operations – that is, operations against the West.

The same phenomenon can be seen in the disrupted plot against airliners traveling from the UK to the US in 2006, which was also cited by Leiter. Al Qaeda intended to destroy multiple airliners using liquid explosives assembled on board the planes once they were airborne. The plot was modeled after a plan named “Bojinka,” which was conceived by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his nephew Ramzi Yousef in the mid-1990s.

The plan was revived by al Qaeda after KSM’s arrest in 2003. The point man for the operation was Rashid Rauf, a senior member of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM). JEM was originally formed with assistance from the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment in the 1990s to fight Indian forces inside Kashmir. Like HUJI, JEM leaders serve al Qaeda’s global jihad. Thus, Rauf became one of the key figures in al Qaeda’s external operations wing.

The dossiers of terrorists like Rauf and Kashmiri illustrate that the lines between al Qaeda and other, like-minded jihadist organizations are becoming increasingly blurred.

Leiter cited other relationships in this vein. He called the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP), which was responsible for the failed Times Square plot in May, al Qaeda’s “closest ally.” Leiter added, “TTP leaders maintain close ties to senior [al Qaeda] leaders, providing critical support to [al Qaeda] in the FATA and sharing some of the same global violent extremist goals.”

Counterterrorism authorities are “looking closely” at the TTP, as well as the Haqqani Network, “for any indicators of attack planning in the West,” Leiter said. Like the TTP, the Haqqani Network has “close ties” to al Qaeda.

Leiter noted that Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), another creation of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency in the 1990s, “poses a threat to a range of interests in South Asia.” Moreover, LeT’s “involvement in attacks in Afghanistan against US and Coalition forces and provision of support to the Taliban and [al Qaeda] extremists there pose a threat to US and Coalition interests.”

Leiter said that while the LeT has not launched an attack against the West, it “could pose a direct threat to the Homeland and Europe, especially should they collude with [al Qaeda] operatives.”

Yemen, Somalia, North and West Africa, and Iraq

Outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Leiter cited four areas where al Qaeda’s affiliates are a particular concern.

Leiter described Yemen as a “key battleground and potential regional base of operations from which [al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP] can plan attacks, train recruits, and facilitate the movement of operatives.” As evidence of the threat posed by AQAP, Leiter cited an assassination attempt on a Saudi prince last August, as well as Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab’s attempted attack on Flight 253 on Christmas Day 2009.

Al Qaeda cleric Anwar al Awlaki “played a significant role in” Abdulmutallab’s plotting, Leiter says. According to published reports, Abdulmutallab met with the al Qaeda cleric in Yemen months prior to boarding a Detroit-bound airliner.

Some commentators have tried to distance Shabaab in Somalia from al Qaeda. But Leiter said that East Africa “remains a key locale for al Qaeda associates.” In addition, some Shabaab “leaders share [al Qaeda’s] ideology and publicly have praised Usama bin Ladin and requested further guidance from the group, although Somali nationalist themes are also prevalent in their public statements.”

Leiter also noted that Shabaab “leaders have cooperated closely with a limited number of East Africa-based [al Qaeda] operatives and the Somalia-based training program established by al Shabaab and now deceased [al Qaeda] operative Saleh Nabhan, continues to attract hundreds of violent extremists from across the globe, to include dozens of recruits from the United States.”

“The potential for Somali trainees to return to the United States or elsewhere in the West to launch attacks remains a significant concern,” Leiter explained in his written testimony.

In North and West Africa, al Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is a “persistent threat to US and other Western interests.” The “primary” threat, Leiter reported, comes from AQIM “conducting kidnap for ransom operations and small-arms attacks, though the group’s execution in July of a French hostage and first suicide bombing attack in Niger earlier this year punctuate AQIM’s lethality and attack range.”

Finally, counterterrorism operations have “continued to pressure” al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and “hinder its external ambitions.” But it remains a “key” al Qaeda affiliate, Leiter reported. “While AQI’s leaders continue to publicly threaten to attack the West, to include the Homeland, their ability to do so has been diminished, although not eliminated.”

Homegrown Sunni extremism

Homegrown Sunni extremist activity has spiked, according to Leiter, with “plots disrupted in New York, North Carolina, Arkansas, Alaska, Texas, and Illinois during the past year.” Although these plots were “unrelated operationally,” they are “indicative of a collective subculture and a common cause that rallies independent individuals to violence.”

A crucially important part of Leiter’s testimony is his public identification of a “US-specific narrative that motivates individuals to violence.” This narrative, according to Leiter, is “a blend of [al Qaeda] inspiration, perceived victimization, and glorification of past homegrown plotting.”

In his new autobiography, A Journey: My Political Life, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair discusses this “narrative” at length and points out that it is not only a problem in the West, but also throughout the Middle East. Blair writes:

Here is where the root of the problem lies. The extremists are small in number, but their narrative – which sees Islam as the victim of a scornful West externally, and an insufficiently religious leadership internally – has a far bigger hold. …

It is the narrative that has to be assailed. It has to be avowed, acknowledged; then taken on, inside and outside Islam. It should not be respected. It should be confronted, disagreed with, argued against on grounds of politics, security and religion.

Leiter explained that the NCTC is coordinating a number of initiatives within the US government to counter this narrative. For example, the NCTC “helps coordinate the Federal Government’s engagement with Somali American communities” in order to counter radicalization. It is not clear, however, if the NCTC has a comprehensive plan in place to counter the narrative, as Blair argues is necessary.

Leiter cited two specific terrorist attacks in 2009 as examples of the threat posed by homegrown extremism: Major Nidal Malik Hassan’s shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas and Carlos Leon Bledsoe’s attack on an US military recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Leiter said these attacks “serve as stark examples of lone actors inspired by the global violent extremist movement who attacked without oversight or guidance from overseas-based [al Qaeda] elements.”

Leiter’s description does not match the facts of Hassan’s and Bledsoe’s attacks. Maj. Hassan contacted Anwar al Awlaki repeatedly by email to ask about the permissibility of certain acts (e.g. turning against the American Army) under Sharia law. Awlaki gave his blessing to Hassan. Awlaki would later claim in a propaganda video that he was proud to call Hassan one of his “students.” This certainly amounts to guidance.

In a letter to the judge in his case, Bledsoe (who changed his name to Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad) admitted he was guilty of the “Jihadi attack.” It is at least possible that Bledsoe did receive some “guidance” from overseas actors as he admittedly studied jihad in Yemen, and claimed that he was a member of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. It is not clear how much of Bledsoe’s letter is true, as opposed to bluster. But it is at least plausible that he did consort with al Qaeda or other jihadist organizations in Yemen.

"Homegrown" extremism is undoubtedly a serious security threat. However, it is often poorly defined.

MI5 : The Threat to National Security

2010-09-18T00:47:00.000-04:00

The Threat to National Security

Address at the Worshipful Company of Security Professionals by the Director General of the Security Service, Jonathan Evans.

September 16, 2010

1. Thank you very much for the invitation to speak at the Worshipful Company of Security Professionals.

2. I would like to take this opportunity to provide some comments on the national security threats as we currently see them, not least so that those with responsibility for managing risks to their businesses – or even in their private lives – can do so on an informed basis. So I intend to cover the threat in three parts, first, Irish Republican dissident terrorism, then Al Qaida and its associates, and finally espionage.

3. I start with Northern Ireland because of the developments in the last eighteen months. The Security Service, as part of the arrangements to facilitate the devolution of policing and justice under the Good Friday Agreement, assumed the lead responsibility for national security intelligence work in Northern Ireland in October 2007. At that point our working assumption was that the residual threat from terrorism in Northern Ireland was low and likely to decline further as time went on and as the new constitutional arrangements there took root. Sadly that has not proved to be the case. On the contrary we have seen a persistent rise in terrorist activity and ambition in Northern Ireland over the last three years. Perhaps we were giving insufficient weight to the pattern of history over the last hundred years which shows that whenever the main body of Irish republicanism has reached a political accommodation and rejoined constitutional politics, a hardliner rejectionist group would fragment off and continue with the so called "armed struggle".

4. Like many extreme organisations, the dissident Republicans have tended to form separate groups based on apparently marginal distinctions or personal rivalries. But those separate groups can still be dangerous and in recent months there have been increasing signs of co-ordination and cooperation between the groups. This has led to a position where this year we have seen over thirty attacks or attempted attacks by dissident Republicans on national security targets compared to just over twenty for the whole of last year. In addition we have seen an increasing variety of attack techniques used, ranging from shootings to undercar devices to large vehicle bombs. At the same time we have seen improved weapons capability (including the use of Semtex). The vast majority of attacks are directed at the security forces, principally the Police Service of Northern Ireland. But the terrorists are reckless - often putting members of the public at risk. While at present the dissidents' campaign is focussed on Northern Ireland we cannot exclude the possibility that they might seek to extend their attacks to Great Britain as violent Republican groups have traditionally done. Therefore, while we do not face the scale of problems caused by the Provisional IRA at the height of the Troubles, there is a real and increasing security challenge in Northern Ireland.

5. There is a crucial difference in my view from the position fifteen years ago. The Provisionals at their height could claim the political support of a significant body of opinion in Northern Ireland, and did develop a credible political strategy to operate alongside their terrorist campaign, but we see little evidence of a viable political programme on the part of the dissident Republican splinter groups. Their political base is small and localised. It is also clear that many of the dissident Republican activists operate at the same time as terrorists and organised criminals, with involvement in both smuggling and the illegal narcotics market, despite public denunciations of drug dealing. No doubt they see some benefit to their criminal enterprises from their terrorist activity and vice versa.

6. Despite the demands in Northern Ireland, where we have reinforced our presence in response to the increased violence and work closely with the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the main effort for the Security Service remains international terrorism, particularly from Al Qaida, its affiliates and those inspired by its ideology.

7. I don't want to give a number for those of current security interest as that has sometimes been used in the past as a kind of metric for the severity of the threat. But I can say that while the UK's counter terrorist capabilities are enormously more effective than was the case ten years ago, we remain extremely busy with terrorist casework on a day-to-day basis. Though it is rightly invisible to the man or woman in the street there is a huge amount of activity taking place every day to manage the terrorist risks this country still faces. Every day hundreds of officers are involved in this intense struggle, identifying and investigating people suspected of being, or known to be, involved in terrorism or the infrastructure that makes terrorism possible. And all the time we are looking for opportunities to disrupt their illicit activities before they can endanger the public. The secret nature of this struggle makes it hard for those not directly involved to understand some of the skirmishes that come into the public domain: for example the Control Orders, the immigration cases and the criminal cases. So it might be helpful for me to describe what this daily struggle involves, since counter terrorism is subject of some rather misleading and excitable conjecture.

8. Each month at present we receive in Thames House, our Headquarters, several hundred pieces of information that might be described as new "leads" to violent extremism and terrorism relevant to the UK. These leads come from a variety of sources. They might be suspicions passed on by members of the public, they might be pieces of information passed to the UK from other countries, they might be reports from the police, from GCHQ, from MI6, from our own telephone intercepts, human sources in and around extremist groups and so on. But it is impossible to investigate fully several hundred new leads a month so we have a well established system for prioritising the leads according to how directly they appear to indicate a terrorist threat, or terrorist support activity here in the UK. The most worrying leads are investigated most fully; those at the bottom of the priority list might receive only limited scrutiny. This is not ideal and involves difficult risk judgements, but it is the unavoidable practical fact of counter terrorist work within any realistic resource constraints. We are fully aware that among those apparently lower priority leads might be some that are in reality very significant, but given that most of our resources are already tied up in existing cases (because some cases can go on for months or years) and that we shall have several hundred more new leads every month, we have to make decisions about which ones we pursue. (It was this need to prioritise that the Intelligence and Security Committee described in their thorough report into the 7 July bombings).

9. Once these leads have been prioritised, the higher priority ones are investigated using the capabilities available under the law to our Service, the Police and the other agencies. This is a highly integrated process because there is no way effectively to separate the domestic and overseas aspects of such cases. Very few of our counter-terrorist investigations today are solely UK-based, which is why close integration with SIS and GCHQ, as well as the Police, is critical. The purpose of the investigations is to find out whether there is anything to worry about, and if so to find out as much as we can about it so action can be taken to stop the terrorist planning or stop the support activity. This might be by arrests, by immigration action, by special measures such as Control Orders or in some other way. Our aim is to reach a position of assurance where any threat is identified and action taken to disrupt it before any harm is done, and particularly before there is an imminent danger to the public. This is of course easier said than done, and will never be fully achievable, but it is the aim.

10. It is interesting to note in this context that in the last ten years what might be called a "zero tolerance” attitude to terrorist risk in Great Britain has become more widespread. While it has always been the case that the authorities have made every effort to prevent terrorist attacks, it used to be accepted as part of everyday life that sometimes the terrorists would get lucky and there would be an attack. In recent years we appear increasingly to have imported from the American media the assumption that terrorism is 100% preventable and any incident that is not prevented is seen as a culpable government failure. This is a nonsensical way to consider terrorist risk and only plays into the hands of the terrorists themselves. Risk can be managed and reduced but it cannot realistically be abolished and if we delude ourselves that it can we are setting ourselves up for a nasty disappointment.

11. In the investigations that we are pursuing day to day, sometimes our ability to uncover and disrupt a threat goes right down to the wire, as was the case with the airline liquid bomb plot in 2006. The plotters were only days away from mounting an attack. Sometimes it is possible or necessary to step in much earlier, though in such cases it can be hard to get enough evidence to bring criminal charges. But I would rather face criticism when there is no prosecution (often accompanied by conspiracy theories about what was supposedly going on) than see a plot come to fruition because we had not acted soon enough. Operation Pathway, the disruption of an Al Qaida cell in North West England 18 months ago, is a good example of a necessarily early intervention where criminal charges could not eventually be sustained. The case has subsequently been reviewed by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission and Mr Justice Mitting concluded that the case involved a genuine threat from individuals tasked by Al Qaida. Whilst we are committed to prosecutions wherever possible it is a sad fact that for all sorts of good reasons terrorist threats can still exist which the English criminal justice system cannot reach. The government cannot absolve itself of the responsibility to protect its citizens just because the criminal law cannot, in the particular circumstances, serve the purpose.

12. If that is the investigative and assurance process, how does the overall threat look today in comparison with three or four years ago?

13. At any one time we have a handful of investigations that we believe involve the real possibility of a terrorist attack being planned against the UK. That number will fluctuate and some cases may not develop as far as we had expected, but most turn out to be the real thing. The fact that there are real plots uncovered on a fairly regular basis demonstrates that there is a persistent intent on the part of Al Qaida and its associates to attack the UK. But as well as intent there has to be capability and their capabilities can be patchy. Some of those we see being encouraged or tasked by Al Qaida associates to mount attacks here are not people with the skills or character to make credible terrorists. Others are. But determination can take you a long way and even determined amateurs can cause devastation. The case of the neo-Nazi David Copeland, who attacked the gay and ethnic minority communities with such appalling results in 1999, is a good example of the threat posed by the determined lone bomber. Against that analysis, the recent encouragement by a senior Yemen-based Al Qaida associate to his followers in the West, to mount any sort of attack against Western interests and not to feel the need to aspire to spectacular terrorism such as 9/11, is a real concern.

14. The percentage of the priority plots and leads we see in the UK linked to Al Qaida in the tribal areas of Pakistan, where Al Qaida senior leadership is still based, has dropped from around 75% two or three years ago to around 50% now. This does not mean that the overall threat has reduced but that it has diversified. The reduction in cases linked to the Tribal areas of Pakistan is partly attributable to the pressure exerted on the Al Qaida leadership there. But the reduction is also partly a result of increased activity elsewhere. In Somalia, for example, there are a significant number of UK residents training in Al Shabaab camps to fight in the insurgency there. Al Shabaab, an Islamist militia in Somalia, is closely aligned with Al Qaida and Somalia shows many of the characteristics that made Afghanistan so dangerous as a seedbed for terrorism in the period before the fall of the Taleban. There is no effective government, there is a strong extremist presence and there are training camps attracting would be jihadists from across the world. We need to do whatever we can to stop people from this country becoming involved in terrorism and murder in Somalia, but beyond that I am concerned that it is only a matter of time before we see terrorism on our streets inspired by those who are today fighting alongside Al Shabaab.

15. The other area of increased concern in respect of the domestic threat to the UK is Yemen. The AQ affiliate based in Yemen, known as "Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula" is the group that among other things developed the concealable non-metallic underpants bomb used in both the attempt to murder the Saudi Security Minister His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed Bin Naif in 2009 and in the narrowly averted Christmas 2009 aircraft bombing over Detroit by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The operational involvement of Yemen based preacher Anwar Al Awlaqi with AQAP is of particular concern given his wide circle of adherents in the West, including in the UK. His influence is all the wider because he preaches and teaches in the English language which makes his message easier to access and understand for Western audiences. We saw his hand in the Abdulmutallab case. There is a real risk that one of his adherents will respond to his urging to violence and mount an attack in the UK, possibly acting alone and with little formal training, and we have seen a surge in Yemen related casework this year. The outcome of some of these investigations has been reported in the media.

16. In terms of the trajectory of the threat it is worth also drawing attention to some other relevant factors.

17. First, our experience over the last ten years has shown that networks of terrorist supporters can be extraordinarily determined, resilient and patient. We see groups that have been disrupted and where several members have been convicted of terrorist or other offences, but that are able to revive and resume terrorist-related activities within a relatively short period of time and sometimes under other leadership. And of course they learn each time from the mistakes that they or others have made.

18. Second, it is now nine years after 9/11. The upsurge of terrorist support activity in the years immediately following it is long enough ago for individuals who were successfully investigated and convicted of criminal offences during that period now to be coming out of prison having served their terms with remission. Unfortunately we know that some of those prisoners are still committed extremists who are likely to return to their terrorist activities and they will be added to the cases needing to be monitored in coming years. Experience has shown that it is very rarely the case that anyone who has been closely involved with terrorist-related activity can be safely taken off our list of potentially dangerous individuals; the tail of intelligence "aftercare" gets increasingly lengthy.

19. Third, we are now less than two years from the London Olympics. The eyes of the world will be on London during the Olympic period and the run up to it. We have to assume that those eyes will include some malign ones that will see an opportunity to gain notoriety and to inflict damage on the UK and on some other participating nations. There will be a major security operation to support the Games, but we should not underestimate the challenge of mounting the Games securely in an environment with a high terrorist threat, the first time this has been attempted.

20. So, to sum up the Al Qaida related threat. The country continues to face a real threat from Al Qaida-related terrorism. That threat is diverse in both geography and levels of skill involved but it is persistent and dangerous and trying to control it involves a continual invisible struggle. Counter-terrorist capabilities have improved in recent years but there remains a serious risk of a lethal attack taking place. I see no reason to believe that the position will significantly improve in the immediate future.

21. I would like to conclude with a brief reference to the espionage threat. Events over the summer in the United States underlined the continuing level of covert intelligence activity that takes place internationally. Espionage did not start with the Cold War and it did not end with it either. Both traditional and cyber espionage continue to pose a threat to British interests, with the commercial sector very much in the front line along with more traditional diplomatic and defence interests. Using cyberspace, especially the Internet, as a vector for espionage has lowered the barriers to entry and has also made attribution of attacks more difficult, reducing the political risks of spying. And cyber espionage can be facilitated by, and facilitate, traditional human spying. So the overall likelihood of any particular entity being the subject of state espionage has probably never been higher, though paradoxically many of the vulnerabilities exploited both in cyber espionage and traditional espionage are relatively straightforward to plug if you are aware of them. Cyber security is a priority for the government both in respect of national security and economic harm. Ensuring that well informed advice is available to those who need it, including through the use of private sector partners is, and will remain, vital.

22. It is fitting that I should make these comments to the Worshipful Company of Security Professionals. National security is obviously a responsibility of government but the assets that underpin both our security and our economic wellbeing are to a large extent owned or managed by the private sector. The objectives of the Company, including the promotion of excellence and integrity, and the advancement of knowledge in the security profession, in whatever sector, are therefore highly relevant to the national security challenges we face. I hope that the comments that I have made will contribute to the successful planning and implementation of the good security practice that underpins so much of our national life today.

Reuters India : Arrests stir worry about Qaeda plots in West

2010-09-07T13:49:00.000-04:00

Arrests stir worry about Qaeda plots in West

By William Maclean, Security Correspondent | September 7, 2010

LONDON (Reuters) - Their place in history assured, are al Qaeda's ageing leaders content merely to propagate their ideology and tactics among like-minded militant groups?

Counter-terrorism analysts say the answer is no: evidence emerging in the West shows the veteran Islamist instigators of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States retain an ambition to execute plots and not just act as propagandists.

They point to investigations into suspected conspiracies uncovered in the past 18 months in the United States, Norway and Britain, which law enforcement officials say were directed by a group of operatives in the core leadership's bases in Pakistan.

Gauging the influence and expertise of the movement's leaders, believed hiding in northwest Pakistan near the Afghan border, is important for Western strategists since Washington has said its main goal in the Afghan war is fighting al Qaeda.

In recent years the threat of U.S. drone strikes is believed to have constrained the ability of a once-active core of plotters around Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri to bring to fruition significant conspiracies beyond south Asia.

But experts say that in 2008 Saleh al-Somali, then al Qaeda external operations chief and believed close to the leadership, set in motion a plot in the United States and two alleged conspiracies uncovered in Britain and Norway.

He organised bomb-training for militants in northwest Pakistan and sent them back to prepare attacks in the United States, Britain and Norway, analysts say.

AMBITIONS UNDIMMED

A Western counter-terrorism official said the evidence of Somali's involvement suggested to Western governments that the group's leaders retained an ambition to launch attacks.

U.S. prosecutors said Somali was helped in the U.S. plot by Adnan al-Shukrijumah, a Saudi-born operative, and Rashid Rauf, a British al Qaeda-linked militant of Pakistani ancestry.

Paul Cruickshank, a terrorism expert and an alumni fellow at the Center on Law and Security at New York University's School of Law, said the plots "show al Qaeda core remains a threat".

"Westerners are still travelling (from homes in the West) to the tribal areas (of Pakistan) in significant numbers... It gives al Qaeda a chance to turn them around and send them back."

"Some of al Qaeda's most experienced bombmakers are there, and so the area remains a significant danger," he said.

For al Qaeda, carrying out a big attack in the West is key to fundraising among wealthy supporters, some of whom have been demoralised by the failure of the group to strike at the West sucessfully since London bombings in 2005 that killed 52 people.

RISK IS SPREAD

Bill Braniff, a senior expert at the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, said Somali's siting of the plots in three different countries was intended to reduce the risk that all three would be detected.

"These plots show al Qaeda's trademark complex attack, geographically distributed," he said referring to the movement's style of multiple bombings.

"If they had succeeded, you would have had a huge propaganda effect from attacks in all three countries."

The plots were dealt successive blows when Rauf was reported killed in a U.S. drone strike in Nov. 2008 and Somali was killed by a drone in Dec. 2009.

But Shukrijumah is widely believed to be alive and is now considered "a very prominent member of the inner circle" of operational planning, according to Roger Cressey, a U.S. security expert and president of Good Harbor Consulting.

Western governments are concerned that subsequent groups of militants trained in northwest Pakistan in 2009 and 2010 may have now made their way to the West to prepare other attacks.

Brynjar Lia and Petter Nesser, research fellows at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, said the discovery of an alleged al Qaeda cell in Norway suggested the group sought a new capability to strike Europe's periphery after disruption to cells in Spain, Britain, Germany and France.

Terrorist cells hardly ever emerged in a vacuum because they needed supporters to recruit and train, they said.

"Discovery of such cells is usually a strong sign that radicalism and underground extremist networks are on the rise," they wrote in a joint article in CTC Sentinel.

LRB : Jonathan Steele: Diary

2010-09-06T14:15:00.000-04:00

Jonathan Steele: Diary

by Jonathan Steele | LRB | Vol. 32 No. 17 | September 9, 2010

The road from Kabul to Kandahar was once known as the Eisenhower highway. Built in the 1950s, when the United States and the Soviet Union competed peacefully for Afghan friendship, this US-funded 300-mile ribbon of tarmac was plied for two decades by lorries and garishly painted buses with no concern for security. Among the passengers were half-stoned Western hippies on the overland trail through Asia. Then came civil war and in 1979 the Soviet invasion. Ambushes turned the highway into a death trap until the victorious Taliban swept into Kabul in September 1996, eliminating all security problems once again. The only threat when I travelled the highway a few weeks later was colossal discomfort. After years of neglect, the road was close to collapse. Long stretches rippled like a corrugated roof, making travel in our hired minivan unbearable even at five miles an hour. What should have been a six-hour journey took 23.

I was on the way to the Taliban’s Kandahar heartland with a colleague from the New York Times. We had seen wide-eyed young Taliban fighters in Kabul, like peasant boys parachuted into Gomorrah, rip cassettes out of car stereos and stride into hospitals to order female doctors home and men to grow beards. Now we wanted to meet the ideologues who had launched the movement. We asked an official in the Taliban’s ‘liaison office’ about the Taliban budget and how they decided their spending priorities. He looked blank. It was clear that the Taliban had nothing resembling normal state administration, let alone service delivery. What role did the government play in connection with the foreign aid which the UN and a few Western NGOs were still providing? The official relaxed visibly. ‘We identify projects. We assist them in assisting us,’ he answered, as though the Taliban were doing foreigners a great favour.

Mullah Muhammad Hassan Rahmani, the governor of Kandahar and a close associate of Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, was happy to receive us for two hours as soon as our translator contacted his office. An unhurried and genial figure, he planted the metal end of his artificial leg on a small table between us in an apparently practised gesture. He clearly saw it as a useful talking point, knowing we would ask about his record in the jihad. He had lost his right knee fighting the Russians, he said. With no sense of awe he described Mullah Omar as a political leader more than a fount of wisdom. ‘He has not too much religious knowledge,’ he said. ‘He was involved in fighting for years and did not have the time to acquire it. A lot of scholars know more than he does.’ Television was banned under Taliban rule because ‘worshipping statues was forbidden by the Prophet and watching television is the same as seeing statues. Drawing pictures or looking at them is sinful.’ Large weddings with male and female guests and music and dancing were also forbidden. Education for girls was permitted but had to take place in a separate building; the Taliban hadn’t had the funds to build any new schools in the two years they had held power in Kandahar. Women would be allowed to work outside the home once the war was over. Stoning was the punishment for adultery, with the man put into a sack and the woman, in her burqa, placed in a pit up to her waist before the crowd pitched in. It was an effective deterrent, the governor said: so far as he could recall there had been only two or three cases in Kandahar in the last two years. ‘I was busy and couldn’t see it. In fact I’ve never seen it.’ Asked whether the Taliban wanted to spread their views beyond Afghanistan’s borders, Hassan was adamant that this was ‘enemy propaganda’. Afghanistan wanted good relations with everyone and would not interfere abroad.

Fourteen years have passed since that encounter and, remarkably, almost no other senior Taliban leader has offered himself for interview in that time. After 1996 journalists rarely got visas to Afghanistan, until the Taliban lost power in 2001. Since they re-emerged to start their insurgency against the US-led intervention, not one top mullah has met the press. About 30 ‘reconciled’ Taliban now live in government guesthouses in Kabul. Some are ex-Taliban leaders who were captured and taken to Guantánamo after their regime fell, then amnestied on their release and sent back to Afghanistan; others were not senior enough to be detained in the first place. They talk to the media and Hamid Karzai sees them as potential mediators with their former colleagues. But none were part of the new insurgency and it is unclear whether they still have contact – let alone influence – with the men who are running it.

So the Afghans who really matter are out of view at exactly the wrong time, with Obama’s war sinking into a Vietnam-style quagmire and pressure growing for a political settlement as the best exit strategy for the US and its allies. Mullah Hassan went into hiding when Kandahar fell in 2001. His whereabouts are unknown, as are Mullah Omar’s. He is said to live near Quetta but no diplomat, politician or journalist has been able to meet him since 2001. Occasional statements on the Taliban website are all we have to go by. So the important questions remain unanswered. Have the Taliban changed in the decade since they lost office? Is there a neo-Taliban, as some suggest? What of the younger generation of field commanders who lead today’s resistance to the Americans and British? Are they in regular touch with Mullah Omar and do they answer to him in any practical sense, either in military strategy or in their political objectives? Above all, is there room for compromise between the Taliban, President Karzai and the Tajik and Uzbek leaders who surround him in Kabul so that, if the US withdraws in the next few years, a power-sharing government can have a chance of lasting?

Some evidence that the Taliban have moved on since they were in power is provided by Antonio Giustozzi, a scholar at the Crisis States Research Centre at the London School of Economics, who has edited a collection of essays entitled Decoding the New Taliban.[*] For one thing, the technology has changed. Men who used to reject television now put out propaganda DVDs and run a website of news and opinion, complete with pictures. More important, their social attitudes have shifted. Giustozzi argues that the Taliban realise their old position on education was self-defeating and lost them support, and the line is now being reversed. In Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, according to Tom Coghlan, one of Giustozzi’s contributors, people in September 2008 ‘reported a strikingly less repressive interpretation of the Taliban’s social edicts.’ They no longer ban TV, music, dog-fighting and kite-flying; nor do they insist on the old rule that men grow beards long enough to be held in the fist.

Some analysts believe that US air strikes have been so effective in killing senior Taliban that the war is now being run by a new generation of men in their twenties and thirties, with no experience of the anti-Soviet struggle that schooled the mujahidin warlords as well as Mullah Omar and his Taliban colleagues. Whether this means they are more radical than the previous generation is unclear. Coghlan quotes a Taliban cleric near Lashkar Gah in Helmand in March 2008 as saying: ‘These new crazy guys are really emotional. They are war-addicted.’

Recent reports suggest that most Afghans, tired of the all-pervasive insecurity, want negotiations with the Taliban. A survey of 423 men in Helmand and Kandahar, carried out in May by the International Council on Security and Development, found that 74 per cent were in favour of negotiations. In Kabul in March, I interviewed several women professionals, the people who suffered most from the Taliban’s restrictions on girls’ education and women working outside the home. To varying degrees they all supported the idea of dialogue with the Taliban. They felt the top priority was to end what they saw as a civil war – not an insurgency, as Nato calls it. They saw the Taliban as authentic nationalists with legitimate grievances who needed to be brought back into the equation. Otherwise, Afghans would go on being used as proxies in a long battle between al-Qaida and the US. It was time to break free of both sets of foreigners, the global jihadis and the US empire. Shukria Barakzai, an MP and women’s rights campaigner, put it like this: ‘I changed my view three years ago when I realised Afghanistan is on its own. It’s not that the international community doesn’t support us. They just don’t understand us. The Taliban are part of our population. They have different ideas but as democrats we have to accept that.’

The shift in Afghanistan’s public mood since 2007, when I was last in Kabul, is dramatic. Then, the Taliban’s military comeback was still in its infancy and defeating them was the priority. There are several things behind the change: growing disappointment that billions of dollars of Western aid seem to go nowhere except into the bank accounts of foreign consultants or local politicians; despair over the continuing civilian casualties, many caused by US airstrikes; anger and humiliation caused by the high-handedness of foreign troops; and a desire to build a national consensus in which Afghans resolve their problems themselves. Karzai’s recent outbursts against the Americans and other foreigners reflect a widely held mood.

The war logs released by WikiLeaks and analysed in July in the Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times paint a picture of worsening insecurity and previously unreported but mounting civilian casualties, caused by Taliban IEDs as well as Nato air strikes. A UN report in August said civilian casualties had risen by almost a third in the first six months of this year, including an increase in Taliban assassinations of teachers, doctors and tribal leaders accused of collaborating with the US. The war logs put the spotlight back on Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate’s role in funding the Taliban in the early 1990s and sheltering many of its leaders since 2001. Although much of the intelligence is flimsy or based on prejudice, the general trend of ISI support for the Taliban is clear.

Conversations with Afghans, too, reveal increasing anger with Pakistan as well as the US. Many feel Pakistan exploits the war to keep Afghanistan divided and weak. They see Pakistan’s link with the Taliban as malign, though opinions differ as to whether the Taliban are puppets, victims or willing agents of Islamabad. Among Afghanistan’s Pashtun population there is considerable support for the view that the north-western territories of Pakistan, including the city of Peshawar, belong to them; Afghanistan has never officially recognised the Durand Line that was drawn in 1893 between the British Empire and Afghanistan. Afghans believe Pakistan tries to control any Afghan group that seeks power in Kabul in order to prevent it from raising the Pashtunistan issue.

The only detailed insider account of the Taliban is a memoir by Abdul Salam Zaeef, the movement’s former ambassador to Pakistan. Zaeef is no spokesman for Mullah Omar and the Quetta shura. But My Life with the Taliban usefully shows that its leaders saw themselves as nationalists, reformers and liberators rather than Islamist ideologues.[†] Mullah Hassan’s characterisation of Mullah Omar in that 1996 Kandahar interview as a political rather than a religious leader fits well with Zaeef’s version of history. Zaeef, too, is contemptuous of Pakistan, and the ISI in particular. He made a point of resisting their advances when he took up his diplomatic post in Islamabad, seeing them as ill-intentioned and manipulative. Pakistan ‘is so famous for treachery that it is said they can get milk from a bull,’ he writes. ‘They use everybody, deceive everybody.’ Some of his anger comes from his childhood in refugee camps near Peshawar, where Afghans were treated as second-class citizens, regularly picked on by the Pakistani police. But he is also furious with Pakistan’s role in the ‘war on terror’: its torture and detention of suspected terrorists, he believes, is as bad as anything the US does.

Arrested after the Taliban collapse in 2001, Zaeef was sent to Guantánamo. On the way he spent time in US custody in Kandahar and Bagram, where he was kept in solitary confinement with his hands and feet tied for 20 days. In Kandahar – shades of the abuse in Abu Ghraib – Zaeef says he was stripped naked and mocked by male and female US troops, one of whom took photos. After three years in Guantánamo, he was offered release on condition he signed a statement that he had been a member of al-Qaida and the Taliban and would cut all ties with them. ‘I was a Talib, I am a Talib and I will always be a Talib, but I have never been part of al-Qaida,’ he retorted. Eventually they allowed him to go after signing a declaration: ‘I am writing this out of obligation and stating that I am not going to participate in any kind of anti-American activities or military actions.’

Zaeef maintains that he was shocked by al-Qaida’s attack on 9/11, of which he had no foreknowledge. He says he wept when he watched TV pictures of the burning buildings and people throwing themselves out and falling to the ground like stones: ‘I stared at the pictures in disbelief.’ He immediately saw the likely repercussions. ‘I knew that Afghanistan and its poverty-stricken people would ultimately suffer for what had just taken place in America. The United States would seek revenge.’ He admits that some of the Taliban watching the scene were jubilant and thought the US was too far away to retaliate. ‘How could they be so superficial?’ he asks.

Mullah Omar rang to consult Zaeef about how to react. Next morning Zaeef called a press conference in Islamabad and read a statement condemning the attacks. ‘All those responsible must be brought to justice. We want them to be brought to justice and we want America to be patient and careful in their actions,’ it said. Zaeef returned to Kandahar, where he found Mullah Omar blindly sure that the US was unlikely to attack. He tried to warn the Taliban leader. He told him Pakistan was urging the US to launch air strikes on Afghanistan and had already started talks with the Northern Alliance in the expectation that they would be the leaders of a post-Taliban government. But Omar claimed America could not attack Afghanistan without valid reason. He had asked Washington to deliver proof incriminating bin Laden and said the Taliban would take no further action until it was given hard evidence. Zaeef’s account seems plausible given that the Taliban made no preparations for war, but it shows how out of touch Omar had become. The destruction of the Buddha statues at Bamyan earlier in the year had already suggested he had no real understanding of the way the outside world perceived the Taliban.

We know almost nothing about the Taliban’s current views, but it’s clear that on the US side there is as yet no readiness to talk. There is some evidence that General David Petraeus, the new US commander in Afghanistan, is more in tune with Afghan realities than his predecessor, General Stanley McChrystal. But both have been committed to the current ‘surge’ of extra US troops. Petraeus’s image in the US as a man who had success with the surge in Iraq may wed him even more closely to the strategy than McChrystal. Known as a company man with an ear for the subtleties of inter-agency jockeying in Washington, Petraeus recognises that the White House believes the Taliban have to be weakened militarily before the US can contemplate talks. Petraeus will not step out of line.

In its political strategy the US puts its money on ‘reconciliation and reintegration’. Decoded, this amounts to little more than amnesty and surrender. Taliban fighters and commanders should renounce violence and sign up to the constitution, in return for which they may be paid a short-term allowance and perhaps be offered a job. The deal is highly unlikely to tempt anyone of any significance. Amnesty was first offered in 2005 and no senior commander has defected. Only 12 of the 142 Taliban leaders on the UN security council sanctions list have come over, and none was involved in the post-2001 insurgency. The Americans are fighting a variety of local Taliban commanders, and, in south-eastern Afghanistan, different groups entirely: Hizb-i-Islami, founded by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and the so-called Haqqani network, led by a father and son team. Each group has different regional and tribal loyalties but it is fanciful to imagine any of them can be persuaded to join the Americans and fight each other. Previous American efforts to create local militias have had minimal success. Offering local ceasefires is a more productive path. Groups would keep their arms but drop out of the fight unless outsiders move into the district. The British tried this in 2006 in Musa Qala in the northern part of Helmand when they persuaded the town’s elders to ask the Taliban not to enter if the British withdrew. At the time the Americans were not happy, and neither was General David Richards, then the International Security Assistance Force commander in Afghanistan and soon to be Britain’s chief of the Defence Staff. The truce broke down after a US air strike killed the brother of the local Taliban commander just outside the demilitarised area. It may have been deliberate sabotage.

The US ‘reconciliation’ approach at least recognises, for the first time, that most Taliban are motivated by a sense of grievance and a demand for justice. They are not ideologues or Islamists pursuing a global jihad like al-Qaida. Trying to start a dialogue with them through local elders may be productive if it is aimed at understanding their wider objectives beyond the obvious one, the withdrawal of Western forces from their district and ultimately from the country. At the national level it is essential that talks take place between Karzai and Mullah Omar. If Omar insists he can only talk with the Americans, there could be a format that includes plenary sessions with Karzai, the Taliban and the Americans so that the Taliban address their remarks to the Americans. Pakistan’s role is vital. Ideally, Pakistan would be included in a regional forum of ‘Friends of Afghanistan’ made up of Iran, Pakistan, India, China, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Russia: these countries would be asked to make pledges of non-interference and recognise Afghanistan as a non-aligned state with no foreign bases. But Pakistan is likely to insist on more than that. A model might be the Geneva talks that ended the Soviet occupation in 1988. They included the Soviet Union, the US, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Today’s version would be the US, Pakistan, the Kabul government and the Taliban. Eventually, there should also be an Afghan Loya Jirga with all the Afghan parties, including the Kabul government, the Taliban, and Hekmatyar and the Haqqanis. Any changes to the constitution must be agreed by representatives of Afghan women’s groups and human rights organisations.

Can a settlement along these lines be found? Only an exploratory dialogue with the Taliban can even begin to answer this question. There are bound to be misunderstandings and breakdowns on the way. Twenty-six years elapsed between the Conservative government’s first secret contacts with the IRA in 1972 and the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. In South Africa, where there was broad agreement on the need for a transfer of power, it still required four years to work out the details. What would a post-American Afghanistan look like? It is likely to have a weak central government and powerful semi-autonomous regions, in part because Kabul has never been a strong ruling centre. The national army may well have to be broken into regional corps. At the moment its officer corps is Tajik-dominated and it is hard to see how Taliban commanders could work with them.

Are we getting ahead of ourselves? Until the Obama administration comes round to the idea of negotiations, progress is stalled. When David Miliband advocated talks with the Taliban in March, he did not mention their name in his key sentence. ‘The idea of political engagement with those who would directly or indirectly attack our troops is difficult,’ he said in a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In spite of this cautious formulation, US policy-makers reacted negatively and the current British government’s line is not to repeat it. But Obama will have to move at some point from his ‘reconciliation’ policy to one of ‘accommodation’. That means taking the Taliban’s grievances on board and being willing to address them in a compromise deal that is likely to involve the formation of a power-sharing government in Kabul in return for a US withdrawal. The US public is growing steadily more disillusioned with what is already America’s longest war. Obama has promised to review his strategy in December, a year after he announced the surge. By then the results of November’s Congressional elections will be in. The decision he faces is momentous: go into the 2012 campaign as a president who has started the endgame or play the tough guy even though he must know any hope of defeating the Taliban militarily is doomed.

In These Times : The Radical Conservative

2010-07-28T13:34:00.000-04:00

The Radical Conservative

Vietnam veteran and author Andrew Bacevich on American decadence and the failure of the Iraq War.

By David Barsamian | January 23, 2009

At least at first glance, Andrew Bacevich might seem an unlikely candidate to have become one of the Iraq War’s fiercest critics. A graduate of West Point and a Vietnam War veteran, Bacevich spent 23 years in the military before retiring as a colonel. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he contributed to the conservative Weekly Standard and National Review. These days, however, his writing is much more likely to appear in The Nation.

But it’s difficult to say whether this marks a change in Bacevich’s principles or those of the American conservative movement. As he wrote in his 2005 book, The New American Militarism, “My disenchantment with what passes for mainstream conservatism, embodied in the present Bush administration and its groupies, is just about absolute. … [M]y views have come to coincide with the critique long offered by the radical left: It is the mainstream itself, the professional liberals as well as professional conservative who define the problem.”

A professor of history and international relations at Boston University, Bacevich’s latest book is The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, which draws on the philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr’s warnings against “our dreams of managing history.”

He recently spoke with In These Times about conservatives’ response to his book, Iraq and why we shouldn’t expect too much change from an Obama administration.

In The Limits Of Power, you look at the consumption patterns of the average American citizen today. Given the urgency of a wartime situation, you’re very critical.

It’s not simply that I’m troubled by consumption in the context of a global war. I’m troubled by the patterns of consumption even apart from the war—in that we have come to expect that it is our due to live beyond our means, both as individuals and as a nation.

I’m not some kind of ascetic monk. I don’t live in a cave. I probably enjoy a pretty good standard of living relative to many other people. Nonetheless, one senses a kind of a compulsion to acquire in our society. There is a mindlessness about it that I find troubling. Maybe that’s just me admitting that I’m kind of an old-fashioned cultural conservative, but it’s a concern especially because we can’t pay for all the stuff that we’re buying.

Add the war on top of that, and it does become more troubling. On the one hand, we have leaders like President Bush, proclaiming that this is a struggle that we should see as the equivalent of World War II, that the evil that we face is the equivalent of Nazi Germany or of Soviet totalitarianism. And yet, in an odd sense the country sort of says, “Yes, I got it, thank you very much,” and then we just go back to doing what we were doing as if there were no war.

One consequence of that, of course, is that the burden of the war falls on our military. I think that the military has been abused over the last seven years. It’s tremendously admirable that the Army and the Marine Corps, in particular, have hung together the way they’ve hung together. But that doesn’t make it right, doesn’t make it fair, and it certainly doesn’t make it indefinitely sustainable.

What’s been the conservative response to your book?

The conservatives have really been split by the war. I dare say, the majority of conservatives are loyal to the Republican Party, loyal to President Bush, support the war in general terms, may acknowledge that it was badly handled but would still argue that it was an appropriate enterprise.

There is a minority of conservatives—I’m in that minority—that sees the policies of President Bush as anything but conservative, really seeing them as radical, as wild-eyed. The people who are in my camp—again, I emphasize, it’s the minority—would argue that a principled conservative foreign policy needs to be a realistic foreign policy.

It’s not a world in which good is pitted against evil. It’s really a world in which gray is pitted against gray.

Even though we are a powerful nation, there are very real limits to our power, very real limits to our capacity to anticipate the consequences of our actions, and therefore we really ought to be a lot more modest in the way we approach the world.

What are your views on Iraq?

There is no question that security conditions have improved significantly over the past year and a half. Regardless of whether you think the war is a good idea or a bad idea, it’s a good thing that the security conditions have improved. Those who have claimed that this is the result of a genius strategy called “the surge” probably are oversimplifying. The explanation for why security conditions have improved is complex, and it reflects as much internal decisions made—internal to Iraq—as much as it does anything that we’ve done.

Does that mean that victory is at hand? I don’t think so. Iraq still is in many respects a dependency, can’t manage its own affairs. So we are stuck there, absent a sort of a decision by President-elect Obama to just draw a line and say, “This was a mistake and we’re getting out.”

It’s important to ask, “What does it mean, what have we gained?” Among the numerous justifications for the war, one very important one was weapons of mass destruction. There were none. One was that somehow Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with al Qaeda. He was not.

The real justification, the real strategic plan, the real reason that the Bush administration went in is that they thought that by toppling Saddam, we could bring about rapid and efficient transformation of Iraqi society and make it into a somewhat liberal, modern, cohesive, functioning nation state, and that somehow that success in Iraq would be a precedent for achieving a similar transformation in other Muslim societies.

Does that strike you as chutzpah?

It strikes me as bizarre.

Even if tomorrow we declared victory in Iraq, the war has not provided a template for the, quote, unquote, transformation of the rest of the Middle East. Even if it ended tomorrow, we would have expended—what, $800 billion or $1 trillion?—and lost well more than 4,000 American lives.

Does anybody think we’re going to similarly transform Iran or Syria or, God forbid, Pakistan? As a step in a longer-term strategic process, the Iraq War has failed.

You’re a professor. Across the board Americans are not very well versed in history, their own history or the history of other countries.

When you’re flying along at 35,000 feet and you’re looking down, you say, “My God, this is a big country.” We live in our own world—we are our own world. There are vast, wide-open spaces. There is something about the environment in which we Americans live that encourages a certain provincialism.

The notion that we’ve ever pursued an isolationist foreign policy is totally wrong and unsustainable by our history. It’s one of the great enduring myths. But the notion that we are an inward-looking people is not mythic. There is that inclination to look within and to not be especially interested in what is going on out there.

I myself am guilty. To the extent that I was interested in the world, say, 25 or 30 years ago, I was interested in the world that was defined by the Cold War. The world that mattered to me was the world of divided Germany and divided South Korea and the Soviet empire and places like that. I wasn’t interested in Afghanistan or the history of Afghanistan. So, yes, I’ve discovered the history of Afghanistan, I’ve discovered something of the history of Iraq.

But we tend to be provincial, and that becomes a problem when we get up in the morning and decide we’re going to go remake one of these distant places.

In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times in late August, you weren’t very sanguine about real change coming to Washington on Jan. 20, 2009. You write, “The very structure of American politics imposes its own constraints.” What are some of those constraints?

I don’t think presidents govern—administrations do. You have to look at the people they bring in. In many respects the people that I see surrounding Obama, at least with regard to foreign policy, aren’t radically different from the people who surrounded McCain.

They’re not identical, but it’s not as if we’ve got a bunch of isolationists or peaceniks or whatever. You actually have a bunch of people around Obama who believe in the notion of American global leadership, believe that America should be the supreme military power, who, yes, believe that we screwed up Iraq. But Obama himself says quite frequently, I’m not going to hesitate to pull the trigger when I think I need to pull the trigger.

Also, we have to acknowledge the extent to which any administration is also hemmed in by interests. The president can get up in the morning and say, “I’ve got a great idea.” But presidents operate within confines defined by sundry interests that don’t want change to occur beyond certain limits. So the president is not going to save the day.

NPR : Is This The 'End Of American Exceptionalism'?

2010-07-27T18:35:00.001-04:00

Is This The 'End Of American Exceptionalism'?

Excerpt: 'The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism'

by Andrew J. Bacevich | September 11, 2008

Chapter One

The Crisis of Profligacy

Today, no less than in 1776, a passion for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness remains at the center of America's civic theology. The Jeffersonian trinity summarizes our common inheritance, defines our aspirations, and provides the touchstone for our influence abroad.

Yet if Americans still cherish the sentiments contained in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, they have, over time, radically revised their understanding of those "inalienable rights." Today, individual Americans use their freedom to do many worthy things. Some read, write, paint, sculpt, compose, and play music. Others build, restore, and preserve. Still others attend plays, concerts, and sporting events, visit their local multiplexes, IM each other incessantly, and join "communities" of the like- minded in an ever- growing array of virtual worlds. They also pursue innumerable hobbies, worship, tithe, and, in commendably large numbers, attend to the needs of the less fortunate. Yet none of these in themselves define what it means to be an American in the twenty-first century.

If one were to choose a single word to characterize that identity, it would have to be more. For the majority of contemporary Americans, the essence of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness centers on a relentless personal quest to acquire, to consume, to indulge, and to shed whatever constraints might interfere with those endeavors. A bumper sticker, a sardonic motto, and a charge dating from the Age of Woodstock have recast the Jeffersonian trinity in modern vernacular: "Whoever dies with the most toys wins"; "Shop till you drop"; "If it feels good, do it."

It would be misleading to suggest that every American has surrendered to this ethic of self- gratification. Resistance to its demands persists and takes many forms. Yet dissenters, intent on curbing the American penchant for consumption and self- indulgence, are fighting a rear- guard action, valiant perhaps but unlikely to reverse the tide. The ethic of self- gratification has firmly entrenched itself as the defining feature of the American way of life. The point is neither to deplore nor to celebrate this fact, but simply to acknowledge it.

Others have described, dissected, and typically bemoaned the cultural—and even moral—implications of this development. Few, however, have considered how an American preoccupation with "more" has affected U.S. relations with rest of the world. Yet the foreign policy implications of our present- day penchant for consumption and self- indulgence are almost entirely negative. Over the past six decades, efforts to satisfy spiraling consumer demand have given birth to a condition of profound dependency. The United States may still remain the mightiest power the world has ever seen, but the fact is that Americans are no longer masters of their own fate.

The ethic of self- gratification threatens the well- being of the United States. It does so not because Americans have lost touch with some mythical Puritan habits of hard work and self- abnegation, but because it saddles us with costly commitments abroad that we are increasingly ill- equipped to sustain while confronting us with dangers to which we have no ready response. As the prerequisites of the American way of life have grown, they have outstripped the means available to satisfy them. Americans of an earlier generation worried about bomber and missile gaps, both of which turned out to be fictitious. The present- day gap between requirements and the means available to satisfy those requirements is neither contrived nor imaginary. It is real and growing. This gap defines the crisis of American profligacy.

Power and Abundance

Placed in historical perspective, the triumph of this ethic of self- gratification hardly qualifies as a surprise. The restless search for a buck and the ruthless elimination of anyone—or anything—standing in the way of doing so have long been central to the American character. Touring the United States in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville, astute observer of the young Republic, noted the "feverish ardor" of its citizens to accumulate. Yet, even as the typical American "clutches at everything," the Frenchman wrote, "he holds nothing fast, but soon loosens his grasp to pursue fresh gratifications." However munificent his possessions, the American hungered for more, an obsession that filled him with "anxiety, fear, and regret, and keeps his mind in ceaseless trepidation."

Even in de Tocqueville's day, satisfying such yearnings as well as easing the anxieties and fears they evoked had important policy implications. To quench their ardor, Americans looked abroad, seeking to extend the reach of U.S. power. The pursuit of "fresh gratifications" expressed itself collectively in an urge to expand, territorially and commercially. This expansionist project was already well begun when de Tocqueville's famed Democracy in America appeared, most notably through Jefferson's acquisition of the Louisiana territory in 1803 and through ongoing efforts to remove (or simply eliminate) Native Americans, an undertaking that continued throughout the nineteenth century.

Preferring to remember their collective story somewhat differently, Americans look to politicians to sanitize their past. When, in his 2005 inaugural address, George W. Bush identified the promulgation of freedom as "the mission that created our nation," neoconservative hearts certainly beat a little faster, as they undoubtedly did when he went on to declare that America's "great liberating tradition" now required the United States to devote itself to "ending tyranny in our world." Yet Bush was simply putting his own gloss on a time- honored conviction ascribing to the United States a uniqueness of character and purpose. From its founding, America has expressed through its behavior and its evolution a providential purpose. Paying homage to, and therefore renewing, this tradition of American exceptionalism has long been one of the presidency's primary extra constitutional obligations.

Many Americans find such sentiments compelling. Yet to credit the United States with possessing a "liberating tradition" is equivalent to saying that Hollywood has a "tradition of artistic excellence." The movie business is just that—a business. Its purpose is to make money. If once in a while a studio produces a .lm of aesthetic value, that may be cause for celebration, but profit, not revealing truth and beauty, defines the purpose of the enterprise.

Something of the same can be said of the enterprise launched on July 4, 1776. The hardheaded lawyers, merchants, farmers, and slaveholding plantation owners gathered in Philadelphia that summer did not set out to create a church. They founded a republic. Their purpose was not to save mankind. It was to ensure that people like themselves enjoyed unencumbered access to the Jeffersonian trinity.

In the years that followed, the United States achieved remarkable success in making good on those aims. Yet never during the course of America's transformation from a small power to a great one did the United States exert itself to liberate others—absent an overriding perception that the nation had large security or economic interests at stake.

From time to time, although not nearly as frequently as we like to imagine, some of the world's unfortunates managed as a consequence to escape from bondage. The Civil War did, for instance, produce emancipation. Yet to explain the conflagration of 1861–65 as a response to the plight of enslaved African Americans is to engage at best in an immense oversimplification. Near the end of World War II, GIs did liberate the surviving inmates of Nazi death camps. Yet for those who directed the American war effort of 1941–45, the fate of European Jews never figured as more than an afterthought.

Crediting the United States with a "great liberating tradition" distorts the past and obscures the actual motive force behind American politics and U.S. foreign policy. It transforms history into a morality tale, thereby providing a rationale for dodging serious moral analysis. To insist that the liberation of others has never been more than an ancillary motive of U.S. policy is not cynicism; it is a prerequisite to self-understanding.

If the young United States had a mission, it was not to liberate but to expand. "Of course," declared Theodore Roosevelt in 1899, as if explaining the self- evident to the obtuse, "our whole national history has been one of expansion." TR spoke truthfully. The founders viewed stasis as tantamount to suicide. From the outset, Americans evinced a compulsion to acquire territory and extend their commercial reach abroad.

How was expansion achieved? On this point, the historical record leaves no room for debate: by any means necessary. Depending on the circumstances, the United States relied on diplomacy, hard bargaining, bluster, chicanery, intimidation, or naked coercion. We infiltrated land belonging to our neighbors and then brazenly proclaimed it our own. We harassed, filibustered, and, when the situation called for it, launched full- scale invasions. We engaged in ethnic cleansing. At times, we insisted that treaties be considered sacrosanct. On other occasions, we blithely jettisoned solemn agreements that had outlived their usefulness.

As the methods employed varied, so too did the rationales offered to justify action. We touted our status as God's new Chosen People, erecting a "city upon a hill" destined to illuminate the world. We acted at the behest of providential guidance or responded to the urgings of our "manifest destiny." We declared our obligation to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ or to "uplift little brown brother." With Woodrow Wilson as our tutor, we shouldered our responsibility to "show the way to the nations of the world how they shall walk in the paths of liberty." Critics who derided these claims as bunkum—the young Lincoln during the war with Mexico, Mark Twain after the imperial adventures of 1898, Senator Robert La Follette amid "the war to end all wars"— scored points but lost the argument. Periodically revised and refurbished, American exceptionalism (which implied exceptional American prerogatives) only gained greater currency.

When it came to action rather than talk, even the policy makers viewed as most idealistic remained fixated on one overriding aim: enhancing American influence, wealth, and power. The record of U.S. foreign relations from the earliest colonial encounters with Native Americans to the end of the Cold War is neither uniquely high- minded nor uniquely hypocritical and exploitive. In this sense, the interpretations of America's past offered by both George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden fall equally wide of the mark. As a rising power, the United States adhered to the iron laws of international politics, which allow little space for altruism. If the tale of American expansion contains a moral theme at all, that theme is necessarily one of ambiguity.

Excepted from The Limits of Power by Andrew J. Bacevich. Copyright @ 2008 by Andrew J. Bacevich. Published in 2008 by Henry Holt and Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

WaPo : What's an Iraqi Life Worth?

2010-07-13T11:23:00.000-04:00

What's an Iraqi Life Worth?

By Andrew J. Bacevich | July 9, 2006

In Iraq, lives differ in value -- and so do deaths. In this disparity lies an important reason why the United States has botched this war.

Last November in Haditha, a squad of Marines, outraged at the loss of a comrade, is said to have run amok, avenging his death by killing two dozen innocent bystanders. And in March, U.S. soldiers in Mahmudiyah allegedly raped a young Iraqi woman and killed her along with three of her relatives -- an apparently premeditated crime for which one former U.S. soldier has been charged. These incidents are among at least five recent cases of Iraqi civilian deaths that have triggered investigations of U.S. military personnel. If the allegations prove true, Haditha and Mahmudiyah will deservedly take their place alongside Sand Creek, Samar and My Lai in the unhappy catalogue of atrocities committed by American troops.

But recall a more recent incident, in Samarra. On May 30, U.S. soldiers manning a checkpoint there opened fire on a speeding vehicle that either did not see or failed to heed their command to stop. Two women in the vehicle were shot dead. One of them, Nahiba Husayif Jassim, 35, was pregnant. The baby was also killed. The driver, Jassim's brother, had been rushing her to a hospital to give birth. No one tried to cover up the incident: U.S. military representatives issued expressions of regret.

In all likelihood, we will be learning more about Haditha and Mahmudiyah for months to come, whereas the Samarra story has already been filed away and largely forgotten. And that's the problem.

The killing at the Samarra checkpoint was not an atrocity; most likely it was an accident, a mistake. Yet plenty of evidence suggests that in Iraq such mistakes have occurred routinely, with moral and political consequences that have been too long ignored. Indeed, conscious motivation is beside the point: Any action resulting in Iraqi civilian deaths, however inadvertent, undermines the Bush administration's narrative of liberation, and swells the ranks of those resisting the U.S. presence.

Gen. Tommy Franks, who commanded U.S. forces when they entered Iraq more than three years ago, famously declared: "We don't do body counts." Franks was speaking in code. What he meant was this: The U.S. military has learned the lessons of Vietnam -- where body counts became a principal, and much derided, public measure of success -- and it has no intention of repeating that experience. Franks was not going to be one of those generals re-fighting the last war.

Unfortunately, Franks and other senior commanders had not so much learned from Vietnam as forgotten it. This disdain for counting bodies, especially those of Iraqi civilians killed in the course of U.S. operations, is among the reasons why U.S. forces find themselves in another quagmire. It's not that the United States has an aversion to all body counts. We tally every U.S. service member who falls in Iraq, and rightly so. But only in recent months have military leaders finally begun to count -- for internal use only -- some of the very large number of Iraqi noncombatants whom American bullets and bombs have killed.

Through the war's first three years, any Iraqi venturing too close to an American convoy or checkpoint was likely to come under fire. Thousands of these "escalation of force" episodes occurred. Now, Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, has begun to recognize the hidden cost of such an approach. "People who were on the fence or supported us" in the past "have in fact decided to strike out against us," he recently acknowledged.

In the early days of the insurgency, some U.S. commanders appeared oblivious to the possibility that excessive force might produce a backlash. They counted on the iron fist to create an atmosphere conducive to good behavior. The idea was not to distinguish between "good" and "bad" Iraqis, but to induce compliance through intimidation.

"You have to understand the Arab mind," one company commander told the New York Times, displaying all the self-assurance of Douglas MacArthur discoursing on Orientals in 1945. "The only thing they understand is force -- force, pride and saving face." Far from representing the views of a few underlings, such notions penetrated into the upper echelons of the American command. In their book "Cobra II," Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor offer this ugly comment from a senior officer: "The only thing these sand niggers understand is force and I'm about to introduce them to it."

Such crass language, redolent with racist, ethnocentric connotations, speaks volumes. These characterizations, like the use of "gooks" during the Vietnam War, dehumanize the Iraqis and in doing so tacitly permit the otherwise impermissible. Thus, Abu Ghraib and Haditha -- and too many regretted deaths, such as that of Nahiba Husayif Jassim.

As the war enters its fourth year, how many innocent Iraqis have died at American hands, not as a result of Haditha-like massacres but because of accidents and errors? The military doesn't know and, until recently, has publicly professed no interest in knowing. Estimates range considerably, but the number almost certainly runs in the tens of thousands. Even granting the common antiwar bias of those who track the Iraqi death toll -- and granting, too, that the insurgents have far more blood on their hands -- there is no question that the number of Iraqi noncombatants killed by U.S. forces exceeds by an order of magnitude the number of U.S. troops killed in hostile action, which is now more than 2,000.

Who bears responsibility for these Iraqi deaths? The young soldiers pulling the triggers? The commanders who establish rules of engagement that privilege "force protection" over any obligation to protect innocent life? The intellectually bankrupt policymakers who sent U.S. forces into Iraq in the first place and now see no choice but to press on? The culture that, to put it mildly, has sought neither to understand nor to empathize with people in the Arab or Islamic worlds?

There are no easy answers, but one at least ought to acknowledge that in launching a war advertised as a high-minded expression of U.S. idealism, we have waded into a swamp of moral ambiguity. To assert that "stuff happens," as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is wont to do whenever events go awry, simply does not suffice.

Moral questions aside, the toll of Iraqi noncombatant casualties has widespread political implications. Misdirected violence alienates those we are claiming to protect. It plays into the hands of the insurgents, advancing their cause and undercutting our own. It fatally undermines the campaign to win hearts and minds, suggesting to Iraqis and Americans alike that Iraqi civilians -- and perhaps Arabs and Muslims more generally -- are expendable. Certainly, Nahiba Husayif Jassim's death helped clarify her brother's perspective on the war. "God take revenge on the Americans and those who brought them here," he declared after the incident. "They have no regard for our lives."

He was being unfair, of course. It's not that we have no regard for Iraqi lives; it's just that we have much less regard for them. The current reparations policy -- the payment offered in those instances in which U.S. forces do own up to killing an Iraq civilian -- makes the point. The insurance payout to the beneficiaries of an American soldier who dies in the line of duty is $400,000, while in the eyes of the U.S. government, a dead Iraqi civilian is reportedly worth up to $2,500 in condolence payments -- about the price of a decent plasma-screen TV.

For all the talk of Iraq being a sovereign nation, foreign occupiers are the ones deciding what an Iraqi life is worth. And although President Bush has remarked in a different context that "every human life is a precious gift of matchless value," our actions in Iraq continue to convey the impression that civilian lives aren't worth all that much.

That impression urgently needs to change. To start, the Pentagon must get over its aversion to counting all bodies. It needs to measure in painstaking detail -- and publicly -- the mayhem we are causing as a byproduct of what we call liberation. To do otherwise, to shrug off the death of Nahiba Husayif Jassim as just one of those things that happens in war, only reinforces the impression that Americans view Iraqis as less than fully human. Unless we demonstrate by our actions that we value their lives as much as the lives of our own troops, our failure is certain.

bacevich@bu.edu

Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University.

WaPo : I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty.

2010-07-13T11:17:00.000-04:00

I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty.

By Andrew J. Bacevich | May 27, 2007

Parents who lose children, whether through accident or illness, inevitably wonder what they could have done to prevent their loss. When my son was killed in Iraq earlier this month at age 27, I found myself pondering my responsibility for his death.

Among the hundreds of messages that my wife and I have received, two bore directly on this question. Both held me personally culpable, insisting that my public opposition to the war had provided aid and comfort to the enemy. Each said that my son's death came as a direct result of my antiwar writings.

This may seem a vile accusation to lay against a grieving father. But in fact, it has become a staple of American political discourse, repeated endlessly by those keen to allow President Bush a free hand in waging his war. By encouraging "the terrorists," opponents of the Iraq conflict increase the risk to U.S. troops. Although the First Amendment protects antiwar critics from being tried for treason, it provides no protection for the hardly less serious charge of failing to support the troops -- today's civic equivalent of dereliction of duty.

What exactly is a father's duty when his son is sent into harm's way?

Among the many ways to answer that question, mine was this one: As my son was doing his utmost to be a good soldier, I strove to be a good citizen.

As a citizen, I have tried since Sept. 11, 2001, to promote a critical understanding of U.S. foreign policy. I know that even now, people of good will find much to admire in Bush's response to that awful day. They applaud his doctrine of preventive war. They endorse his crusade to spread democracy across the Muslim world and to eliminate tyranny from the face of the Earth. They insist not only that his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was correct but that the war there can still be won. Some -- the members of the "the-surge-is-already-working" school of thought -- even profess to see victory just over the horizon.

I believe that such notions are dead wrong and doomed to fail. In books, articles and op-ed pieces, in talks to audiences large and small, I have said as much. "The long war is an unwinnable one," I wrote in this section of The Washington Post in August 2005. "The United States needs to liquidate its presence in Iraq, placing the onus on Iraqis to decide their fate and creating the space for other regional powers to assist in brokering a political settlement. We've done all that we can do."

Not for a second did I expect my own efforts to make a difference. But I did nurse the hope that my voice might combine with those of others -- teachers, writers, activists and ordinary folks -- to educate the public about the folly of the course on which the nation has embarked. I hoped that those efforts might produce a political climate conducive to change. I genuinely believed that if the people spoke, our leaders in Washington would listen and respond.

This, I can now see, was an illusion.

The people have spoken, and nothing of substance has changed. The November 2006 midterm elections signified an unambiguous repudiation of the policies that landed us in our present predicament. But half a year later, the war continues, with no end in sight. Indeed, by sending more troops to Iraq (and by extending the tours of those, like my son, who were already there), Bush has signaled his complete disregard for what was once quaintly referred to as "the will of the people."

To be fair, responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son's death, my state's senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son's wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me.

To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove -- namely, wealthy individuals and institutions.

Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought.

Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.

Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation's call to "global leadership." It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent.

This is not some great conspiracy. It's the way our system works.

In joining the Army, my son was following in his father's footsteps: Before he was born, I had served in Vietnam. As military officers, we shared an ironic kinship of sorts, each of us demonstrating a peculiar knack for picking the wrong war at the wrong time. Yet he was the better soldier -- brave and steadfast and irrepressible.

I know that my son did his best to serve our country. Through my own opposition to a profoundly misguided war, I thought I was doing the same. In fact, while he was giving his all, I was doing nothing. In this way, I failed him.

Andrew J. Bacevich teaches history and international relations at Boston University. His son died May 13 after a suicide bomb explosion in Salah al-Din province.

National Interest : Raising Jihad

2010-07-13T06:30:00.000-04:00

Raising Jihad

by Andrew J. Bacevich | March 2, 2009

[review of David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 384 pp., $27.95.]

IN WASHINGTON, protracted crisis creates opportunities. The cold war gave rise to a national-security elite whose members flourished for decades while rotating in and out of government. To this very day, the Arab-Israeli “peace process” performs a similar function, supporting the existence of various research institutes and advocacy groups while providing fodder for endless conferencing and endlessly repetitive studies, essays and op-eds.

The Long War—the Pentagon’s preferred name for the global war on terror—promises to do much the same. Whatever else one may say of this conflict, it has demonstrated a remarkable capacity to generate jobs. Established federal agencies have expanded. New ones have come into existence. Think tanks have proliferated. Contractors and lobbyists have prospered. Given the assumption—shared by mainstream Democrats and Republicans alike—that the Long War will continue for decades if not generations, its potential as an engine for career opportunities appears vast indeed.

Protracted crisis also produces its own cult of celebrity, exalting the status of figures perceived to possess inside knowledge or to exercise particular clout. During the early days of the cold war, functionaries like George Kennan and Paul Nitze suddenly became boldfaced names. As the great struggle with the Soviet Union dragged on, the list of notable cold warriors lengthened. Some of these Washington celebrities—presidential assistants, politically savvy generals, agency heads, and “whiz kids” with sharp elbows and a knack for self-promotion—quickly flamed out, left town and were soon forgotten. Others fell from grace and yet continued to haunt the city where they once exercised power. (A few years ago I came across Robert McNamara lunching alone at the Old Ebbitt Grill; it was like suddenly encountering a spirit from the netherworld—and about as welcome.) A few celebs manage to retain enduring influence. The peace process may be a niche market, but even today on just about anything related to Arabs and Israelis, Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross head the short list of go-to guys. Like Cher and Madonna—or like Zbig and Henry—they’ve been at it so long that surnames are no longer required: Martin and Dennis will do just fine.

So too with the Long War. It is producing its own constellation of celebrities, of whom General David Petraeus is far and away the brightest, but that also includes the likes of Colonel H. R. McMaster, the hero of Tal Afar; retired–Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, author of the influential book Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife and now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), the best of the think tanks spawned by the Long War; and Dr. David Kilcullen, who is perhaps the most interesting of this select group.

Kilcullen was once a soldier and now classifies himself as a “counterinsurgency professional.” A former officer in the Australian army with a PhD from the University of New South Wales (his dissertation dealt with Indonesian terrorists and guerrilla movements), Kilcullen has served as an adviser to General Petraeus in Baghdad and to former–Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington. As the Bush administration left office, he signed on with CNAS and also became a partner with the Crumpton Group, a Washington-based consulting firm founded by former–CIA official and terrorism specialist Henry “Hank” Crumpton. The Long War has been good to Dr. Kilcullen.

For perhaps just that reason, when it comes to taking stock of that conflict, Kilcullen is someone to reckon with. In his new book The Accidental Guerrilla, we actually encounter three Kilcullens. First there is Kilcullen the practitioner, who draws on considerable firsthand experience to offer his own take on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In this regard, Accidental Guerrilla resembles dozens of other Washington books, blending memoir with policy analysis, generously laced with spin. Then there is Kilcullen the scholar, presenting his own grand theory of insurgency and prescribing a set of “best practices” to which counterinsurgents should adhere. In this regard, the book falls somewhere between academic treatise and military field manual: it is dry, repetitive and laced with statements of the obvious. Last, however, there is Kilcullen the apostate. With the administration whose policies he sought to implement now gone from office, Kilcullen uses Accidental Guerrilla to skewer those he served for gross strategic ineptitude. His chief finding—that through its actions the Bush administration has managed to exacerbate the Islamist threat while wasting resources on a prodigious scale—is not exactly novel. Yet given Kilcullen’s status as both witness and participant, his indictment carries considerable weight. Here lies the real value of his book.

ON IRAQ, Kilcullen the practitioner is generally bullish. As a member of Petraeus’s inner circle during the period of the so-called surge, he makes two points. First, the surge is working. Second, credit for this success belongs to those who served in Baghdad, above all General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, rather than to paper pushers back in the White House or kibitzers congregating over lunch at the American Enterprise Institute.

The surge, Kilcullen contends, pulled Iraqi “society back from the brink of total collapse.” In terms of security, he describes the progress achieved as “substantive and significant.” U.S. efforts prior to February 2007, when Petraeus took command in Baghdad, had been almost entirely counterproductive. An excessive reliance on force had accomplished little apart from “progressively alienating village after village” while “creating a pool of people who hate the U.S.” Sectarian violence was driving the minority Sunni community into the arms of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and other extremist groups. As a result, by 2006 Iraq was drowning in “an immense tide of blood.”

The Joint Campaign Plan for 2007 and 2008, devised under Petraeus’s direction, reversed that tide. The new approach, according to Kilcullen, began with a detailed political strategy aimed at reconciling Iraq’s various sectarian and ethnic factions. Improved security would create conditions making reconciliation possible. The key to improving security was to pay less attention to killing the enemy and more attention to protecting the Iraqi people. This in turn required a wholesale shift in the way that U.S. and other coalition forces were doing business. President Bush’s decision to deploy a half-dozen additional brigades combined with Petraeus’s implementation of a newly revised (or freshly rediscovered) counterinsurgency doctrine made all the difference.

Here the triumphal narrative constructed by the Bush White House (and enshrined in neoconservative circles) ends. Kilcullen makes it clear that the actual story is more complicated and by implication more problematic.

Napoleon once remarked that the best generals were the ones favored by good luck. Petraeus is clearly a capable general; in Iraq circa 2007 he may well have been an especially lucky one as well.

Some months prior to his arrival in Baghdad, the character of the Iraq War had begun to change. Beginning in western Anbar Province, Sunni tribal leaders, whose followers provided the insurgent rank and file, began to turn on AQI. The Americans misleadingly dubbed this the Sunni Awakening, as if our adversaries had begun to see the light. As Kilcullen makes clear, Sunni behavior was utterly pragmatic. “Only a naif,” he writes, would interpret the Sunni tribal revolt as “indicating support for the Iraqi government or for Coalition forces.” Still, in exchange for guns and money, Sunni sheikhs promised to desist from attacking U.S. troops and to collaborate in efforts to target AQI. They proved as good as their word. In terms of reducing the overall level of violence, this development—which U.S. officials stumbled on belatedly and then scrambled to harness—proved crucial.

How long will this marriage of convenience endure and what sort of offspring will it produce? The truth is that it’s probably too soon to tell. When it comes to anything touching on Iraq’s future, Kilcullen, whose usual mode of expression does not suggest a want of self-confidence, becomes notably circumspect. He concedes that expectations of improved security producing a top-down political settlement have not panned out: the Iraqi government in Baghdad remains divided and dysfunctional. Yet as a stalwart defender of the surge, he nurtures hopes that deals being cut with local tribal leaders might foster an “Iraqi-led, bottom-up” process of reconciliation.

Kilcullen makes no promises on that score, instead acknowledging the self-evident: despite six years of prodigious effort, the Americans are along for the ride. The Iraqis are in charge. The Sunni Awakening, he writes, “was their idea, they started it, they are leading it, it is happening on their terms and their timeline.” By extension, the Iraqis will decide where things go from here, with Kilcullen venturing only that events “will play out in ways that may be good or bad, but are fundamentally unpredictable.” In short, the second-order benefits of a success that Kilcullen hails as undeniable, substantive and significant turn out to be partial, precarious and shrouded in ambiguity—a pretty meager return on a very substantial American investment.

In 2008, Kilcullen left Baghdad and turned his attention to Afghanistan, surveying the situation there at the behest of then-Secretary Rice. More than seven years after U.S. forces first arrived, the news coming out of Kabul is almost uniformly bad. Kilcullen knows this but insists that the war “remains winnable.” In this case, winning will require the United States and its allies to commit themselves to an intensive effort, lasting “five to ten years at least,” aimed at “building a resilient Afghan state and civil society” capable of fending off the Taliban. The key to success, in his view, is to extend “an effective, legitimate government presence into Afghanistan’s 40,020 villages.” Such a presence, he concedes, is something that has never existed.

Stripped to its essentials, this is a call for Western-engineered nation building on a stupendous scale—in Kilcullen’s own words, “building an effective state structure, for the first time in modern Afghan history.” Yet even that will not suffice. Given the porous Afghan-Pakistani border, unless the United States and its partners also fix Pakistan, “a military victory in Afghanistan will simply shift the problem a few miles to the east.” With this is mind, Kilcullen calls for a “full-spectrum strategy” designed to “improve governance, security, and economic conditions” throughout the region. Although he illustrates this approach anecdotally, he offers no estimates of costs or who will pay them. Nor does Kilcullen explain why the results to be achieved in Afghanistan-Pakistan, even in the very best case, would produce an outcome any more definitive than the one he foresees in Iraq.

KILCULLEN THE practitioner, intent on transforming Afghanistan and Pakistan, is not entirely on the same page with Kilcullen the scholar, whose grand theory of insurgency emphasizes the unintended consequences of mucking around in traditional societies.

Mucking around by outsiders converts small problems into big ones. An appreciation of this phenomenon lies at the heart of al-Qaeda’s strategy, which Kilcullen describes as “fundamentally one of bleeding the United States to exhaustion, while simultaneously using U.S. reaction to incite a mass uprising within the Islamic world.” With that end in mind, al-Qaeda conspires to lure the West into launching ill-advised military actions, confident that one result will be to antagonize the local population, which will then respond to al-Qaeda’s calls to expel the intruders. In essence, Western intervention serves as al-Qaeda’s best recruiting tool. This is Kilcullen’s Accidental Guerrilla Syndrome.

Kilcullen emphasizes that accidental guerrillas fight not to reinstitute the caliphate or to convert nonbelievers, but “principally to be left alone.” What they want above all is to preserve their way of life. The vast majority of those who take up arms against the United States and its allies do so “not because they hate the West and seek our overthrow, but because we have invaded their space to deal with a small extremist element.”

Of course, rather than depicting the threat posed by al-Qaeda as small, the Bush administration chose to cast it as equivalent to Nazi Germany. The premise underlying the administration’s Long War was that the Islamic world could not be “left alone.” Instead, it had to be coerced into changing. The administration invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq to jump-start that process of change. In doing so, however, the United States was playing directly into enemy hands. The decision to go after Saddam Hussein in particular, Kilcullen writes, was “a deeply misguided and counterproductive undertaking, an extremely severe strategic error.” The ostensible success of the surge notwithstanding, the Iraq War remains a “sorry adventure.”

The improved counterinsurgency techniques now being implemented by the United States military do not redeem that error. They merely offer, in the judgment of Kilcullen the apostate, “the best way out of a bad situation that we should never have gotten ourselves into.”

Here we arrive at the nub of the matter. According to a currently fashionable view, the chief operative lesson of the Iraq War is that counterinsurgency works, with U.S. forces having now mastered the best practices required to prevail in conflicts of this nature. Those who adhere to this view expect the Long War to bring more such challenges, with the neglected Afghan conflict even now presenting itself as next in line. Given this prospect, they want the Pentagon to gear itself up for a succession of such trials, enshrining counterinsurgency as the preferred American way of war in place of discredited concepts like “shock and awe.” Doing so will have large implications for how defense dollars are distributed among the various armed services and for how U.S. forces are trained, equipped and configured. Ask yourself how many fighter-bombers or nuclear submarines it takes to establish an effective government presence in each of Afghanistan’s 40,020 villages and you get the gist of what this might imply.

Yet given the costs of Iraq—now second only to World War II as the most expensive war in all U.S. history—and given the way previous efforts to pacify the Afghan countryside have fared, how much should we expect to spend in redeeming Afghanistan’s forty thousand villages? Having completed that task five or ten years hence, how many other villages in Pakistan, Iran, Syria and Egypt will require similar ministrations? And how many more accidental guerrillas will we inadvertently create along the way?

Kilcullen the apostate knows full well that an approach that hinges on wholesale societal transformation makes no sense. The consummate counterinsurgency professional understands that the application of technique, however skillful, will not suffice to salvage the Long War. Yet as someone deeply invested in that conflict, he cannot bring himself to acknowledge the conclusion to which his own analysis points: the very concept of waging a Long War as the antidote to Islamism is fundamentally and irrevocably flawed.

If counterinsurgency is useful chiefly for digging ourselves out of holes we shouldn’t be in, then why not simply avoid the holes? Why play al-Qaeda’s game? Why persist in waging the Long War when that war makes no sense?

When it comes to dealing with Islamism, containment rather than transformation should provide the cornerstone of U.S. (and Western) strategy. Ours is the far stronger hand. The jihadist project is entirely negative. Apart from offering an outlet for anger and resentment, Osama bin Laden and others of his ilk have nothing on offer. Time is our ally. With time, our adversary will wither and die—unless through our own folly we choose to destroy ourselves first.

Andrew J. Bacevich, a contributing editor to The National Interest, is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His most recent book is The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008).

Counterpunch : Obama's Post-Modern War of Attrition

2010-07-13T06:24:00.000-04:00

Obama's Post-Modern War of Attrition

Tell Me How This Ends?

By ANDREW J. BACEVICH | January 3, 2010

On the march to Baghdad, back when America's war on terror was young, a rising star in the United States military lobbed this enigmatic bon mot to an accommodating reporter: "Tell me how this ends." Thus did then-Maj. Gen. David Petraeus in 2003 neatly frame the issue that still today haunts the U.S.-led effort to defeat violent anti-Western jihadism.

To know how something ends implies knowing where it's going. Yet eight years after it began, the war on terror is headed back to where it started. The prequel is the sequel, Afghanistan replacing Iraq as the once and now once again central front.

So are we making progress? Even as President Obama escalates the war in Afghanistan, that question hangs in the air, ignored by all. Rather than explaining how the struggle will end, the President merely affirms that it must continue, his eye fixed on pacifying a country of which his own secretary of state recently remarked "We have no long-term stake there."

How pacifying Afghanistan will bring us closer to the figurative Berlin or Tokyo that defines our ultimate objective is unclear. True, the 9/11 plot was hatched in Afghanistan, and we want to prevent any recurrence of that event. It's also true that Dallas was the site of our last presidential assassination. Yet no one thinks that posting Secret Service agents in the Texas School Book Depository holds the key to keeping our current President safe.

Then there is the Af-Pak argument - that U.S. military action in Afghanistan is necessary to ensuring the stability of nuclear-armed Pakistan. Selling Pakistanis on the logic of this argument poses a challenge, however, given that the eight-year Western military presence in Afghanistan corresponds to an eight-year period during which Pakistan has edged steadily closer to internal collapse.

In reality, the chief rationale for pouring more troops into Afghanistan derives from a determination to restore the credibility of American arms, badly tarnished in Iraq. Thanks to Petraeus' rediscovery of counterinsurgency doctrine, road-tested in Surge I, U.S. forces ostensibly won a belated but significant triumph. Surge II could show that Iraq was no fluke.

Military analysts who a decade ago were touting the wonders of precision-guided munitions now cite counterinsurgency as the new American way of war. Killing the enemy has become passé. Advanced thinking now assigns top priority to "securing the people," insulating them from violence and winning them over with good governance. Twenty-first century American military officers speak the language of 20th century social reformers, sounding less like George Patton and more like Jane Addams.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has declared his intention to remedy "the weakness of [Afghan political] institutions, the unpunished abuse of power by corrupt officials and powerbrokers, a widespread sense of political disenfranchisement and a longstanding lack of economic opportunity."

Undertaken in Louisiana or Illinois, this would qualify as an ambitious agenda. In Afghanistan, it qualifies as a tall order indeed.

But assume the best: If McChrystal replicates in Afghanistan the success that Petraeus achieved in Iraq - ignore, please, the government ministries imploding in Baghdad - where does that leave us?

To sustain public support, a protracted war needs a persuasive narrative. Americans after Dec. 7, 1941, didn't know when their war would end. But they took comfort in knowing where and how it was going to end: with enemy armies destroyed and enemy capitals occupied.

Americans today haven't a clue when, where or how their war will end. The Long War, as the Pentagon aptly calls it, has no coherent narrative. When it comes to defining victory, U.S. political and military leaders are flying blind.

Historically, the default strategy for wars that lack a plausible victory narrative is attrition. When you don't know how to win, you try to outlast your opponent, hoping he'll run out of troops, money and will before you do. Think World War I, but also Vietnam.

The revival of counterinsurgency doctrine, celebrated as evidence of enlightened military practice, commits America to a postmodern version of attrition. Rather than wearing the enemy down, we'll build contested countries up, while expending hundreds of billions of dollars (borrowed from abroad) and hundreds of soldiers' lives (sent from home).

How does this end? The verdict is already written: The Long War ends not in victory but in exhaustion and insolvency, when the United States runs out of troops and out of money.

Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He the author of The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.

This column originally ran in the New York Daily News.

Harpers : The war we can't win

2010-07-13T06:20:00.000-04:00

The war we can't win

By A.J. Bacevich | November, 2009

By Andrew J. Bacevich, in the August 15 issue of Commonweal. Bacevich is a professor of international relations at Boston University and the author, most recently, of The Limits of Power. He served as an officer in the U.S. Army from 1969 to 1992.

History deals rudely with the pretensions of those who presume to determine its course. In an American context, this describes the fate of those falling prey to the Wilsonian Conceit. Yet the damage done by that conceit outlives its perpetrators.

From time to time, in some moment of peril or anxiety, a statesman appears on the scene promising to eliminate tyranny, ensure the triumph of liberty, and achieve permanent peace. For a moment, the statesman achieves the status of prophet, one who in his own person seemingly embodies the essence of the American purpose. Then reality intrudes, exposing the promises as costly fantasies. The prophet’s followers abandon him. Mocked and reviled, he is eventually banished—perhaps to some gated community in Dallas.

However brief his ascendancy, the discredited prophet leaves behind a legacy. Most obvious are the problems created and left unresolved, commitments made and left unfulfilled, debts accrued and left unpaid. Less obvious, but for that reason more important, are the changes in perception. The prophet recasts our image of reality. Long after his departure, remnants of that image linger and retain their capacity to beguile: consider how the Wilsonian vision of the United States as crusader state called upon to redeem the world in World War I has periodically resurfaced despite Woodrow Wilson’s own manifest failure to make good on that expectation. The prophet declaims and departs. Yet traces of his testimony, however at odds with the facts, remain lodged in our consciousness.

So it is today with Afghanistan, the conflict that George W. Bush began, then ignored, and finally bequeathed to his successor. Barack Obama has embraced that conflict as “the war we must win.” Those who celebrated Bush’s militancy back in the intoxicating days when he was promising to rid the world of evil see Obama’s enthusiasm for pressing on in Afghanistan as a vindication of sorts. They are right to do so.

The misguided and mismanaged global war on terror reduced Bush’s presidency to ruin. The candidate whose run for high office derived its energy from an implicit promise to repudiate all that Bush had wrought now seems intent on salvaging something useful from that failed enterprise—even if that means putting his own presidency at risk. Candidate Obama once derided the notion that the United States is called upon to determine the fate of Iraq. President Obama expresses a willingness to expend untold billions—not to mention who knows how many lives—in order to determine the fate of Afghanistan. Liberals may have interpreted Obama’s campaign pledge to ramp up the U.S. military commitment to Afghanistan as calculated to insulate himself from the charge of being a national-security wimp. Events have exposed that interpretation as incorrect. It turns out—apparently—that the president genuinely views this remote, landlocked, primitive Central Asian country as a vital U.S. national-security interest.

What is it about Afghanistan, possessing next to nothing that the United States requires, that justifies such lavish attention? In Washington, this question goes not only unanswered but unasked. Among Democrats and Republicans alike, with few exceptions, Afghanistan’s importance is simply assumed—much the way fifty years ago otherwise intelligent people simply assumed that the United States had a vital interest in ensuring the -survival of South Vietnam. Today, as then, the assumption does not stand up to even casual scrutiny.

Tune in to the Sunday talk shows or consult the op-ed pages and you might conclude otherwise. Those who profess to be in the know insist that the fight in Afghanistan is essential to keeping America safe. The events of September 11, 2001, ostensibly occurred because we ignored Afghanistan. Preventing the recurrence of those events, therefore, requires that we fix the place. Yet this widely accepted line of reasoning overlooks the primary reason the 9/11 conspiracy succeeded: federal, state, and local agencies responsible for basic security fell down on the job, failing to install even minimally adequate security measures at the nation’s airports. The national-security apparatus wasn’t paying attention. Indeed, consumed with its ABC agenda—“anything but Clinton” were the Bush Administration’s watchwords in those days—it ignored or downplayed all sorts of warning signs, not least of all Osama bin Laden’s declaration of war against the United States. Averting a recurrence of that awful day does not require the semipermanent occupation and pacification of distant countries like Afghanistan. Rather, it requires that the United States erect and maintain robust defenses.

Fixing Afghanistan is not only unnecessary, it’s also likely to prove impossible. Not for nothing has the place acquired the nickname Graveyard of Empires. Americans, insistent that the dominion over which they preside does not meet the definition of empire, evince little interest in how the British, Russians, or others have fared in attempting to impose their will on the Afghans. As General David McKiernan, until recently the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, put it, “There’s always an inclination to relate what we’re doing now with previous nations,” adding, “I think that’s a very unhealthy comparison.” McKiernan was expressing a view common among the ranks of the political and military elite: We’re Americans. We’re different. Therefore, the experience of others does not apply.

Of course, Americans like McKiernan who reject as irrelevant the experience of others might at least be willing to contemplate the experience of the United States itself. Take the case of Iraq, now bizarrely trumpeted in some quarters as a “success” and even more bizarrely seen as offering a template for how to turn Afghanistan around. Much has been made of the United States Army’s rediscovery of (and growing infatuation with) counterinsurgency doctrine, applied in Iraq beginning in early 2007 when President Bush launched his so-called surge and anointed General David Petraeus as the senior U.S. commander in Baghdad. Yet technique is no substitute for strategy. Violence in Iraq may be down, but evidence of the promised political reconciliation that the surge was intended to produce remains elusive. America’s Mesopotamian misadventure continues. Pretending that the surge has redeemed the Iraq war is akin to claiming that when Andy Jackson “caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans” he thereby enabled the United States to emerge victorious from the War of 1812. Such a judgment works well as folklore but ignores an abundance of contrary evidence.

More than six years after it began, Operation Iraqi Freedom has consumed something like a trillion dollars—with the meter still running—and has taken the lives of more than 4,300 American soldiers. Meanwhile, in Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities, car bombs continue to detonate at regular intervals, killing and maiming dozens. Anyone inclined to put Iraq in the nation’s rearview mirror is simply deluded. Not long ago, General Raymond Odierno, Petraeus’s successor and the fifth U.S. commander in Baghdad, expressed the view that the insurgency in Iraq is likely to drag on for another five, ten, or fifteen years. Events may well show that Odierno is an optimist.

Given the embarrassing yet indisputable fact that this was an utterly needless war—no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction found, no ties between Saddam Hussein and the jihadists established, no democratic transformation of the Islamic world set in motion, no road to peace in Jerusalem discovered in downtown Baghdad—to describe Iraq as a success, and as a model for application elsewhere, is nothing short of obscene. The great unacknowledged lesson of Iraq is the one that Norman Mailer identified decades ago: “Fighting a war to fix something works about as good as going to a whorehouse to get rid of a clap.”

For those who, despite all this, still hanker to have a go at nation building, why start with Afghanistan? Why not first fix, say, Mexico? In terms of its importance to the United States, our southern neighbor—a major supplier of oil and drugs among other commodities deemed vital to the American way of life—outranks Afghanistan by several orders of magnitude.

If one believes that moral considerations rather than self-interest should inform foreign policy, Mexico still qualifies for priority attention. Consider the theft of California. Or consider more recently how the American appetite for illicit drugs and our lax gun laws have corroded Mexican institutions and produced an epidemic of violence afflicting ordinary Mexicans. Yet any politician calling for the commitment of 60,000 U.S. troops to Mexico to secure those interests or acquit those moral obligations would be laughed out of Washington—and rightly so. Any pundit proposing that the United States assume responsibility for eliminating the corruption endemic in Mexican politics while establishing in Mexico City effective mechanisms of governance would have his license to pontificate revoked. Anyone suggesting that the United States possesses the wisdom and the wherewithal to solve the problem of Mexican drug trafficking, to endow Mexico with competent security forces, and to reform the Mexican school system (while protecting the rights of Mexican women) would be dismissed as a lunatic. Meanwhile, those who promote such programs for Afghanistan, ignoring questions of cost and ignoring as well the corruption and ineffectiveness that pervade our own institutions, are treated like sages.

The contrast between Washington’s preoccupation with Afghanistan and its relative indifference to Mexico testifies to the distortion of U.S. national-security priorities adopted by George W. Bush in his post-9/11 prophetic mode—distortions now being endorsed by Bush’s successor. It also testifies to a vast failure of imagination to which our governing classes have succumbed. This failure of imagination makes it impossible for those who possess either authority or influence in Washington to consider the possibility (a) that the solution to America’s problems is to be found not out there—where “there” in this case is Central Asia—but here at home; (b) that the people out there, rather than requiring our ministrations, may well be capable of managing their own affairs, relying on their own methods; and (c) that to disregard (a) and (b) is to open the door to great mischief and in all likelihood to perpetrate no small amount of evil. Needless to say, when mischief or evil does occur—when a stray American bomb kills a few dozen Afghan civilians, for instance—the costs of this failure of imagination are not borne by the people who inhabit the leafy neighborhoods of northwest Washington, who lunch at the Palm or the Metropolitan Club and school their kids at Sidwell Friends.

So the answer to the question of the hour—What should the United States do about Afghanistan?—comes down to this: A sense of realism and a sense of proportion should oblige us to take a minimalist approach. As with Uruguay or Fiji or Estonia or other countries where U.S. interests are limited, the United States should undertake to secure those interests at the lowest cost possible.

What might this mean in practice? General Petraeus, now in charge of U.S. Central Command, recently commented that “the mission is to ensure that Afghanistan does not again become a sanctuary for Al Qaeda and other transnational extremists,” in effect “to deny them safe havens in which they can plan and train for such attacks.” The mission statement is a sound one. The current approach to accomplishing the mission is not sound and, indeed, qualifies as counterproductive. Note that denying Al Qaeda safe havens in Pakistan hasn’t required U.S. forces to occupy the frontier regions of that country. Similarly, denying transnational extremists safe havens in Afghanistan shouldn’t require military occupation by the United States and its allies.

It would be much better to let local authorities do the heavy lifting. Provided appropriate incentives, the tribal chiefs who actually run Afghanistan are best positioned to prevent terrorist networks from establishing a large-scale presence. As a backup, intensive surveillance complemented with precision punitive strikes (assuming we can manage to kill the right people) will suffice to disrupt Al Qaeda’s plans. Certainly, that approach offers a cheaper and more efficient alternative to the establishment of a large-scale and long-term U.S. ground presence—which, as the U.S. campaigns in both Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated, has the unintended effect of handing jihadists a recruiting tool that they are quick to exploit.

In the aftermath of 9/11, all the talk—much of it emanating from neoconservative quarters—was about achieving a “decisive victory” over terror. The reality is that we can’t eliminate every last armed militant harboring a grudge against the West. Nor do we need to. As long as we maintain adequate defenses, Al Qaeda operatives, in their caves, pose no more than a modest threat. And unless the Taliban can establish enclaves in places like New Jersey or Miami, the danger they pose to the United States falls several notches below the threat posed by Cuba, which is no threat at all.

As for the putatively existential challenge posed by Islamic radicalism, that project will prove ultimately to be a self-defeating one. What violent Islamists have on offer—a rejection of modernity that aims to restore the caliphate and unify the ummah—doesn’t sell. In this regard, Iran—its nuclear aspirations the subject of much hand-wringing—offers considerable cause for hope. Much like the Castro revolution that once elicited so much angst in Washington, the Islamic revolution launched in 1979 has failed resoundingly. Observers once feared that the revolution inspired and led by the Ayatollah Khomeini would sweep across the Persian Gulf. In fact, it has accomplished precious little. Within Iran itself, the Islamic republic no longer represents the hopes and aspirations of the Iranian people, as the tens of thousands of protesters who recently filled the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities made evident. Here we see foretold the fate awaiting the revolutionary cause that Osama bin Laden purports to promote.

In short, time is on our side, not on the side of those who proclaim their intention of turning back the clock to the fifteenth century. The ethos of consumption and individual autonomy, privileging the here and now over the eternal, will conquer the Muslim world as surely as it is conquering East Asia and as surely as it has already conquered what was once known as Christendom. It’s the wreckage left in the wake of that conquest that demands our attention. If the United States today has a saving mission, it is to save itself. Speaking in the midst of another unnecessary war back in 1967, Martin Luther King got it exactly right: “Come home, America.” The prophet of that era urged his countrymen to take on “the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.”

Dr. King’s list of evils may need a bit of tweaking—in our own day, the sins requiring expiation number more than three. Yet in his insistence that we first heal ourselves, King remains today the prophet we ignore at our peril. That Barack Obama should fail to realize this qualifies as not only ironic but inexplicable.

Common Dreams : Vietnam's Real Lessons

2010-07-13T06:17:00.001-04:00

Vietnam's Real Lessons

by Andrew J. Bacevich | August 26, 2007

Finding the debacle of the Vietnam War a rationale for sustaining the U.S. military presence in Iraq requires considerable imagination. If nothing else, President Bush's speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars earlier this week revealed a hitherto unsuspected capacity for creativity. Yet as an exercise in historical analysis, his remarks proved to be self-serving and selective.

For years, the Bush administration has rejected all comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam. Now the president cites Vietnam to bolster his insistence on "seeing the Iraqis through as they build their democracy." To do otherwise, he says, will invite a recurrence of the events that followed the fall of Saigon, when "millions of innocent citizens" were murdered, imprisoned or forced to flee.

The president views the abandonment of our Southeast Asian allies as a disgrace, deploring the fate suffered by the "boat people" and the victims of the Khmer Rouge. According to Bush, withdrawing from Iraq constitutes a comparable act of abandonment. Beyond that, the president finds little connection between Vietnam and Iraq. This is unfortunate. For that earlier war offers lessons of immediate relevance to the predicament we face today. As the balance of the president's VFW address makes clear, Bush remains oblivious to the history that actually matters.

Here are a few of the lessons that he overlooks.

In unconventional wars, body counts don't really count. In the Vietnam War, superior American firepower enabled U.S. forces to prevail in most tactical engagements. We killed plenty of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. But killing didn't produce victory -- the exertions of U.S. troops all too frequently proved to be counterproductive.

So too in Iraq -- although Bush insists on pretending otherwise. His speech had him sounding like President Lyndon Johnson, bragging that, in each month since January, U.S. troops in Iraq have "killed or captured an average of more than 1,500 Al Qaeda terrorists and other extremists." If Bush thinks that by racking up big body counts the so-called surge will reverse the course of the war, he is deceiving himself. The real question is not how many bad guys we are killing, but how many our continued presence in Iraq is creating.

There's no substitute for legitimacy. Wars like Vietnam and Iraq aren't won militarily; at best, they are settled politically. But political solutions imply the existence of legitimate political institutions, able to govern effectively and to command the loyalty of the population.

In the Republic of Vietnam, created by the United States after the partition of French Indochina, such institutions did not exist. Despite an enormous U.S. investment in nation-building, they never did. In the end, South Vietnam proved to be a fiction.

So too with Iraq, conjured up by the British after World War I out of remnants of the Ottoman Empire. As a courtesy, we might pretend that Iraq qualifies as a "nation-state," much as we pretend that members of Division I varsity football programs are "scholar-athletes." In fact, given its deep sectarian and tribal divisions, Iraq makes South Vietnam look good by comparison.

In his VFW presentation, Bush described Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki as "a good guy." Whether Maliki is a good guy or even a heckuva good guy is beside the point. The real question is whether he presides over a government capable of governing. Mounting evidence suggests that the answer to that question is no.

As a lens for strategic analysis, ideology distorts rather than clarifies. From Dwight D. Eisenhower through Richard M. Nixon, a parade of presidents convinced themselves that defending South Vietnam qualified as a vital U.S. interest. For the free world, a communist takeover of that country would imply an unacceptable defeat.

Yet when South Vietnam did fall, the strategic effect proved to be limited. The falling dominoes never did pose a threat to our shores for one simple reason: The communists of North Vietnam were less interested in promoting world revolution than in unifying their country under socialist rule. We deluded ourselves into thinking that we were defending freedom against totalitarianism. In fact, we had blundered into a civil war.

With regard to Iraq, Bush persists in making an analogous error. In his remarks to the VFW, the president described Iraq as an "ideological struggle." Our adversary there aims to crush "freedom, tolerance and dissent," he said, thereby "imposing this ideology across a vital region of the world." If we don't fight them "there," we will surely have to fight them "here."

Radical Islamists like Osama bin Laden do subscribe to a hateful ideology. But to imagine that Bin Laden and others of his ilk have the capability to control the Middle East, restoring the so-called Caliphate, is absurd, as silly as the vaunted domino theory of the 1950s and 1960s.

Politics, not ideology, will determine the future of the Middle East. That's good news and bad news. Good news because the interests and aspirations of Arabs and non-Arabs, Shiites and Sunnis, modernizers and traditionalists will combine to prevent any one faction from gaining the upper hand. Bad news because those same factors guarantee that the Middle East will remain an unstable mess for the foreseeable future.

Sometimes people can manage their own affairs. Does the U.S. need to attend to that mess? Perhaps not.

Here the experience of Vietnam following the U.S. defeat is instructive. Once the Americans departed, the Vietnamese began getting their act together. Although not a utopia, Vietnam has become a stable and increasingly prosperous nation. It is a responsible member of the international community. In Hanoi, the communists remain in power. From an American point of view, who cares?

Bush did not even allude to the condition of Vietnam today. Yet the question poses itself: Is it not possible that the people of the Middle East might be better qualified to determine their future than a cadre of American soldiers, spooks and do-gooders? The answer to that question just might be yes.

Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He is a Vietnam War veteran.

© 2007 The Los Angeles Times

Boston Review : ‘Americans misperceive the world and their role in determining its evolution’

2010-07-12T09:17:00.000-04:00

‘Americans misperceive the world and their role in determining its evolution’

Andrew J. Bacevich : December 28, 2009

This article is a response to Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.

Nir Rosen is rightly skeptical of the counterinsurgency campaign the United States seems hellbent on pursuing in Afghanistan. Yet the problems highlighted by U.S. military action in that unfortunate country go much further: Americans misperceive the world and their own role in determining its evolution.

The bedrock assumption to which all of official Washington adheres, liberal Democrats no less than conservative Republicans, is that the United States itself constitutes the axis around which history turns. We define the future. Our actions determine its course. The world needs, expects, and yearns for America to lead, thereby ensuring the ultimate triumph of liberty. For the United States to shrink from its responsibility to lead is, at the very least, to put at risk the precarious stability to which humanity clings and in all likelihood would open the door to unspeakable catastrophe. Alternatives to American leadership simply do not exist.

Reject these propositions and your chances of working in the White House, securing a cushy billet at some Washington think tank, or landing an invitation to pontificate on one of the Sunday-morning talk shows are reduced to just about zero.

This self-image, combining grandeur with insufferable smugness, both energizes and perverts U.S. foreign policy. It inspires American policymakers to undertake breathtakingly bold initiatives such as the Marshall Plan—Harry Truman setting out to rebuild a Europe laid prostrate by war. Yet it also inspires the likes of George W. Bush to pursue his Freedom Agenda—an expressed intent to transform the entire Islamic world, providing a rationale for open-ended “global war.”

The conviction that the United States is history’s prime mover also blinds Washington to forces that may well exercise a far greater impact on the course of events than do the actions of the United States itself.

During the Cold War, for example, U.S. policymakers viewed events through the lens of bipolarity. The world, they insisted, broke neatly into two camps divided by an iron curtain. In the 1950s Secretary of State John Foster Dulles declared that neutrality was immoral and impermissible. Governments had to choose: you either sided with the free world (led, of course, by the United States) or you aligned yourself with the communists.

This oversimplified with-us-or-against-us mentality made it difficult, if not impossible, for Dulles and other U.S. leaders to comprehend the eruption of third-world nationalism triggered by and feeding off of the collapse of the old European empires after World War II. In Washington “non-aligned” became a synonym for “fellow traveler.” Faced with expressions of self-determination that did not fit neatly into the prevailing East-West paradigm, U.S. officials assumed the worst and acted to enforce conformity to Western—i.e., American—requirements. This misperception—that self-professed nationalists in places such as Iran, Guatemala, and Vietnam were actually agents of the Kremlin—produced a penchant for U.S. intervention, both overt and covert, that yielded disastrous consequences, many of them still dogging us today.

Had U.S. officials accurately gauged the wellsprings of postcolonial nationalism, the United States might have demonstrated greater self-restraint when faced with third-world recalcitrance. The insistence that Egypt’s Nasser or Cuba’s Castro toe some line dictated from Washington turned out to be neither necessary nor productive.

Yet appreciating the new nationalism might also have offered Washington an insight into the profound internal weakness of the multinational, multiethnic Soviet Empire. Poles, Afghans, and Chinese had no interest in taking their marching orders from Moscow. Nor, as events would show, did Ukrainians, Georgians, and Kazakhs. The post-1945 Soviet Empire was as obsolete as the empires of Great Britain and France. Its collapse was a bit longer in coming, but was equally foreordained.

A similar misperception afflicts U.S. policy today. In the wake of 9/11, a with-us-or-against-us mentality once again swept Washington. “Terrorism” assumed the place of communism as the great evil that the United States was called upon to extirpate. This effort triggered a revival of interventionism, pursued heedless of cost and regardless of consequences, whether practical or moral.

In the Pentagon, they call this the Long War. With his decision to escalate the U.S. military commitment to Afghanistan, President Barack Obama—effectively abandoning his promise to “change the way Washington works”—has signaled his administration’s commitment to the Long War.

Yet, as with the Cold War, the Long War rests on a false premise. To divide the world into two camps today makes no more sense than it did in Dulles’s time. Rather than creating clarity, indulging in this sort of oversimplification sows confusion and encourages miscalculation. It allows Americans to avert their eyes from the gathering forces—largely beyond the control of the United States—that are actually reshaping the international order. Sending U.S. troops to fight in Afghanistan sustains the pretense that we ourselves, exercising the prerogatives of global leadership, are somehow shaping that order.

Violent anti-Western jihadism—a cause that has about as much prospect of conquering the planet as Soviet-style communism—is not going to define the 21st century. Far more likely to do so is the transfer of power—first economic, then political—from the West to the East, from the Atlantic basin to the heartland of Asia. In that regard, the tens of thousands of U.S. troops shipped to Afghanistan matter less than the hundreds of billions of American dollars shipped each year to China.

Complicating this transfer of power and creating conditions from which a new era of violent conflict may emerge is the challenge of dealing with the detritus created during the age of Western dominance now ending: weapons of mass destruction; vast disparities of wealth; the depletion of essential natural resources; massive and potentially irreversible environmental devastation; and a culture ravaged by the pursuit of “freedom” defined in terms of conspicuous consumption and unbridled individual autonomy.

The Long War that President Bush began and that President Obama has now made his own provides an excuse for Americans to avoid confronting these larger matters. A policy of avoidance will not make the problems go away, of course. It will merely advance the day of reckoning that awaits.

WaPo : Endless war, a recipe for four-star arrogance

2010-07-12T09:13:00.000-04:00

Endless war, a recipe for four-star arrogance

By Andrew J. Bacevich | June 27, 2010

Long wars are antithetical to democracy. Protracted conflict introduces toxins that inexorably corrode the values of popular government. Not least among those values is a code of military conduct that honors the principle of civilian control while keeping the officer corps free from the taint of politics. Events of the past week -- notably the Rolling Stone profile that led to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's dismissal -- hint at the toll that nearly a decade of continuous conflict has exacted on the U.S. armed forces. The fate of any one general qualifies as small beer: Wearing four stars does not signify indispensability. But indications that the military's professional ethic is eroding, evident in the disrespect for senior civilians expressed by McChrystal and his inner circle, should set off alarms.

Earlier generations of American leaders, military as well as civilian, instinctively understood the danger posed by long wars. "A democracy cannot fight a Seven Years War," Gen. George C. Marshall once remarked. The people who provided the lifeblood of the citizen army raised to wage World War II had plenty of determination but limited patience. They wanted victory won and normalcy restored.

The wisdom of Marshall's axiom soon became clear. In Vietnam, Lyndon B. Johnson plunged the United States into what became its Seven Years War. The citizen army that was sent to Southeast Asia fought valiantly for a time and then fell to pieces. As the conflict dragged on, Americans in large numbers turned against the war -- and also against the troops who fought it.

After Vietnam, the United States abandoned its citizen army tradition, oblivious to the consequences. In its place, it opted for what the Founders once called a "standing army" -- a force consisting of long-serving career professionals.

For a time, the creation of this so-called all-volunteer force, only tenuously linked to American society, appeared to be a master stroke. Washington got superbly trained soldiers and Republicans and Democrats took turns putting them to work. The result, once the Cold War ended, was greater willingness to intervene abroad. As Americans followed news reports of U.S. troops going into action everywhere from the Persian Gulf to the Balkans, from the Caribbean to the Horn of Africa, they found little to complain about: The costs appeared negligible. Their role was simply to cheer.

This happy arrangement now shows signs of unraveling, a victim of what the Pentagon has all too appropriately been calling its Long War.

The Long War is not America's war. It belongs exclusively to "the troops," lashed to a treadmill that finds soldiers and Marines either serving in a combat zone or preparing to deploy.

To be an American soldier today is to serve a people who find nothing amiss in the prospect of armed conflict without end. Once begun, wars continue, persisting regardless of whether they receive public support. President Obama's insistence to the contrary notwithstanding, this nation is not even remotely "at" war. In explaining his decision to change commanders without changing course in Afghanistan, the president offered this rhetorical flourish: "Americans don't flinch in the face of difficult truths." In fact, when it comes to war, the American people avert their eyes from difficult truths. Largely unaffected by events in Afghanistan and Iraq and preoccupied with problems much closer to home, they have demonstrated a fine ability to tune out war. Soldiers (and their families) are left holding the bag.

Throughout history, circumstances such as these have bred praetorianism, warriors becoming enamored with their moral superiority and impatient with the failings of those they are charged to defend. The smug disdain for high-ranking civilians casually expressed by McChrystal and his chief lieutenants -- along with the conviction that "Team America," as these officers style themselves, was bravely holding out against a sea of stupidity and corruption -- suggests that the officer corps of the United States is not immune to this affliction.

To imagine that replacing McChrystal with Gen. David H. Petraeus will fix the problem is wishful thinking. To put it mildly, Petraeus is no simple soldier. He is a highly skilled political operator, whose name appears on Republican wish lists as a potential presidential candidate in 2012. Far more significant, the views cultivated within Team America are shared elsewhere.

The day the McChrystal story broke, an active-duty soldier who has served multiple combat tours offered me his perspective on the unfolding spectacle. The dismissive attitude expressed by Team America, he wrote, "has really become a pandemic in the Army." Among his peers, a belief that "it is OK to condescend to civilian leaders" has become common, ranking officers permitting or even endorsing "a culture of contempt" for those not in uniform. Once the previously forbidden becomes acceptable, it soon becomes the norm.

"Pretty soon you have an entire organization believing that their leader is the 'Savior' and that everyone else is stupid and incompetent, or not committed to victory." In this soldier's view, things are likely to get worse before they get better. "Senior officers who condone this kind of behavior and allow this to continue and fester," he concluded, "create generation after generation of officers like themselves -- but they're generally so arrogant that they think everyone needs to be just like them anyway."

By itself, Team America poses no threat to the constitutional order. Gen. McChrystal is not Gen. MacArthur. When presenting himself at the White House on Wednesday, McChrystal arrived not as a man on horseback but as a supplicant, hat (and resignation) in hand. Still, even with his departure, it would be a mistake to consider the matter closed.

During Vietnam, the United States military cracked from the bottom up. The damage took decades to repair. In the seemingly endless wars of the post-Sept. 11 era, a military that has demonstrated remarkable durability now shows signs of coming undone at the top. The officer corps is losing its bearings.

Americans might do well to contemplate a famous warning issued by another frustrated commander from a much earlier age.

"We had been told, on leaving our native soil," wrote the centurion Marcus Flavius to a cousin back in Rome, "that we were going to defend the sacred rights conferred on us by so many of our citizens [and to aid] populations in need of our assistance and our civilization." For such a cause, he and his comrades had willingly offered to "shed our quota of blood, to sacrifice our youth and our hopes." Yet the news from the homeland was disconcerting: The capital was seemingly rife with factions, treachery and petty politics. "Make haste," Marcus Flavius continued, "and tell me that our fellow citizens understand us, support us and protect us as we ourselves are protecting the glory of the empire."

"If it should be otherwise, if we should have to leave our bleached bones on these desert sands in vain, then beware of the anger of the legions!"

Stanley McChrystal is no Marcus Flavius, lacking the Roman's eloquence, among other things. Yet in ending his military career on such an ignominious note, he has, however clumsily, issued a warning that deserves our attention.

The responsibility facing the American people is clear. They need to reclaim ownership of their army. They need to give their soldiers respite, by insisting that Washington abandon its de facto policy of perpetual war. Or, alternatively, the United States should become a nation truly "at" war, with all that implies in terms of civic obligation, fiscal policies and domestic priorities. Should the people choose neither course -- and thereby subject their troops to continuing abuse -- the damage to the army and to American democracy will be severe.

Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His book "Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War" will be published in August.

TNR : Non-Believer

2010-07-12T01:42:00.000-04:00

Non-Believer

Andrew Bacevich | July 7, 2010

As a candidate for president, George W. Bush famously promised to pursue a “humble” foreign policy. The events of 9/11—for Bush akin to a conversion experience—swept humility by the board. The 43rd president found his true calling: Providence was summoning him to purge the world of evil.

When it came to fulfilling this mission, Bush’s subsequent efforts yielded precious little. Recklessness compounded by profound incompetence became the hallmark of his administration. Yet of this there can be no doubt: Until the day he left office, Bush himself remained certain that his intentions were pure and the nation’s cause righteous. In particular, he believed, and believed deeply, in the Iraq war.

Bush’s Freedom Agenda ended in abject failure—no liberalizing tide has swept the Islamic world. The promised Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the evidence linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda never materialized. Implementing the heinous Bush Doctrine of preventive war in Iraq yielded an insurgency that sent millions fleeing to squalid refugee camps. As a direct result, thousands of American soldiers were killed and many thousands more maimed or otherwise deeply scarred.

Despite all of this and more, George W. Bush never wavered. He remained resolute, his conscience clear. He knew he was doing God’s work. He was—and no doubt remains today—a true believer. The 43d president was a well-intentioned fool, who inflicted grievous harm on his country. Yet when Bush stands before his Maker (or the bar of History), he will say without fear of contradiction: “I did what I thought was right.”

Barack Obama is anything but a fool. Yet when called upon to account for his presidency, honesty will prevent him from making a comparable claim. “The problems I inherited were difficult ones,” he will say. “None of the choices were good ones. Things were complicated.”

The Afghanistan war forms part of that complicated inheritance where good choices are hard to come by. Much as Iraq was Bush’s war, Afghanistan has become Obama’s war. Yet the president clearly wants nothing more than to rid himself of his war. Obama has prolonged and escalated a conflict in which he himself manifestly does not believe. When after months of deliberation (or delay) he unveiled his Afghan “surge” in December 2009, the presidential trumpet blew charge and recall simultaneously. Even as Obama ordered more troops into combat, he announced their planned withdrawal “because the nation that I'm most interested in building is our own.”

The Americans who elected Obama president share that view. Yet the expectations of change that vaulted him to the presidency went well beyond the issue of priorities. Obama’s supporters were counting on him to bring to the White House an enlightened moral sensibility: He would govern differently not only because he was smarter than his predecessor but because he responded to a different—and truer—inner compass.

Events have demolished such expectations. Today, when they look at Washington, Americans see a cool, dispassionate, calculating president whose administration lacks a moral core. For prosecution exhibit number one, we need look no further than the meandering course of Obama’s war, its casualties and costs mounting without discernible purpose.

Obama doesn’t want to be in Afghanistan any more than Benjamin Netanyahu wants to be in the West Bank. Yet like the Israeli prime minister, the president lacks the guts to get out. It’s all so complicated. There are risks involved. Things might go wrong. There’s an election to think about.

So the war continues. Sustaining some artfully updated version of the status quo becomes the easier (or more expedient) course. Thus does a would-be messiah promising salvation and renewal succumb to the imperatives of “politics”—with young soldiers and their families left to bear the consequences.

The question demands to be asked: Who is more deserving of contempt? The commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause, however misguided, in which he sincerely believes? Or the commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause in which he manifestly does not believe and yet refuses to forsake?

Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He is the author of Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War (2010), The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (2008), and The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (2005), among other books.

New Statesman: Why the Taliban is winning in Afghanistan

2010-07-06T12:25:00.001-04:00

Why the Taliban is winning in Afghanistan

As Washington and London struggle to prop up a puppet government over which Hamid Karzai has no control, they risk repeating the blood-soaked 19th-century history of Britain’s imperial defeat.

William Dalrymple | June 22, 2010

In 1843, shortly after his return from Afghanistan, an army chaplain, Reverend G R Gleig, wrote a memoir about the First Anglo-Afghan War, of which he was one of the very few survivors. It was, he wrote, "a war begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, has Britain acquired with this war. Our eventual evacuation of the country resembled the retreat of an army defeated."

It is difficult to imagine the current military adventure in Afghanistan ending quite as badly as the First Afghan War, an abortive experiment in Great Game colonialism that slowly descended into what is arguably the greatest military humiliation ever suffered by the west in the Middle East: an entire army of what was then the most powerful military nation in the world utterly routed and destroyed by poorly equipped tribesmen, at the cost of £15m (well over £1bn in modern currency) and more than 40,000 lives. But nearly ten years on from Nato's invasion of Afghanistan, there are increasing signs that Britain's fourth war in the country could end with as few political gains as the first three and, like them, terminate in an embarrassing withdrawal after a humiliating defeat, with Afghanistan yet again left in tribal chaos and quite possibly ruled by the same government that the war was launched to overthrow.

Certainly it is becoming clearer than ever that the once-hated Taliban, far from being swept away by General Stanley McChrystal's surge, are instead regrouping, ready for the final act in the history of Hamid Karzai's western-installed puppet government. The Taliban have now advanced out of their borderland safe havens to the very gates of Kabul and are surrounding the capital, much as the US-backed mujahedin once did to the Soviet-installed regime in the late 1980s. Like a rerun of an old movie, all journeys by non-Afghans out of the capital are once again confined largely to tanks, military convoys and helicopters. The Taliban already control more than 70 per cent of the country, where they collect taxes, enforce the sharia and dispense their usual rough justice. Every month, their sphere of influence increases. According to a recent Pentagon report, Karzai's government has control of only 29 out of 121 key strategic districts.

Just recently, on 17 May, there was a suicide attack on a US convoy in the Dar-ul Aman quarter of Kabul, killing 12 civilians and six American soldiers; the following day, there was a daring five-hour-long grenade and machine-gun assault on the US military headquarters at Bagram Airbase, killing an American contractor and wounding nine soldiers, so bringing the death toll for US armed forces in the country to more than 1,000. Then, over the weekend of 22-23 May, there was a series of rocket, mortar and ground assaults on Kandahar Airbase just as the British ministerial delegation was about to visit it, forcing William Hague and Liam Fox to alter their schedule. Since then, a dozen top Afghan officials have been assassinated in Kandahar, including the city of Kandahar's deputy mayor. On 7 June, the deadliest day for Nato forces in months, ten soldiers were killed. Finally, it appears that the Taliban have regained control of the opium-growing centre of Marjah in Helmand Province, only three months after being driven out by McChrystal's forces amid much gung-ho cheerleading in the US media. Afghanistan is going down.

Already, despite the presence of huge numbers of foreign troops, it is now impossible - or at least extremely foolhardy - for any westerner to walk around the capital, Kabul, without armed guards; it is even more inadvisable to head out of town in any direction except north: the strongly anti-Taliban Panjshir Valley, along with the towns of Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat, are the only safe havens left for westerners in the entire country. In all other directions, travel is possible only in an armed convoy.

This is especially true of the Khord-Kabul and Tezeen passes, immediately to the south of Kabul, where as many as 18,000 British troops were lost in 1842, and which are today again a centre of resistance against perceived foreign occupiers. Aid workers familiar with Afghanistan over several decades say the security situation has never been worse. Ideas much touted only a few years ago that Afghanistan might become a popular tourist destination - a Switzerland of central Asia - now seem to be dreams from a distant age. Lonely Planet's guidebook to Afghanistan, optimistically published in 2005, has not been updated and is now once again out of print.

The present war is following a trajectory that is beginning to feel unsettlingly familiar to students of the Great Game. In 1839, the British invaded Afghanistan on the basis of sexed-up intelligence about a non-existent threat: information about a single Russian envoy to Kabul was manipulated by a group of ambitious and ideologically driven hawks to create a scare - in this case, about a phantom Russian invasion - thus bringing about an unnecessary, expensive and entirely avoidable war.

Initially, the hawks were triumphant - the British conquest proved remarkably easy and bloodless; Kabul was captured within a few weeks as the army of the previous regime melted into the hills, and a pliable monarch, Shah Shuja, was successfully placed on the throne. For a few months the British played cricket, went skating and put on amateur theatricals as if on summer leave in Simla; there were discussions about making Kabul the summer capital of the Raj. Then an insurgency began and that first heady success slowly unravelled, first among the Pashtuns of Kandahar and Helmand Provinces. It slowly gained momentum, moving northwards until it reached Kabul, so making the British occupation impossible to sustain.

What happened next is a warning of how bad things could yet become: a full-scale rebellion against the British broke out in Kabul, and the two most senior British envoys, Sir Alexander Burnes and Sir William Macnaghten, were assassinated, one hacked to death by a mob in the streets, the other stabbed and shot by the resistance leader Wazir Akbar Khan during negotiations. It was on the retreat that followed, on 6 January 1842, that the 18,000 East India Company troops, and maybe half that many again Indian camp followers, were slaughtered by Afghan marksmen waiting in ambush amid the high passes, shot down as they trudged through the icy depths of the Afghan winter. After eight days on the death march, the last 50 survivors made their final stand at the village of Gandamak. As late as the 1970s, fragments of Victorian weaponry and military equipment could be found lying in the screes above the village. Even today, the hill is said to be covered with the bleached bones of the British dead.

One Englishman lived to tell the tale of that last stand (if you discount the fictional survival of Flashman) - an ordinary foot soldier, Thomas Souter, wrapped his regimental colours around him to prevent them being captured, and was taken hostage by the Afghans who assumed that such a colourfully clothed individual must command a high ransom. It is a measure of the increasingly pertinent parallels between the 19th-century war and today's that one of the main Nato bases in Afghanistan was recently named Camp Souter after that survivor.

In the years that followed, the British defeat in Afghanistan became pregnant with symbolism. For the Victorian British, it was the country's greatest imperial disaster of the 19th century. It was exactly a century before another army would be lost, in Singapore in 1942. Yet the retreat from Kabul also became a symbol of gallantry against the odds: William Barnes Wollen's celebrated oil painting The Last Stand of the 44th Regiment at Gundamuck - showing a group of ragged but doggedly determined British soldiers standing encircled behind a porcupine of bayonets, as the Pashtun tribesmen close in - became one of the best-known images of the era, along with Remnants of an Army, Elizabeth Butler's image of the wounded and bleeding army surgeon William Brydon, who had made it through to the safety of Jalalabad, arriving before the city walls on his collapsing nag.

For the Afghans, the British defeat of 1842 became a symbol of freedom from foreign invasion. It is again no accident that the diplomatic quarter of Kabul is named after the general who oversaw the rout of the British in that year: Wazir Akbar Khan.

For south Asians, who provided most of the cannon fodder - the foot soldiers and followers killed on the retreat - the war ironically became a symbol of possibility: although thousands of Indians died on the march, it showed that the British army was not invincible and a well-planned insurgency could force them out. Thus, in 1857, the Indians launched their own anti-colonial uprising, the Great Mutiny (as it is known in Britain) or the first war of independence (as it is known in India), partly inspired by what the Afghans had achieved in 1842.

This destabilising effect on south Asia of the failed war in Afghanistan has a direct parallel in the blowback that is today destabilising Pakistan and the tribal territories of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata). Here the Pakistani Taliban are once more on the march, rebuilding their presence in Swat, and are now surrounding Peshawar, which is almost daily being rocked by bombs, while outlying groups of Taliban are again spreading their influence into the valleys leading towards Islamabad. Across much of the North-West Frontier Province - roughly a fifth of Pakistan's territory - women have now been forced into the burqa, music has been silenced, barbershops are forbidden to shave beards and more than 125 girls' schools have been blown up or burned down.

A significant proportion of the Peshawar elite, along with the city's musicians, have decamped to the relatively safe and tolerant confines of Lahore and Karachi, while tens of thousands of ordinary people from the surrounding hills of the semi-autonomous Fata tribal belt, and especially the Bajaur Agency (or tribal area), have fled from the conflict zones blasted by US Predator drones and strafed by Pakistani helicopter gunships to the tent camps ringing the provincial capital.

The Fata, it is true, have never been fully under the control of any Pakistani government, and have always been unruly, but the region has been radicalised as never before by the rain of shells and cluster bombs that have caused huge civilian casualties and daily add a stream of angry foot soldiers to the insurgency. Elsewhere in Pakistan, anti-western religious and political extremism continues to flourish, as ever larger numbers of ordinary Pakistanis are driven to fight by corruption, predatory politics and the abuse of power by Pakistan's feudal elite, as well as the military aggression of the drones. Indeed, the ripples of instability lapping out from Afghanistan and Pakistan have reached even New York. When CIA interrogators asked Faisal Shahzad why he tried to let off a car bomb last month in Times Square, he told them of his desire to avenge those "innocent people being hit by drones from above".

The route of the British retreat of 1842 backs on to the mountain range that leads to Tora Bora and the Pakistan border, an area that has always been a Taliban centre. I had been advised not to attempt to visit the area without local protection, and so last month I set off for the mountains in the company of a regional tribal leader who was also a minister in Karzai's government. He is a mountain of a man named Anwar Khan Jegdalek, a former village wrestling champion who made his name as a Hezb-e-Islami mujahedin commander in the jihad against the Soviets in the 1980s.

It was Anwar Khan Jegdalek's ancestors who inflicted some of the worst casualties on the British army of 1842, something he proudly repeated several times as we drove through the same passes. "They forced us to pick up guns to defend our honour," he said. "So we killed every last one of those bastards." None of this, incidentally, has stopped Anwar Khan Jegdalek from sending his family away from Kabul to the greater safety of Northolt, Middlesex.

He drove himself in a huge 4x4, while a pick-up full of heavily armed Afghan bodyguards followed behind. We left Kabul - past the blast walls of the Nato barracks built on the very site of the British cantonment of 170 years ago - and headed down a corkscrewing road into the line of bleak mountain passes that links Kabul with the Khyber Pass.

It is a dramatic and violent landscape: fault lines of crushed and tortured strata groaned and twisted in the gunpowder-coloured rock walls rising on either side of us. Above, the jagged mountain tops were veiled in an ominous cloud of mist. As we drove, Anwar Khan Jegdalek complained bitterly of western treatment of his government. "In the 1980s when we were killing Russians for them, the Americans called us freedom fighters," he muttered, as we descended through the first pass. "Now they just dismiss us as warlords."

At Sorobi, where the mountains debouche into a high-altitude ochre desert dotted with encampments of nomads, we left the main road and headed into Taliban territory. A further five trucks full of Anwar Khan Jegdalek's old mujahedin fighters, all brandishing rocket-propelled grenades and with faces wrapped in keffiyehs, appeared from a side road to escort us.

At the crest of Jegdalek village, on 12 January 1842, 200 frostbitten British soldiers found themselves surrounded by several thousand Pashtun tribesmen. The two highest-ranking British soldiers, General Elphinstone and Brigadier Shelton, went off to negotiate but were taken hostage. Only 50 infantrymen managed to break out under cover of darkness. Our own welcome was, thankfully, somewhat warmer. It was my host's first visit to his home since he had become a minister, and the proud villagers took their old commander on a nostalgia trip through hills smelling of wild thyme and rosemary, and up on to mountainsides carpeted with hollyhocks, mulberries and white poplars. Here, at the top of the surrounding peaks, lay the remains of Anwar Khan Jegdalek's old mujahedin bunkers and entrenchments. Once the tour was completed, the villagers fed us, Mughal style, in an apricot orchard: we sat on carpets under a trellis of vine and pomegranate blossom as course after course of kebabs and mulberry pulao was laid in front of us.

During lunch, as my hosts casually pointed out the various places in the village where the British had been massacred in 1842, I asked them if they saw any parallels between that war and the present situation. "It is exactly the same," said Anwar Khan Jegdalek. "Both times the foreigners have come for their own interests, not for ours. They say, 'We are your friends, we want democracy, we want to help.' But they are lying."

“Whoever comes to Afghanistan, even now, they will face the fate of Burnes, Macnaghten and Dr Brydon," said Mohammad Khan, our host in the village and the owner of the orchard where we were sitting. The names of the fighters of 1842, long forgotten in their home country, were still known here.

“Since the British went, we've had the Russians," said an old man to my right. "We saw them off, too, but not before they bombed many of the houses in the village." He pointed at a ridge of ruined mud-brick houses.

“We are the roof of the world," said Mohammad Khan. "From here, you can control and watch everywhere."

“Afghanistan is like the crossroads for every nation that comes to power," agreed Anwar Khan Jegdalek. "But we do not have the strength to control our own destiny - our fate is always determined by our neighbours. Next, it will be China. This is the last days of the Americans."

I asked if they thought the Taliban would come back. "The Taliban?" said Mohammad Khan. "They are here already! At least after dark. Just over that pass." He pointed in the direction of Gandamak and Tora Bora. "That is where they are strongest."

It was nearly five in the afternoon before the final flaps of nan bread were cleared away, by which time it had become clear that it was too late to head on to the site of the British last stand at Gandamak. Instead, that evening we went to the relative safety of Jalalabad, where we discovered we'd had a narrow escape: it turned out there had been a huge battle at Gandamak that morning between government forces and a group of villagers supported by the Taliban. The sheer scale and length of the feast had saved us from walking straight into an ambush. The battle had taken place on exactly the site of the British last stand.

The following morning in Jalalabad, we went to a jirga, or assembly of tribal elders, to which the greybeards of Gandamak had come under a flag of truce to discuss what had happened the day before. The story was typical of many I heard about the current government, and revealed how a mixture of corruption, incompetence and insensitivity has helped give an opening for the return of the once-hated Taliban.

As Predator drones took off and landed incessantly at the nearby airfield, the elders related how the previous year government troops had turned up to destroy the opium harvest. The troops promised the villagers full compensation, and were allowed to burn the crops; but the money never turned up. Before the planting season, the villagers again went to Jalalabad and asked the government if they could be provided with assistance to grow other crops. Promises were made; again nothing was delivered. They planted poppy, informing the local authorities that if they again tried to burn the crop, the village would have no option but to resist. When the troops turned up, about the same time as we were arriving at nearby Jegdalek, the villagers were waiting for them, and had called in the local Taliban to assist. In the fighting that followed, nine policemen were killed, six vehicles destroyed and ten police hostages taken.

After the jirga was over, one of the tribal elders came over and we chatted for a while over a glass of green tea. "Last month," he said, "some American officers called us to a hotel in Jalalabad for a meeting. One of them asked me, 'Why do you hate us?' I replied, 'Because you blow down our doors, enter our houses, pull our women by the hair and kick our children. We cannot accept this. We will fight back, and we will break your teeth, and when your teeth are broken you will leave, just as the British left before you. It is just a matter of time.'"

What did he say to that? “He turned to his friend and said, 'If the old men are like this, what will the younger ones be like?' In truth, all the Americans here know that their game is over. It is just their politicians who deny this."

The defeat of the west's latest puppet government on the very same hill of Gandamak where the British came to grief in 1842 made me think, on the way back to Kabul, about the increasingly close parallels between the fix that Nato is in and the one faced by the British 170 years ago.

Now as then, the problem is not hatred of the west, so much as a dislike of foreign troops swaggering around and making themselves odious to the very people they are meant to be helping. On the return journey, as we crawled back up the passes towards Kabul, we got stuck behind a US military convoy of eight Humvees and two armoured personnel carriers in full camouflage, all travelling at less than 20 miles per hour. Despite the slow speed, the troops refused to let any Afghan drivers overtake them, for fear of suicide bombers, and they fired warning shots at any who attempted to do so. By the time we reached the top of the pass two hours later, there were 300 cars and trucks backed up behind the convoy, each one full of Afghans furious at being ordered around in their own country by a group of foreigners. Every day, small incidents of arrogance and insensitivity such as this make the anger grow.

There has always been an absolute refusal by the Afghans to be ruled by foreigners, or to accept any government perceived as being imposed on the country from abroad. Now as then, the puppet ruler installed by the west has proved inadequate to the job. Too weak, unpopular and corrupt to provide security or development, he has been forced to turn on his puppeteers in order to retain even a vestige of legitimacy in the eyes of his people. Recently, Karzai has accused the US, the UK and the UN of orchestrating a fraud in last year's elections, described Nato forces as "an army of occupation", and even threatened to join the Taliban if Washington kept putting pressure on him. Shah Shuja did much the same thing in 1842, towards the end of his rule, and was known to have offered his allegiance and assistance to the insurgents who eventually toppled and beheaded him.

Now as then, there have been few tangible signs of improvement under the western-backed regime. Despite the US pouring approximately $80bn into Afghanistan, the roads in Kabul are still more rutted than those in the smallest provincial towns of Pakistan. There is little health care; for any severe medical condition, patients still have to fly to India. A quarter of all teachers in Afghanistan are themselves illiterate. In many areas, district governance is almost non-existent: half the governors do not have an office, more than half have no electricity, and most receive only $6 a month in expenses. Civil servants lack the most basic education and skills.

This is largely because $76.5bn of the $80bn committed to the country has been spent on military and security, and most of the remaining $3.5bn on international consultants, some of whom are paid in excess of $1,000 a day, according to an Afghan government report. This, in turn, has had other negative effects. As in 1842, the presence of large numbers of well-paid foreign troops has caused the cost of food and provisions to rise, and living standards to fall. The Afghans feel they are getting poorer, not richer.

There are other similarities. Then as now, the war effort was partially privatised: it was not so much the British army as a corporation, the East India Company, that provided most of the troops who fought the war for Britain in 1842, just as today both the British and the Americans have subcontracted much of their security work to private companies. When I visited the British embassy, I found that many of the security guards at the gatehouse were not army or military police, but from Group 4 Security. The US security contracts offered to Blackwater/Xe and other private security forces under Dick Cheney's ideologically driven policy of privatising war are worth many millions of dollars.

Finally, now as then, there has been an attempt at a last show of force in order to save face before withdrawal. As happened in 1842, it has achieved little except civilian casualties and the further alienation of the Afghans. As one of the tribal elders from Jegdalek said to me: "How many times can they apologise for killing our innocent women and children and expect us to forgive them? They come, they bomb, they kill us and then they say, 'Oh, sorry, we got the wrong people.' And they keep doing that."

The British soldiers of 1842 found the same reaction in their day. In his diary of his time with the British army of retribution, which laid waste to great areas of southern Afghanistan as punishment for the massacres on the retreat from Kabul earlier in the year, the young Captain N Chamberlain reported how his troops inflicted horrible atrocities on any Afghan civilians they could find. One morning he met a wounded Afghan woman dragging herself towards a stream with a water pot. "I filled the vessel for her," he wrote, "but all she said was, 'Curses on the feringhees [foreigners]!' I continued on my way disgusted with myself, the world, above all with my cruel profession. In fact, we are nothing but licensed assassins."

However, there are some important differences between Britain's first defeat in Afghanistan and the current mess. In 1842, we were at least reinstalling a legitimate Afghan ruler and removing one who could genuinely be cast as an illegitimate usurper. Shah Shuja, the British puppet, was a former ruler of the Sadozai dynasty, from the leading Pashtun clan, and a grandson of the great Ahmed Shah Durrani, the first king of a united Afghanistan. As the traveller and pioneering archaeologist Charles Masson observed: "The Afghans had no objection to the match; they merely disliked the manner of the wooing."

This time, we have been clumsier, and Nato has helped instal a former CIA asset accused by a high-ranking UN diplomat of drug abuse and of having a history of mental instability, with little to recommend him other than that he was once run out of Langley. Although Karzai is a Pashtun of the Popalzai tribe, under his watch Nato has in effect installed the Northern Alliance in Kabul and driven the country's Pashtun majority out of power.

The reality of our present Afghan entanglement is that we took sides in a complex civil war, which has been running since the 1970s, siding with the north against the south, town against country, secularism against Islam, and the Tajiks against the Pashtuns. We have installed a government, and trained up an army, both of which in many ways have discriminated against the Pashtun majority, and whose top-down, highly centralised constitution allows for remarkably little federalism or regional representation. However much western liberals may dislike the Taliban - and they have very good reason for doing so - the truth remains that they are in many ways the authentic voice of rural Pashtun conservatism, whose views and wishes are ignored by the government in Kabul and who are still largely excluded from power. It is hardly surprising that the Pashtuns are determined to resist the regime and that the insurgency is widely supported, especially in the Pashtun heartlands of the south and east.

Yet it is not too late to learn some lessons from the mistakes of the British in 1842. Then, British officials in Kabul continued to send out despatches of delusional optimism as the insurgents moved ever closer to Kabul, believing that there was a straightforward military solution to the problem and that if only they could recruit enough Afghans to their army, they could eventually march out, leaving that regime in place - exactly the sentiments expressed by the Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, on his visit to Afghanistan last month.

In 1842, by the time they realised they had to negotiate a political solution, their power had ebbed too far, and the only thing the insurgents were willing to negotiate was an unconditional surrender. Today, too, there is no easy military solution to Afghanistan: even if we proceed with the plan to equip an army of half a million troops (at the cost of roughly $2bn a year, when the entire revenue of the Afghan government is $1.1bn - in other words, 180 per cent of revenue), that army will never be able to guarantee security or shore up such a discredited regime. Every day, despite the military power of the US and Nato and the $25bn so far ploughed into rebuilding the Afghan army, security gets worse, and the area under government control contracts week by week.

The only answer is to negotiate a political solution while we still have enough power to do so, which in some form or other involves talking to the Taliban. This is a course that Karzai, to his credit, is keen to pursue; he made it clear that his peace jirga at the start of this month was open to any Taliban leader willing to lay down arms, and that jobs and monetary incentives would be available to former Taliban who changed their allegiance and joined the government. It is still unclear whether the new Tory government supports this course; Barack Obama certainly opposes it. In this, he is supported by the notably undiplomatic US envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, described by one senior British diplomat as "a bull who brings his own china shop wherever he goes".

There is something else we can still do before we pull out: leave some basic infrastructure behind, a goal we notably failed to achieve in the past nine years. Yet William Hague and Liam Fox oppose this policy - as Fox notoriously said in his 21 May interview with the Times, which infuriated his Afghan hosts: "We are not in Afghanistan for the sake of the education policy in a broken 13th-century country." The Tories could do much worse than consult their own newly elected backbencher Rory Stewart. He knows much more about Afghanistan than either Fox or Hague. As Stewart wrote shortly before he entered politics, targeted aid projects that employ Afghans can do a great deal of good, "and we should focus on meeting the Afghan government's request for more investment in agriculture, irrigation, energy and roads".

In the meantime, Obama has announced that he will begin withdrawing troops in July 2011. The start of the US withdrawal is likely to begin a rush to evacuate the other Nato forces located in pockets around the country: the Dutch have announced that they will be pulling out of Uruzgan this summer, and the Canadian and Danes won't be far behind them. Nor will the Brits, despite assurances from Hague and Fox. A recent poll showed that 72 per cent of Britons want their troops out of Afghanistan immediately, and there is only so long any government can hold out against such strong public opinion. Certainly, it is time to shed the idea that a pro-western puppet regime that excludes the Pashtuns can remain in place indefinitely. The Karzai government is crumbling before our eyes, and if we delude ourselves that this is not the case, we could yet face a replay of 1842.

George Lawrence, a veteran of that war, issued a prescient warning in the Times just before Britain blundered into the Second Anglo-Afghan War in the 1870s. "A new generation has arisen which, instead of profiting from the solemn lessons of the past, is willing and eager to embroil us in the affairs of that turbulent and unhappy country," he wrote. "Although military disasters may be avoided, an advance now, however successful in a military point of view, would not fail to turn out to be as politically useless."

William Dalrymple's latest book, "Nine Lives: in Search of the Sacred in Modern India", won the first Asia House Literary Award in May, and is newly published in paperback (Bloomsbury, £8.99). His book on the First Anglo-Afghan War is planned for release in autumn 2012

Times : Lawyer of the Week: Amjad Malik

2010-06-10T03:17:00.004-04:00

Lawyer of the Week: Amjad Malik

Linda Tsang | June 10, 2010

Amjad Malik, a solicitor-advocate at the Rochdale firm Amjad Malik Solicitors, acted pro bono for three Pakistani students in a deportation appeal hearing at a Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) in London and won the appeal against deportation in the case of Shoaib Khan.

What were the main challenges in this case and the possible implications?

Ten Pakistani-national students were arrested on April 8, 2009, in Operation Pathway because they were considered to be a threat to national security. No charges were brought and they were later released to the UK Border Agency, which initiated deportation proceedings.

SIAC allowed the appeal of Shoaib Khan [and two other students represented by the lawyer Gareth Peirce] on all the allegations on the ground that there was a risk of torture on deportation to Pakistan.

What was your most memorable experience as a lawyer?

Ensuring that the three appellants I acted for could give evidence via video-link from Pakistan, with possible far-reaching implications in similar cases.

What was your worst day as a lawyer?

In 2001, after receiving a judgment in the House of Lords in the case of a Muslim cleric (Rehman), who won his deportation appeal in SIAC, my house was stoned early the next morning. It was a shattering experience and I can only say that I was only doing my job.

Who has been the most influential person in your life and why?

My father played a pivotal role in my academic progress -- and my wife is a solid rock who has supported me for the past 18 years. As we acted pro bono in this case, she sat behind me while I appeared alongside five QCs.

Why did you become a lawyer?

A passion to fight injustice in any shape and formÍ and I was fascinated that Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, was a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn early in his life.

What would your advice be to anyone wanting a career in law?

A lawyer’s job is important and difficult and one must be ready to do pro bono work because it is part of the package — to do a little extra for society: to serve yourself as well as others.

If you had not become a lawyer what would you have chosen and why?

A journalist reporting on human rights abuses all around the world. Reporting requires sheer hard work and advocacy and there is a sense of satisfaction after each report, which is similar to concluding a case.

Where do you see yourself in ten years?

I was a lawyer for Oldham Citizens Advice Bureau from 2000-03 and I hope to have some future role working for a charity in the area of human rights, or at the UN.

l_tsang@hotmail.com

WaPo : U.S. 'secret war' expands globally as Special Operations forces take larger role

2010-06-04T20:48:00.000-04:00

U.S. 'secret war' expands globally as Special Operations forces take larger role

By Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe | June 4, 2010; A01

Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.

Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.

Commanders are developing plans for increasing the use of such forces in Somalia, where a Special Operations raid last year killed the alleged head of al-Qaeda in East Africa. Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group.

The surge in Special Operations deployments, along with intensified CIA drone attacks in western Pakistan, is the other side of the national security doctrine of global engagement and domestic values President Obama released last week.

One advantage of using "secret" forces for such missions is that they rarely discuss their operations in public. For a Democratic president such as Obama, who is criticized from either side of the political spectrum for too much or too little aggression, the unacknowledged CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, along with unilateral U.S. raids in Somalia and joint operations in Yemen, provide politically useful tools.

Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed "things that the previous administration did not."

'More access'

Special Operations commanders have also become a far more regular presence at the White House than they were under George W. Bush's administration, when most briefings on potential future operations were run through the Pentagon chain of command and were conducted by the defense secretary or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"We have a lot more access," a second military official said. "They are talking publicly much less but they are acting more. They are willing to get aggressive much more quickly."

The White House, he said, is "asking for ideas and plans . . . calling us in and saying, 'Tell me what you can do. Tell me how you do these things.' "

The Special Operations capabilities requested by the White House go beyond unilateral strikes and include the training of local counterterrorism forces and joint operations with them. In Yemen, for example, "we are doing all three," the official said. Officials who spoke about the increased operations were not authorized to discuss them on the record.

The clearest public description of the secret-war aspects of the doctrine came from White House counterterrorism director John O. Brennan. He said last week that the United States "will not merely respond after the fact" of a terrorist attack but will "take the fight to al-Qaeda and its extremist affiliates whether they plot and train in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond."

That rhetoric is not much different than Bush's pledge to "take the battle to the enemy . . . and confront the worst threats before they emerge." The elite Special Operations units, drawn from all four branches of the armed forces, became a frontline counterterrorism weapon for the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But Obama has made such forces a far more integrated part of his global security strategy. He has asked for a 5.7 percent increase in the Special Operations budget for fiscal 2011, for a total of $6.3 billion, plus an additional $3.5 billion in 2010 contingency funding.

Bush-era clashes between the Defense and State departments over Special Operations deployments have all but ceased. Former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld saw them as an independent force, approving in some countries Special Operations intelligence-gathering missions that were so secret that the U.S. ambassador was not told they were underway. But the close relationship between Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is said to have smoothed out the process.

"In some places, we are quite obvious in our presence," Adm. Eric T. Olson, head of the Special Operations Command, said in a speech. "In some places, in deference to host-country sensitivities, we are lower in profile. In every place, Special Operations forces activities are coordinated with the U.S. ambassador and are under the operational control of the four-star regional commander."

Chains of command

Gen. David H. Petraeus at the Central Command and others were ordered by the Joint Staff under Bush to develop plans to use Special Operations forces for intelligence collection and other counterterrorism efforts, and were given the authority to issue direct orders to them. But those orders were formalized only last year, including in a CENTCOM directive outlining operations throughout South Asia, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.

The order, whose existence was first reported by the New York Times, includes intelligence collection in Iran, although it is unclear whether Special Operations forces are active there.

The Tampa-based Special Operations Command is not entirely happy with its subordination to regional commanders and, in Afghanistan and Iraq, to theater commanders. Special Operations troops within Afghanistan had their own chain of command until early this year, when they were brought under the unified direction of the overall U.S. and NATO commander there, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, and his operational deputy, Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez.

"Everybody working in CENTCOM works for Dave Petraeus," a military official said. "Our issue is that we believe our theater forces should be under a Special Operations theater commander, instead of . . . Rodriguez, who is a conventional [forces] guy who doesn't know how to do what we do."

Special Operations troops train for years in foreign cultures and language, and consider themselves a breed apart from what they call "general purpose forces." Special Operations troops sometimes bridle at ambassadorial authority to "control who comes in and out of their country," the official said. Operations have also been hindered in Pakistan -- where Special Operations trainers hope to nearly triple their current deployment to 300 -- by that government's delay in issuing the visas.

Although pleased with their expanded numbers and funding, Special Operations commanders would like to devote more of their force to global missions outside war zones. Of about 13,000 Special Operations forces deployed overseas, about 9,000 are evenly divided between Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Eighty percent of our investment is now in resolving current conflicts, not in building capabilities with partners to avoid future ones," one official said.

Questions remain

The force has also chafed at the cumbersome process under which the president or his designee, usually Gates, must authorize its use of lethal force outside war zones. Although the CIA has the authority to designate targets and launch lethal missiles in Pakistan's western tribal areas, attacks such as last year's in Somalia and Yemen require civilian approval.

The United Nations, in a report this week, questioned the administration's authority under international law to conduct such raids, particularly when they kill innocent civilians. One possible legal justification -- the permission of the country in question -- is complicated in places such as Pakistan and Yemen, where the governments privately agree but do not publicly acknowledge approving the attacks.

Former Bush officials, still smarting from accusations that their administration overextended the president's authority to conduct lethal activities around the world at will, have asked similar questions. "While they seem to be expanding their operations both in terms of extraterritoriality and aggressiveness, they are contracting the legal authority upon which those expanding actions are based," said John B. Bellinger III, a senior legal adviser in both of Bush's administrations.

The Obama administration has rejected the constitutional executive authority claimed by Bush and has based its lethal operations on the authority Congress gave the president in 2001 to use "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons" he determines "planned, authorized, committed, or aided" the Sept. 11 attacks.

Many of those currently being targeted, Bellinger said, "particularly in places outside Afghanistan," had nothing to do with the 2001 attacks.

LAT : Setbacks weaken Al Qaeda's ability to mount attacks, terrorism officials say

2009-10-19T01:52:00.003-04:00

Setbacks weaken Al Qaeda's ability to mount attacks, terrorism officials say

By Sebastian Rotella | Reporting from Washington | October 17, 2009

As Al Qaeda is weakened by the loss of leaders, fighters, funds and ideological appeal, the extremist network's ability to attack targets in the United States and Western Europe has diminished, anti-terrorism officials say.

Nonetheless, Al Qaeda and allied groups based primarily in Pakistan remain a threat, particularly because of an increasing ability to attract recruits from Central Asia and Turkey to offset the decline in the number of militants from the Arab world and the West.

Al Qaeda's relative strength these days is of crucial importance in the complex debate in Washington over future U.S. troop levels and tactics in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Although factions within the Obama administration differ on how best to deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan, all agree that the paramount priority is defeating Al Qaeda. Unlike the Afghan Taliban, the terrorist network Al Qaeda remains committed to a holy war against the West with a goal of matching or surpassing its devastating attacks in 2001.

Western intelligence officials say that the group, already under pressure from U.S. drone strikes and facing a likely Pakistani army assault on its sanctuary, has been further racked by internal division and rifts with tribal groups.

"Some pretty experienced individuals have been taken out of the equation," a senior British anti-terrorism official said in a recent interview.

"There is fear, insecurity and paranoia about individuals arriving from outside, worries about spies and infiltration," said the official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive topic. "There is a sense that it has become a less romantic experience. Which is important because of the impact on Al Qaeda the brand, the myth, the idea of the glorious jihadist."

Al Qaeda last spilled blood in the West in July 2005 when bombing attacks on the London transportation system killed 52 people. Global cooperation and aggressive infiltration by Western spy services have thwarted subsequent plots, and a stepped-up campaign of drone strikes has killed many Al Qaeda leaders and intensified divisions among extremist groups.

"There are tensions about AQ as an entity," the British official said. "It has embedded itself in [northwestern Pakistan] over the course of years with marriages, links to tribes. The drone strikes appear to be straining those bonds with the locals."

Some Arabs and Westerners still trek to the training compounds of Waziristan, though the numbers have shrunk as intelligence services get better at tracking and capturing trainees. British militants thought to have trained in Pakistan during the last year and a half number in the tens, not the hundreds, the official said.

French authorities say only small numbers of militants from France are going to Pakistan. Italian anti-terrorism officials have not detected any recruits from their country traveling to Pakistan since 2005 or '06, said Armando Spataro, a top terrorism prosecutor in Milan.

The dwindling supply of foreign recruits results partly from an ideological backlash in the Muslim world, experts say.

President Obama cited the debilitated condition of the terrorist network last week during a visit with U.S. counter-terrorism officials.

"Because of our efforts, Al Qaeda and its allies have not only lost operational capacity, they've lost legitimacy and credibility," he said.

The number of failed plots in the West, whether directed or inspired by Al Qaeda, also shows that the quality of operatives has declined, scholar Marc Sageman testified at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week.

"Counter-terrorism is working," said Sageman, a former CIA officer and New York Police Department expert. "Terrorist organizations can no longer cherry-pick the best candidates as they did in the 1990s. There is no Al Qaeda recruitment program: Al Qaeda and its allies are totally dependent on self-selected volunteers."

In several recent cases, Western trainees in Pakistan allegedly had contact with Mustafa Abu Yazid, also known as Said Sheik, a longtime Egyptian financial boss. Abu Yazid acts as the day-to-day chief of the network while Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, spend their time eluding capture, said the British official.

The training and direction of Westerners had largely been coordinated by one individual: Rashid Rauf, a Pakistani Briton who died in a missile strike in November. Investigators believe Rauf was the handler of British operatives in plots dating back to a failed 2004 bombing in London.

A French trainee who confessed this year detailed to French police the relatively small size of the network. Walid Othmani, who is of Tunisian descent, said he trained in the Waziristan region with a mostly Arab contingent of 300 to 500 fighters, according to a French police report provided by a defense lawyer.

"The chief of the Arabs is . . . of Egyptian origin," Othmani told interrogators. "The Arab group is mostly people of Saudi origin. You find people from the Middle East, North Africans, blacks, Turks and a majority of Arabs."

Anti-terrorism officials said Othmani's estimate largely matches previous intelligence.

The French militant also described a trend that may signal a new threat: the rise of Turks and Central Asians.

"There's a big Turkish group, the Arab group [the smallest of the groups], two rather large Uzbek groups, a group of Uighurs from Turkestan [the region in China officially known as Xinjiang] . . . the largest of the groups," he said under questioning. "There are also two Kurdish groups and finally a mixed group led by an Uzbek."

Western investigators worry about the Uzbek-led Islamic Jihad Union. The IJU broke off in 2002 from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a longtime Al Qaeda ally.

The IJU has made a name for itself as a Turkic-speaking alternative to Al Qaeda for Turks and Central Asians. The Turkic groups produce Internet propaganda in amounts that rival those of Al Qaeda, and have threatened Germany because of its military presence in Afghanistan.

"For the Turkic groups, Germany is America," said Evan Kohlmann, a terrorism expert who works with law enforcement around the world.

The IJU also directed a group of converts and Turks from Germany who were convicted of plotting to bomb U.S. military targets in Germany in 2007.

An IJU video recently obtained by Kohlmann shows Germans training in Pakistani badlands along with a muscular man with a shaved head who brandishes an automatic rifle. The video identifies him as an American.

"Law enforcement is deathly afraid of these groups," Kohlmann said.

Recent attacks in Pakistan highlight other threats to the West. The bold strikes on military and government targets were blamed on joint teams of Pakistani Taliban and Punjabi militant groups, both allies of Al Qaeda that could protect or rejuvenate the network.

"The ties between Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban are closer and closer," Jean-Louis Bruguiere, a veteran French anti-terrorism magistrate, said in an interview. "Then you have the danger of other Pakistani networks like Lashkar-e-Taiba that have had complicity in the past with elements of the state. Al Qaeda might be diluted, but it could become part of a larger threat."

Two Americans with links to Lashkar were convicted this summer in Atlanta of conspiring with militants in Canada and Europe and filming prospective targets in Washington.

In contrast, the Pakistani Taliban, like its Afghani counterpart, rarely surfaces in plots against the West.

One murky case hints at the potential: the arrests last year of a group of Pakistanis in Barcelona, Spain. Then-Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mahsud allegedly sent would-be suicide bombers to Barcelona, shadowed by a Pakistani informant working for French intelligence.

The informant called in a police raid when the suspects allegedly said they were about to commit a suicide attack on the Barcelona subway. No explosives were found, however. Some French and Spanish officials said the imminence of the attack was exaggerated and the links to Mahsud, who died in an airstrike this year, were unclear.

Nonetheless, the alliance between Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban raises concern, Bruguiere said.

"Such ambitions by the Pakistani Taliban cannot be excluded, because they want to join in the global jihad," Bruguiere said.

rotella@latimes.com

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

Trak : Britain to help Pak establish MI5-like network

2009-10-07T02:39:00.001-04:00

Britain to help Pak establish MI5-like network

ANI | October 2, 2009

Washington, Oct. 2 (ANI): Britain will assist Pakistan to set up a counter-intelligence agency on the line of British secret service, MI5.

BBC’s Richard Watson quoted senior British and Pakistani counter-terrorism officials as saying that British training and funding will be made available to the new security authority.

In the first phase, 200 experts will be employed in Pakistan, covering extremism and religious affairs, he said.

One of these will examine the alleged role in religious schools and radicalisation.

He added that there will be a new counter-terrorism strategy within six months, and research projects will be launched.

British intelligence has estimated that almost three quarters of terrorist attacks in Britain have their origins in Pakistan.

British experts fear that Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI could block progress, as it would want to remain in charge of terrorist investigations.

However, Pakistani sources insisted that the ISI is fully on board.

The Home Office declined to comment on funding, but said it strongly supported the move. (ANI)

Targana : Osama’s death or capture just months away: Expert

2009-09-28T15:34:00.000-04:00

Osama’s death or capture just months away: Expert

NEW YORK - The cornered and weakened Osama bin Laden is just months away from being captured or killed, a terrorism expert has predicted.

The Daily Star quoted Al-Qaida expert Peter Bergen as saying: “Bin Laden will be captured or killed.”

According to experts, the 52-year-old al-Qaida chief is on the run with less power than ever before.

“Laden is trapped in the mountains of Pakistan’s tribal areas. He is stripped of any power, unable to communicate on the phone for fear of being overheard by US eavesdroppers and he is forever on the run,” experts were quoted by the report, as saying.

Drone attacks have already killed Bin Laden’s many key allies. About 500 terrorists, including a series of key lieutenants, were killed in 56 predator attacks.

Khalid Habib, the group’s military chief, rising star Abu Layth al-Libi, explosives and chemical warfare expert Abu Khabab al-Masri and attack planner Usama al-Kini have been killed.

Atlantic airline bombing plotter Rashid Rauf was allegedly killed in a drone attack, as was Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.

Al-Qaida’s propaganda arm seems to have been drowned by internal feuds and suspicion, since many of its websites are often offline.

America’s Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said: “Al-Qaida today is less capable and effective than it was a year ago. In Pakistan’s FATA, al-Qaida has lost significant parts of its command structure in a succession of damaging blows.

“We are more aggressive and the ability to be more aggressive is founded on the larger and more sophisticated understanding of the adversary that we have gained.” (ANI)

War On You : EXCLUSIVE… 9/11, What’s Wrong With This Picture?

2009-09-02T05:59:00.002-04:00

EXCLUSIVE… 9/11, What’s Wrong With This Picture?

September 2, 2009

Waronyou has reviewed the content herein and agrees the author has presented a new and different perspective on the events of 9/11.

Many official government stories are so ridiculous that a select group of people some call the puppet masters don’t expect you to believe them. Disinformation is misleading information that is true, deliberately announced publicly or leaked by a government or an intelligence agency to sow confusion and undermine credibility. Misinformation is false or inaccurate information, which is deliberately intended to deceive.

September 11, 2001:

According to the government on 9/11 19 fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil genius named Osama bin Laden, crash airplanes into steel skyscrapers because they “hate our freedom to consume” and for the first time in history three buildings collapse at free fall speed due to a jet fuel fire. Jet fuel, which is basically kerosene that burns at about 400c, on 9/11 took on the qualities of an explosive demolition agent, vaporizing 70 tons of aircraft into a puff of smoke and causing 110-story buildings to collapse into a pile of rubble. Misinformation?

Yes, millions believe at least a LIHOP (Let It Happen on Purpose) version of the story because a MIHOP (Made It Happen on Purpose) version results in cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort felt when one realizes 3,000 American citizens died to build up the military, pass the Patriot Act, justify the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and, of course, FISA–the White House’s warrantless wiretapping on Americans suspected of links to terrorists.

Anyone not in denial and offered an alternate explanation needs a New York minute to realize the official story is absurd, and that is before they find out the military was conducting Operation Vigilant Guardian, an exercise on 9/11 simulating hijacked planes in the NE sector of the United States crashing into skyscrapers. The government describes the coincidence of terrorists actually hijacking planes and flying them into the World Trade Center as just one of those “bizarre coincidences,” those little quirks of fate that do happen from time to time, like the same person winning the lottery three weeks in a row. The odds are astronomical, but these things happen.

There were other bizarre coincidences on 9/11, take World Trade Center 7. Never heard of WTC 7? That isn’t surprising because, although slick science TV programs “explained” the collapses of the Twin Towers, the 7-second collapse of Building 7 remains virtually unknown probably because it wasn’t hit by a plane. Chapter 5 of the FEMA World Trade Center Building Performance Study states: “WTC 7 is of significant interest because it appears the collapse was due primarily to fire, rather than any impact damage from the collapsing towers.”

FEMA admits there is no proof a fire caused the collapse of Building 7, and the final chapter (5.8), instead of offering conclusions offers “Recommendations”: “Certain issues should be explored before final conclusions are reached and additional studies of the performance of WTC 7, and related building performance issues should be conducted,” as well as “suggested mechanisms for a progressive collapse should be studied and confirmed,” and “how the collapse of an unknown number of gravity columns brought down the whole building must be explained.”

The report does not mention WTC 7 was home to Giuliani’s Secret Command Center and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Enron, WorldCom and 3 to 4,000 other companies won the lottery when the collapse of Building 7 destroyed their SEC case files.

And then the Penta-gone:

According to Jamie Mcintryre, CNN correspondent at the scene “From my close-up inspection, there’s no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon. And as I said, the only pieces left that you can see are small enough that you pick up in your hand. There are no large tail sections, wing sections, fuselage, nothing like that anywhere around which would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon.” This report is disinformation deliberately announced publicly in order to influence public opinion.

The attack targeted the portion of the building opposite the offices of Secretary of Defense. Instead of attacking Rumsfeld’s offices, the jet executed a 320-degree descending spiral to its east, south, and southwest, losing seven thousand feet before making its final approach from the southwest hitting the portion of the Pentagon just renovated and occupied by its newest tenant, The Office of Naval Intelligence. Thirty-four of those killed were civilian accountants, bookkeepers and budget analysts.

Just the day before, on September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld was speaking to Congress and confessed the Pentagon is missing 2.3 trillion Dollars. Just vanished. And, in another one of those things that don’t happen very often, The Office of Naval Intelligence was investigating the missing 2.3 trillion.

In June 2006, Muckraker Report investigative reporter Ed Haas contacted the FBI to ask why 9/11 was not specifically mentioned on Bin Laden’s wanted page on the FBI website. According to the FBI “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Osama Bin Laden’s most wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”

But according to George W. Bush, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was required because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and a connection to 9/11–and don’t forget Bush wanted to free the Iraqi people.

Recently, the Bush Administration has admitted there were no WMDs and Saddam Hussein had no ties to the attacks on 9/11.

Enter Valerie Plame, the Spy Who Got Shoved Out Into the Cold.

The Plame leak was a breach of national security and a violation of law under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. One could “predict that the investigation” of Bush and Cheney would die in the CIA as George J. Tenet would stay loyal to Bush. But instead, in another one of those strange quirks of fate, Mr. Tenet decided to do “the right thing” and investigate the scandal – ad nauseaum. The story was in the news until 2007 and Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald during the investigation commented, “As you sit back, you want to learn why was this information going out. Why were people taking this information about Valerie Wilson and giving it to reporters?” Answer? Disinformation. Instead of organizing an elaborate PR campaign to disparage Wilson, Cheney could have directed the CIA to hide a few WMDs prior to the invasion. “We found them, he had them, look, here they are, Bush and Cheney were telling the truth.”

And finally a warning from President Bush, “Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories” aired on national television after the attacks of 9/11 and right before the Patriot Act was forced down Congress. Super misinformation.

Evidentially David Ray Griffin was not watching television on 9/11. A philosopher at the Claremont School of Theology, Griffin scrutinizes the timeline and physical evidence of September 11 for unresolved inconsistencies in his widely read book “New Pearl Harbor”. Griffin draws heavily on The Big Lie–a bestseller in France. He claims that if standard procedures for scrambling fighter jets had been followed, the hijacked planes should have been intercepted in time, and that, structurally, the collapse of the World Trade Center towers most likely was caused by explosives placed throughout the towers, not from the plane crashes.

Amazon Customers who searched for or bought New Pearl Harbor or expressed interest in “This Item” can find 17 pages of related titles all by authors who missed the President’s warning.

Don’t want to read about 9/11? How about a movie? Here are just a few amateur selections: 9/11, Eyewitness Hoboken, Great Illusion, Painful Deceptions, Mysteries, Greatest Lie Ever Sold. Google Video has 6 pages of related 9/11 videos.

However, without a doubt the Oscar winner for Best Documentary is “Loose Change” (2005, 2006, 2007). A series of documentaries that assert the September 11, 2001 attacks were planned and conducted by elements within the United States government and base the claims on perceived anomalies in the historical record of the attacks. Loose Change is one of the most downloaded movies on the Internet and was featured on a New York local FOX affiliate, WICZ-TV. Watching it you would assume Oliver Stone was the director, not two college students Dylan Avery & Jason Bermas who allegedly made it by “accident.”

Google “9/11 conspiracy” and you get 134,000,000 results.

Google “9/11 outrageous conspiracy” you get 556,000 results.

There is a 9/11-truth movement in every major city in the United States.

9/11 conspiracy theories are allowed and even encouraged. Could the 9/11 Truth movement be the cover for another story?

The News : The top ten most wanted Jehadis

2009-08-31T23:32:00.002-04:00

The top ten most wanted Jehadis

By Amir Mir | September 1, 2009

LAHORE: The death of Baitullah Mehsud in a US drone attack is unlikely to give Pakistan a reprieve in its military operations in the hostile tribal areas as there are many more hardcore militants with guns in their hands and Jehad on their mind — who are still at large and adamant to pursue their Jehadi agenda.

According to well-placed Interior Ministry sources in Islamabad, Pakistanís top ten most wanted terrorists belong to six militant and sectarian organisations linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Four of the ten wanted militants are affiliated with the TTP; two belong to the LeJ while one each is associated with the TNSM, the JeM, the HUJI and the LeI. They include Maulana Fazlullah, the fugitive Ameer of the Swat chapter of the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), Maulana Fazlullah, Qari Hussain Mehsud, Maulvi Faqeer Mohammad and Waliur Rehman of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Matiur Rehman and Qari Zafar of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri of the Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HUJI), Rashid Rauf of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Mangal Bagh of the Lashkar-e-Islami (LeI).

With Baitullah Mehsud already down, Maulana Fazlullah has become No 1 most wanted terrorist. He is the son-in-law of Maulana Sufi Mohammed, the TNSM founder. Born on March 1, 1975, Fazlullah is widely known as Mullah Radio for using illegal FM channels to broadcast vituperative speeches, threatening people with dire consequences should they not adhere to Shariat and instigating the residents of Swat into taking part in Jehad. He has been missing since April 2009 after the Pakistan Army launched a massive operation to dismantle his Jehadi infrastructure following the collapse of a peace agreement between Sufi Mohammed and the government. Though the Army has reclaimed Swat, Fazlullah remains at large. He carries a reward of Rs 5 million on his head.

A close confidant of Baitullah Mehsud, Hakimullah Mehsud, is the new Ameer of the TTP who ranks No 2 in the most wanted list. Born in 1980, he used to command TTP fighters in Orakzai, Khyber and Kurram tribal agencies of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Hakimullah, also known as Zulfiqar Mehsud alias Gudu, has been leading operations against Natoís supply lines in Khyber and Peshawar. His forces have been behind raids that have led to the destruction of more than 600 Nato vehicles and shipping containers. He had taken credit for a series of suicide attacks and complex assaults in Lahore and Peshawar, including the March 2009 attack on the Manawan Police Training Academy in Lahore. Interior Minister Rehman Malik had claimed after the death of Baitullah that Hakimullah too had died in a gun battle. But he is still alive.

Another close aide of Baitullah, Qari Hussain Mehsud ranks No 3. He is a key commander of the TTP in South Waziristan, and known as the Ustad-e-Fidayeen (the trainer of suicide bombers). He runs camps that train children to become suicide bombers. Children are indoctrinated to wage Jehad in Pakistan and Afghanistan, as shown in a video taken at one of his camps in Spinkai area which was released by himself. The two major suicide hits claimed on the video were the March 11, 2008 suicide attack on the FIA building in Lahore and the November 24, 2007 twin suicide attacks in Rawalpindi, in front of the ISI headquarters. The Pakistani military demolished Hussainís suicide nursery in January 2008 and claimed that he too had been killed. But he mocked the military hardly a week later during a press conference, saying. ìI am alive, donít you see me?”

The No 4 in the most wanted list, Ilyas Kashmiri, the chief of the Azad Kashmir chapter of al-Qaeda-linked Jehadi organisation Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HUJI), is a veteran of the Kashmir Jehad who spent several years in an Indian jail. He was arrested after the December 2003 twin suicide attacks on General Musharrafís presidential cavalcade in Rawalpindi, but released a few weeks later due to lack of evidence. He later shifted his base to the Waziristan region and joined hands with Baitullah Mehsud. He later established a training camp in the Razmak area of Waziristan and shifted most of his militants from his Kotli training camp in Azad Kashmir. He has been named in a charge-sheet filed by the Islamabad police for masterminding the November 2008 murder of Major General (retd) Amir Faisal Alvi, the former general officer commanding (GOC) of the elite Special Services Group (SSG).

No 5 in the most wanted list, Rashid Rauf is an alleged al-Qaeda linked British national of the Pakistani origin who is wanted by Pakistani and Britain for being a central figure in an August 2006 plot to blow up some US-bound trans-Atlantic airplanes. A close relative of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar, Rashid has been accused of forming multiple cells, comprising 12 terrorists each, which had been dispatched in 2008 from Pakistani tribal areas to conduct a series of bomb attacks in the major cities of several European countries. Rashid was reportedly killed on November 22, 2008 after a missile fired from a CIA predator drone destroyed a mud-built bungalow in Alikhel village of North Waziristan. But it later transpired that he is alive and operating from the Waziristan region.

The No 6 most wanted terrorist is Mangal Bagh Afridi, who is the founder of the Lashkar-e-Islam, an Islamic militant group operating in Khyber Agency which claims to be a reformist organisation trying to promote virtue and prevent vice. Born in 1973 in the Bara Tehsil of Khyber Agency, Mangal used to be a bus conductor who now preaches extremism on his privately-run FM radio stations. If one were to believe, his Lashkar-e-Islam has 120,000 armed men who control most parts of Khyber Agency. Already declared a proclaimed offender, he had left a trail of bloodshed, pillage and mayhem when his men attacked unarmed villagers in Sheikhan, near Peshawar, in early 2009 and killed dozens.

Born in 1977, Matiur Rehman alais Samad Sial, the chief operational commander of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, ranks No 7. He is a Pakistani national, but identified as al-Qaedaís planning director, wanted by both the FBI and FIA. Known as an extremely fine bomb-maker, he comes from Bahawalpur district of the Punjab and carries a bounty of Rs 10 million, as announced by the Pakistan government. He had been linked with the August 2006 transatlantic plot to destroy US-bound British aircrafts. Suspected for his involvement in the September 2008 Marriot Hotel suicide bombing in Islamabad, Matiur Rehman is described as extremely dangerous because of his role as the liaison between al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Jehadi community.

Born in 1970 in the Bajaur Agency, Maulvi Faqir Mohammed is a member of the Mohmand tribe and the deputy commander of the TTP who ranks No 8 in the most wanted list. Formerly affiliated with the TNSM led by Sufi Mohammad, he is wanted due to contacts with the Taliban and al-Qaeda militants. Faqeer has publicly stated that he has close ties to Osamaís No 2 Dr Ayman Zawahiri. After Baitullahís death, he had first announced assuming temporary command of the TTP, but later declared that Hakimullah had been selected leader of the TTP. He is accused of orchestrating the November 8, 2006 suicide attack on an Army training centre at Dargai in NWFP which killed 45 recruits of the Punjab Regiment Centre.

Waliur Rehman, the commander of the South Waziristan chapter of the TTP, has emerged as a key Jehadi figure after the death of Baitullah who ranks No 9 on the Most Wanted list. Born in 1974, Waliur is a cleric who studied at a religious seminary in Faisalabad - the Jamia Islamia Imdadia — before teaching for seven years in a Madrassa in South Waziristan. He had joined the Taliban movement in 2004 to become one of Baitullahís trusted aides who used to look after the financial matters of the TTP. At one stage in his life, Waliur Rehman was associated with Maulana Fazlur Rehmanís Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) and had pursued peaceful politics. Wali was a main contender for Baitullahís job as the TTP head and his selection as the TTP head for South Waziristan has made him the pivotal figure in the organisation.

The No 10 most wanted militant is Qari Mohammad Zafar, who is largely believed to be the acting Ameer of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi who runs a suicide bombing squad in Pakistan. Presently operating from South Waziristan, Zafar was alleged to be the mastermind of the September 2008 Marriott Hotel bombing. Hailing from Karachi, he is reported to have become one of the members of al-Qaedaís hardline inner circle in Pakistan and enjoying the protection of the TTP. In 2007, Zafar had escaped from the custody of security services in Lahore. He is also wanted for questioning in connection with the March 2, 2006 car bomb attack on the US consulate in Karachi.

TPV : Murdering Palestinians for their organs: "All facts on the ground prove Swedish report correct"

2009-08-23T22:50:00.001-04:00

Murdering Palestinians for their organs: "All facts on the ground prove Swedish report correct"

by Saed Bannoura | August 23, 2009

Former Palestinian detainee, researcher Abdul-Nasser Farwana, stated that all facts on the ground, since decades, prove that the Israeli occupation executed Palestinian detainees after they surrendered and refused to hand their bodies to their families. Hundreds of bodies were transferred to the families days, months or even years after the fact, and when the bodies were sent back, they were missing vital internal organs.

Farwana added that the Swedish report, written by Donald Boström and published by Aftonbladet Swedish paper, regarding illegal trafficking of body parts of Palestinians is directly connected to the execution of Palestinians after they surrendered to the army, and is connected with the arrest of 40 well-known figures, including Rabbis in New Jersey for money laundering and corruption, in a scheme that involved sales of Israeli kidneys in the US and other corruption rackets.

Farwana added that one of the illegal acts carried out by Israel is having secret detention facilities in which dozens of detainees were imprisoned and never heard of anymore. This is in addition to the “Numbers Graveyard” in which “unknown” Palestinian and Arab fighters are buried.

He said that Israel still denies it is holding hundreds of Palestinian and Arab fighter, and refuses to cooperate with the Red Cross on the issue.

The researcher added that Israel is the only state that had a policy of detaining the bodies of slain Arab and Palestinian fighters, and that some 300 fighters are buried in the numbers graveyard.

Hundreds of bodies were returned during prisoner-swap deals, including the latest swap-deal between Hezbollah and Israel in which some 200 bodies were moved to Lebanon.

Farwana further said that dozens of detainees died in Israeli prisons, some due to torture, and their bodies were not immediately sent to their families, but instead were moved to forensic center, and some of their body parts were removed before bodies were sent back to the Palestinians.

Mayors, rabbis arrested in New Jersey human organ corruption scandal.

He said the Swedish paper said in its report that Palestinians youth were abducted by the Israeli army from their homes, were killed later on, and when their bodies were return, they were cut open and vital organs were missing.

Rabbi Levi Yitzhak Rosenberg, who was recently arrested in New York, is believed to be involved in illegal trade of organs, and that he sold Kidney to patients in the United States for 160.000 USD.

The Aftonbladet report placed the Israeli-Swedish relations at odds, and some Israel officials demanded Sweden to officially apologize, while other officials said that this report in part of the efforts to demonize Israel and the Jews.

The full Aftonbladet Kultur report, in English

Related article: "Sweden flatly rejects Israeli request for media quiet"

TLAXCALA : “Our sons plundered for their organs”

2009-08-23T22:44:00.003-04:00

“Our sons plundered for their organs”

by Donald BOSTRÖM | August 17, 2009

You could call me a “matchmaker,” said Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, from Brooklyn, USA, in a secret recording with an FBI-agent whom he believed to be a client. Ten days later, at the end of July this year, Rosenbaum was arrested and a vast, Sopranos-like, imbroglio of money-laundering and illegal organ-trade was revealed. Rosenbaum’s matchmaking had nothing to do with romance. It was all about buying and selling kidneys from Israel on the black market. Rosenbaum says that he buys the kidneys for $10,000, from poor people. He then proceeds to sell the organs to desperate patients in the States for $160,000. The accusations have shaken the American transplantation business. If they are true it means that organ trafficking is documented for the first time in the US, experts tell the New Jersey Real-Time News.

On the question of how many organs he has sold Rosenbaum replies: “Quite a lot. And I have never failed,” he boasts. The business has been running for quite some time. Francis Delmonici, professor of transplant surgery at Harvard and member of the National Kidney Foundation’s Board of Directors, tells the same newspaper that organ-trafficking, similar to the one reported from Israel, is carried out in other places of the world as well. 5–6,000 operations a year, about ten per cent of the world’s kidney transplants are carried out illegally, according to Delmonici.

Countries suspected of these activities are Pakistan, the Philippines and China, where the organs are allegedly taken from executed prisoners. But Palestinians also harbor strong suspicions against Israel for seizing young men and having them serve as the country’s organ reserve – a very serious accusation, with enough question marks to motivate the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to start an investigation about possible war crimes.

Israel has repeatedly been under fire for its unethical ways of dealing with organs and transplants. France was among the countries that ceased organ collaboration with Israel in the nineties. Jerusalem Post wrote that “the rest of the European countries are expected to follow France’s example shortly.”

Half of the kidneys transplanted to Israelis since the beginning of the 2000s have been bought illegally from Turkey, Eastern Europe or Latin America. Israeli health authorities have full knowledge of this business but do nothing to stop it. At a conference in 2003 it was shown that Israel is the only western country with a medical profession that doesn’t condemn the illegal organ trade. The country takes no legal measures against doctors participating in the illegal business – on the contrary, chief medical officers of Israel’s big hospitals are involved in most of the illegal transplants, according to Dagens Nyheter (December 5, 2003).

In the summer of 1992, Ehud Olmert, then minister of health, tried to address the issue of organ shortage by launching a big campaign aimed at having the Israeli public register for post mortem organ donation. Half a million pamphlets were spread in local newspapers. Ehud Olmert himself was the first person to sign up. A couple of weeks later the Jerusalem Post reported that the campaign was a success. No fewer than 35,000 people had signed up. Prior to the campaign it would have been 500 in a normal month. In the same article, however, Judy Siegel, the reporter, wrote that the gap between supply and demand was still large. 500 people were in line for a kidney transplant, but only 124 transplants could be performed. Of 45 people in need of a new liver, only three could be operated on in Israel.

While the campaign was running, young Palestinian men started to disappear from villages in the West Bank and Gaza. After five days Israeli soldiers would bring them back dead, with their bodies ripped open.

Talk of the bodies terrified the population of the occupied territories. There were rumors of a dramatic increase of young men disappearing, with ensuing nightly funerals of autopsied bodies.

I was in the area at the time, working on a book. On several occasions I was approached by UN staff concerned about the developments. The persons contacting me said that organ theft definitely occurred but that they were prevented from doing anything about it. On an assignment from a broadcasting network I then travelled around interviewing a great number of Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza – meeting parents who told of how their sons had been deprived of organs before being killed. One example that I encountered on this eerie trip was the young stone-thrower Bilal Achmed Ghanan.

It was close to midnight when the motor roar from an Israeli military column sounded from the outskirts of Imatin, a small village in the northern parts of the West Bank. The two thousand inhabitants were awake. They were still, waiting, like silent shadows in the dark, some lying upon roofs, others hiding behind curtains, walls, or trees that provided protection during the curfew but still offered a full view toward what would become the grave for the first martyr of the village. The military had interrupted the electricity and the area was now a closed-off military zone – not even a cat could move outdoors without risking its life. The overpowering silence of the dark night was only interrupted by quiet sobbing. I don’t remember if our shivering was due to the cold or to the tension. Five days earlier, on May 13, 1992, an Israeli special force had used the village’s carpentry workshop for an ambush. The person they were assigned to put out of action was Bilal Achmed Ghanan, one of the stone-throwing Palestinian youngsters who made life difficult for the Israeli soldiers.

As one of the leading stone-throwers Bilal Ghanan had been wanted by the military for a couple of years. Together with other stone-throwing boys he hid in the Nablus mountains, with no roof over his head. Getting caught meant torture and death for these boys – they had to stay in the mountains at all costs.

On May 13 Bilal made an exception, when for some reason, he walked unprotected past the carpentry workshop. Not even Talal, his older brother, knows why he took this risk. Maybe the boys were out of food and needed to restock.

Everything went according to plan for the Israeli special force. The soldiers stubbed their cigarettes, put away their cans of Coca-Cola, and calmly aimed through the broken window. When Bilal was close enough they needed only to pull the triggers. The first shot hit him in the chest. According to villagers who witnessed the incident he was subsequently shot with one bullet in each leg. Two soldiers then ran down from the carpentry workshop and shot Bilal once in the stomach. Finally, they grabbed him by his feet and dragged him up the twenty stone steps of the workshop stair. Villagers say that people from both the UN and the Red Crescent were close by, heard the discharge and came to look for wounded people in need of care. Some arguing took place as to who should take care of the victim. Discussions ended with Israeli soldiers loading the badly wounded Bilal in a jeep and driving him to the outskirts of the village, where a military helicopter waited. The boy was flown to a destination unknown to his family. Five days later he came back, dead and wrapped in green hospital fabric.

A villager recognized Captain Yahya, the leader of the military column who had transported Bilal from the postmortem center Abu Kabir, outside of Tel Aviv, to the place for his final rest. “Captain Yahya is the worst of them all,” the villager whispered in my ear. After Yahya had unloaded the body and changed the green fabric for a light cotton one, some male relatives of the victim were chosen by the soldiers to do the job of digging and mixing cement.

Together with the sharp noises from the shovels we could hear laughter from the soldiers who, as they waited to go home, exchanged some jokes. As Bilal was put in the grave his chest was uncovered. Suddenly it became clear to the few people present just what kind of abuse the boy had been exposed to. Bilal was not by far the first young Palestinian to be buried with a slit from his abdomen up to his chin.

The families in the West Bank and in Gaza felt that they knew exactly what had happened: “Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,” relatives of Khaled from Nablus told me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin and the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who had all disappeared for a number of days only to return at night, dead and autopsied.

“Why are they keeping the bodies for up to five days before they let us bury them? What happened to the bodies during that time? Why are they performing autopsy, against our will, when the cause of death is obvious? Why are the bodies returned at night? Why is it done with a military escort? Why is the area closed off during the funeral? Why is the electricity interrupted?” Nafe’s uncle was upset and he had a lot of questions.

The relatives of the dead Palestinians no longer harbored any doubts as to the reasons for the killings, but the spokesperson for the Israeli army claimed that the allegations of organ theft were lies. All the Palestinian victims go through autopsy on a routine basis, he said. Bilal Achmed Ghanem was one of 133 Palestinians killed in various ways that year. According to the Palestinian statistics the causes of death were: shot in the street, explosion, tear gas, deliberately run over, hanged in prison, shot in school, killed at home etcetera. The 133 people killed were between four months to 88 years old. Only half of them, 69 victims, went through postmortem examination. The routine autopsy of killed Palestinians – of which the army spokesperson was talking – has no bearing on the reality in the occupied territories. The questions remain.

We know that Israel has a great need for organs, that there is a vast and illegal trade of organs which has been running for many years now, that the authorities are aware of it and that doctors in managing positions at the big hospitals participate, as well as civil servants at various levels. We also know that young Palestinian men disappeared, that they were brought back after five days, at night, under tremendous secrecy, stitched back together after having been cut from abdomen to chin.

It’s time to bring clarity to this macabre business, to shed light on what is going on and what has taken place in the territories occupied by Israel since the Intifada began.

Source: ”Våra söner plundras på sina organ” (Aftonbladet Kultur)

Original article published on August 17, 2009.

Press TV : Sweden flatly rejects Israeli request for media quiet

2009-08-23T22:39:00.002-04:00

Sweden flatly rejects Israeli request for media quiet

MRS/AA | August 21, 2009

Sweden has turned down a demand that it condemn the recent publication of an article that links Israeli soldiers to the death of Palestinian civilians with the motive of obtaining their organs.

In an article published earlier in the week, Sweden's best-selling daily Aftonbladet recounted grotesque incidents dating as far back as 1992 in which Israeli soldiers allegedly abducted Palestinian youths and returned their bodies mutilated a few days later.

The publication infuriated Israeli officials who labeled the news piece as 'blatantly racist' and full of 'vile anti-Semitic themes'.

In response to the publication, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called on his Swedish counterpart, Carl Bildt, to officially rebut the 'shocking and appalling' piece.

Tel Aviv's envoy to Sweden, Benny Dagan, was to make a similar request during a Friday meeting with the kingdom's deputy foreign minister.

Bildt, however, responded that he would not condemn the article, asserting that such a measure would be in violation of freedom of expression and counter to the Swedish constitution.

Condemnation of anti-Semitism is "the only issue on which there has ever been complete unity in the Swedish parliament", the Swedish minister wrote in a blog post on Thursday, apparently rejecting the idea that disapproving criminal conduct amounts to anti-Semitism.

The Swedish refusal to denounce the allegations against the Israeli army by the high-circulation daily may shake diplomatic ties between Tel Aviv and Stockholm.

There is media speculation that Israel might respond by canceling the Swedish foreign minister's visit to the occupied West Bank scheduled for the next 10 days.

CAMP CASEY UNDER SAIL FOR SHEEHAN'S SHIPBOARD PEACE SUMMIT

2009-08-23T10:30:00.002-04:00

CAMP CASEY UNDER SAIL FOR SHEEHAN'S SHIPBOARD PEACE SUMMIT

Peace proponent Cindy Sheehan calls all peace leaders to come sail with her aboard 'SS Camp Casey' anchored in Martha's Vineyard for a shipboard peace summit.

August 23, 2009

MARTHA'S VINEYARD -- Peace proponent Cindy Sheehan is calling for peace movement leaders, international news 'anchors' and pro-peace members of the public to sail around Martha's Vineyard, from August 27 to 29. The meetings will be aboard the grand sailing vessel dubbed the SS Camp Casey anchored in Martha's Vineyard. Sheehan will co-captain daily excursions as she holds this seaside peace summit.

Sheehan's purpose is to bring leaders together to stand as an acting 'Department of Peace'. She calls for immediate stipulations: "I am calling in the Peace Movement to encircle our country with our united demand for an immediate return of all U.S. forces around the globe. Bring every one of our troops home NOW! We need them in our families and towns. We need our troops back to help us fix our broken country. Our ships of state must make their voyage home, with our countrymen out of harm's way."

Sheehan declares her plan to mobilize peace leaders to begin work with her to draft the world's first 'Universal Peace Treaty': "We must stop the terrorizing of our soldiers and the world's civilians with the imperial sword rattling of wartime administrations," said Sheehan. "We must BE the change we wish to see in our President!"

Sheehan demands that the Obama Administration issue a mandatory end to U.S. war policy. "The clock does not turn back with a new President.. We must return them all back here immediately. No more waiting will be tolerated. Zero acceptance for keeping our troops abroad!

"Security begins at home with intact families," says Sheehan. "The time of healing must begin. The true purpose of our nation is Peace on Earth, starting with the decisive end to our failed war policies."

To the international peace community, Sheehan says: "This is our time to finally draw an end to America's wars. We must abide by the saying of ancient scriptures: Let peace and peace and peace be everywhere. I declare this to be our new national defense policy."

For information, contact:
Laurie Dobson
lauriegdobson@yahoo.com
207-604-8988

or Bruce Marshall
brmas@yahoo.com
802-767-6079

NYT : Bush Official, in Book, Tells of Pressure on ’04 Vote

2009-08-22T01:30:00.001-04:00

Bush Official, in Book, Tells of Pressure on ’04 Vote

By PETER BAKER | August 20, 2009

WASHINGTON — Tom Ridge, the first secretary of homeland security, asserts in a new book that he was pressured by top advisers to President George W. Bush to raise the national threat level just before the 2004 election in what he suspected was an effort to influence the vote.

After Osama bin Laden released a threatening videotape four days before the election, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pushed Mr. Ridge to elevate the public threat posture but he refused, according to the book. Mr. Ridge calls it a “dramatic and inconceivable” event that “proved most troublesome” and reinforced his decision to resign.

The provocative allegation provides fresh ammunition for critics who have accused the Bush administration of politicizing national security. Mr. Bush and his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, were locked in a tight race heading into that final weekend, and some analysts concluded that even without a higher threat level, the bin Laden tape helped the president win re-election by reminding voters of the danger of Al Qaeda.

Keith M. Urbahn, a spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld, said the defense secretary supported letting the public know if intelligence agencies believed there was a greater threat, and pointed to a variety of chilling Qaeda warnings in those days, including one tape vowing that “the streets of America will run red with blood.”

“Given those facts,” Mr. Urbahn said, “it would seem reasonable for senior administration officials to discuss the threat level. Indeed, it would have been irresponsible had that discussion not taken place.”

Mr. Urbahn said “the storyline advanced by his publisher seemingly to sell copies of the book is nonsense.”

Mr. Ashcroft could not be reached for comment. But Mark Corallo, who was his spokesman at the Justice Department, dismissed Mr. Ridge’s account. “Didn’t happen,” he said. “Now would be a good time for Mr. Ridge to use his emergency duct tape.”

Frances Fragos Townsend, who was Mr. Bush’s homeland security adviser, said that “there was a fulsome debate” about the threat level but that “the politics of it were not ever a factor.”

Mr. Ridge’s book, called “The Test of Our Times” and due out Sept. 1 from Thomas Dunne Books, is the latest by a Bush adviser to disclose internal disagreements and establish distance from an unpopular administration. Mr. Ridge complains that he was never invited to National Security Council meetings, that Mr. Rumsfeld would rarely meet with him and that the White House pressured him to include a justification for the Iraq war in a speech.

He also writes that he lobbied unsuccessfully before Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to replace Michael D. Brown as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and that the White House killed his proposal to open a homeland security regional office in New Orleans.

The most sensational assertion was the pre-election debate in 2004 about the threat level, first reported by U.S. News & World Report. Mr. Ridge writes that the bin Laden tape alone did not justify a change in the nation’s security posture but describes “a vigorous, some might say dramatic, discussion” on Oct. 30 to do so.

“There was absolutely no support for that position within our department. None,” he writes. “I wondered, ‘Is this about security or politics?’ Post-election analysis demonstrated a significant increase in the president’s approval rating in the days after the raising of the threat level.”

Mr. Ridge provides no evidence that politics motivated the discussion. Until now, he has denied politics played a role in threat levels. Asked by Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times if politics ever influenced decisions on threat warnings, he volunteered to take a lie-detector test. “Wire me up,” Mr. Ridge said, according to Mr. Lichtblau’s book, “Bush’s Law.” “Not a chance. Politics played no part.”

IPS : GERMANY: Terror Plot Emerges as Secret Service Game

2009-08-22T00:51:00.001-04:00

GERMANY: Terror Plot Emerges as Secret Service Game

By Julio Godoy | August 20, 2009

BERLIN, Aug 20 (IPS) - It was announced as a terror plot busted. German police had captured three young Muslim men in the small village Medebach-Oberschledor, some 450 km southwest of Berlin Sep. 4 in 2007. The police declared they had seized 730 kilograms of hydrogen peroxide, enough to make 550 kg of explosives.

The three men, and a fourth, who was captured a year later in Turkey, wanted to bomb U.S. military and other facilities in Germany, and to kill "as many U.S. soldiers as possible," one of the accused later confessed.

The four men told court their plans were in retaliation against the U.S. war on 'Islamic terrorism', especially the abuse of hundreds of Muslims detained at Guantanamo prison. German authorities and the media dubbed the four men 'the Sauerland group', in reference to the region where they were captured.

The Sauerland group were declared to be members of the Islamic Jihad Union, an alleged terrorist organisation based in Uzbekistan.

Almost two years later, the case is before the higher regional court in Duesseldorf, some 460 km southwest of Berlin, and should come to a close early 2010.

But now, the case has ceased to be "the serious terrorist threat" it was called. It is now a mysterious puzzle of secret service games, prosecutors' alarmism spread by the media, and basic failures of justice.

The supposedly dangerous group members have emerged as no more than some muddle-heads. They had no links whatsoever to international Islamic terror groups.

"No Islamic chief villain...in Pakistan or somewhere else influenced the group," says Hans Leyendecker, one of Germany's top investigative journalists. "Its members are dumb, narrow-minded young men who hate the U.S."

Moreover, the fifth member of the group, yet to be captured, has been described as a Turkish national known only as Mevlut K. He now appears as an informer of the Turkish national intelligence organisation (MIT, after its Turkish name). He was the key figure in the plot, according to confessions by other members of the Sauerland group.

"Without Mevlut, we would not have been able to go as far with the preparations as we did," Attila Selek, one of the accused, told the court. 'K' had procured 26 fuses for the bombs the group was supposed to make, Selek said. Only, the fuses were useless. German police investigations showed that all but two were too humid to work.

Fritz Gelowicz, another member of the terrorist group, said the four men were informed of K's links with the MIT. "We knew that Mevlut had links with several secret services," Gelowicz told the court. "We though that these links were good for us."

K apparently did not hide his links to the Turkish secret service. On at least one occasion K told the group they were being monitored by the German security agencies. "Then he told me he was stealing this information from secret services," Selek told the court.

Despite warnings that the German police were constantly informed of their actions, the four men continued their preparations until they were captured.

Numerous sources have confirmed that the German foreign intelligence service Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) knew in 2004 that Mevlut K worked for the MIT. That year, the sources said, the MIT proposed to the BND that K be infiltrated into Islam movements in Germany. The BND reportedly rejected the Turkish plan.

Despite the confessions about K's involvement, German justice failed to order his capture for a long time. Mevlut K. is believed to be living in Turkey.

German authorities only issued an international warrant against Mevlut K. Aug. 13, several weeks after depositions by the other four members of the group had been widely circulated.

The Sauerland group could have been "an orchestration to make believe that a huge terrorist threat" was looming over U.S. military facilities in Germany, says Rene Hellig, leading commentator with the Neues Deutschland daily.

Former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray calls it a fake case orchestrated by Uzbek security services.

"I should make plain that regrettably it is a fact that there are those who commit violence, motivated by a fanatic version of their faith," Murray wrote in his personal blog. "Sadly the appalling aggression of the U.S. government and allied war policy has made such reaction much more frequent. They may or may not have been planning to commit explosions. But if they were, the question is who was really pulling their strings, and why?"

Murray says there is no evidence of the existence of Islamic Jihad Union, alleged to have been directing the Sauerland group, other than that given by Uzbek security services. "There are, for example, no communications intercepts between senior terrorists referring to themselves as the Islamic Jihad Union," he said.

Murray said the planned attacks the Uzbekistan government attributed to the group since the spring of 2004 "are in fact largely fake and almost certainly the work of the Uzbek security services, from my investigations on the spot at the time." (END/2009)

APN / IPS : Teenage Terror Plot or Wild Imagination?

2009-08-22T00:43:00.004-04:00

APN : Teenage Terror Plot or Wild Imagination?

IPS : Teenage Terror Plot or Wild Imagination?

Matthew Cardinale | August 21, 2009

ATLANTA, Georgia, Aug 21 (IPS) - Following a seven-day trial, Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, 23, was convicted in a U.S. federal court earlier this month on several counts of providing material support to terrorists and the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LET), a designated foreign terrorist organisation.

However, activists and the Sadequee family say that Shifa - Sadequee's nickname - was just a teenager with a vivid imagination who had no real intention of harming the U.S.

In addition to chatting online with friends about "jihad" in radical online forums, Sadequee made amateur videotapes of dozens of Washington, DC-area landmarks.

According to the Justice Department, Sadequee later sent several of the clips to Younis Tsouli, a propagandist and recruiter for al Qaeda in Iraq, and to Aabid Hussein Khan, a facilitator for LET and the Palestinian terrorist group, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM). Tsouli and Khan have since been convicted of terrorism-related offences in Britain.

Authorities say Sadequee sent an email expressing interest in joining the Taliban in 2001, and he later met with other suspected terrorists, including Syed Harris Ahmed, a former Georgia Tech University student who faces a 15-year-prison sentence.

They charge that Sadequee and Ahmed traveled to Toronto in March 2005 and met with others, including Fahim Ahmed, one of the "Toronto 18" suspects now awaiting a terrorism trial in Canada, to discuss joining LET, allegedly in order to prepare for a violent jihad in the U.S. or abroad.

Sadequee went to Bangladesh in August 2005. Authorities say he continued to communicate with Syed Ahmed as well as other suspected terrorists, including Mirsad Bektasevic, a Balkan-born Swede who was convicted in Bosnia in 2007 of planning to blow up a European target.

Sadaquee was arrested in Bangladesh, according to the Justice Department. However, advocates and relatives say he was kidnapped and tortured, and that he served three years in prison with no trial until this month.

"He faces charges that rely on scant evidence of teenagers chatting back and forth, plans for a website that included translations of previously published scholarly texts, and photos of buildings that were never disseminated or posted," the Free Shifa Committee said in a statement.

Sadequee faces sentencing in October 2009 and could get up to 60 years in federal prison, followed by a term of supervised release up to life, and a one million dollar fine.

"Shifa's statement and cross-examination of the witness, Omar Kamal, asserted that the young men wrote emails, participated in online chats, and visited websites from the ages of 15-19 as a way to make sense of their faith," the statement from Free Shifa said.

"In no way did their activities show the formation of a plan with a defined who, where, when, and what. Shifa said in the opening statements, 'We said a lot about a lot of things,' but 'empty talk' did not amount to conspiracy to provide material support in the form of 'personnel' to terrorist organisations," the group said.

"Sadequee opened with a challenge to the government's limited understanding of the term 'jihad' asserting that the correct interpretation of the term includes details of Islamic law, religious guidelines, and does not mean violence or war. He also presented a challenge to the notion that he and other young men committed 'conspiracy' citing the dictionary that conspiracy includes a plan," Free Shifa said.

"After 9/11 the U.S. government was ready with hundreds of pages of how they were gonna change the law to make it work for them and start a war on terror that had no definitions and no definable end," Stephanie Guilloud, an activist with Project South, said in a video posted on the website, Youtube.

"Eight years later, we're here at a case in Georgia of a 15-year-old who was so angry at that point he didn't know what he do. So he started to find other Islam folks, other folks in his community and his religion to understand what his responsibility was," Guilloud said.

"He's been inside for three years in solitary confinement. The government has pulled out all the stops in the law and in this legal strategy. They have kept and suppressed all evidence of how he was kidnapped in Bangladesh illegally, kidnapped and brought over to this country in order to charge him with these counts," Guilloud said.

"The LET... one of the terrorist organisations that they're accusing him of beginning to intend to start becoming a part of, didn't even exist at the time and also was not registered in the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organisation until... two weeks after Shifa was arrested," Guilloud said.

"These facts are being denied by a Bush-era, Bush-appointed judge... who's running this legal strategy, and suppressing more evidence of even how did they get all this evidence? One of the FBI agents testified today that she wrote emails to Shifa pretending to be his friend so they could trap him into saying whatever, whatever they wanted to charge him with," Guilloud added.

But the U.S. government insisted it is necessary to fight terrorism by preventing would-be terrorists from taking action, and they did not address the claims made by Free Shifa nor Project South in their statement.

"This case [is] a sobering reminder that terrorism and its supporters are not confined to distant battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan," the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia David E. Nahmias said in a statement.

"As recent events further demonstrate, there are still some American citizens willing to take up arms against the United States... In the face of this clear threat, federal law enforcement must and will remain vigilant, seeking to disrupt future terrorist networks before a timer is ticking or a trigger is pulled," he said.

"As we move further away from the tragic events of Sep. 11, 2001, there also seems to be a growing public perception that such conduct is harmless, especially since no bombs were exploded and no one was killed," said Atlanta FBI Special Agent in Charge Gregory Jones.

"This defendant, like many others we have investigated, tried to argue that his criminal conduct and activities were protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The FBI does not buy that argument and today the jury agreed," he said on Aug. 12.

Atlantic Free Press : 9/11 Mind Swell

2009-08-17T01:13:00.004-04:00

9/11 Mind Swell

by Joel S. Hirschhorn | August 13, 2009

As we approach the eighth anniversary of 9/11 consider this paradox. In the post 9-11 years the scientific evidence for disbelieving the official government story has mounted incredibly. And the number of highly respected and credentialed professionals challenging the official story has similarly expanded. Yet, to the considerable disappointment of the international 9/11 truth movement, the objective fact is that there are no widespread, loud demands for a new government-backed 9/11 investigation. The 9/11 truth movement is the epitome of a marginalized movement, one that never goes away despite not achieving truly meaningful results, which in this case means replacing official lies with official truth. What has gone wrong?

Akin to the definition of insanity, the hallmark of entrenched but marginalized movements is that they continue to pursue exactly the same strategy and tactics that have failed to produce solid results. They indulge themselves with self-delusion, defensive thinking and acting as if the world at large must surely and finally wake up, see the light and embrace the Truth. Years and, potentially, decades go by, but this quixotic status quo remains embedded, as if set in intellectual concrete. There is no brain tumor to blame. Nor any mass hypnosis of true believers to prove. There is just monumental disinterest among the dominant culture, political establishment and the broad public that is far more engaged with other issues, problems and movements.

The 9/11 truth movement, at best, gets meager public attention when it is derided and insulted, used as an example of persistent conspiratorial insanity.

Make no mistake; I concluded a few years back, after using my professional engineering and materials science background to study the evidence, that the official government story is a lie. As a former full professor of engineering, I firmly believe that elements of the US government were involved with contributing to (not just allowing) the 9/11 tragedy, but that does not necessarily eliminate the role of those terrorists publicly blamed for the events. Science, logic, evidence and critical thinking told me this.

Who should we blame for the failure of the 9/11 truth movement to fix the historical record and, better yet, identify those in the government who turned 9/11 into an excuse for going to war, getting them indicted, prosecuted, and punished for their murderous acts?

It is too easy to blame the mainstream media and political establishment for refusing to demand and pursue a truly comprehensive and credible independent scientific and engineering investigation. President Obama with his tenacious belief in looking forward, not backward, exemplifies a national mindset to avoid the painful search for truth and justice that could produce still more public disillusionment with government and feed the belief that American democracy is weak at best, and delusional at worst.

Marginalized movements always face competition for public attention. There are always countless national issues and problems that feed new movements and distract the public. There have been many since 9/11, not the least of which was the last presidential campaign and then the painful economic recession, and now the right wing attacks on health care reform. The 9/11 truth movement illustrates a total failure to compete successfully with other events and movements.

This can be explained in several ways. The 9/11 movement has not been able to articulate enough benefits to the public from disbelieving the official government story and pursuing a new investigation. What might ordinary Americans gain? Would proof-positive of government involvement make them feel better, more secure, and more patriotic? Apparently not. In fact, just the opposite. By its very nature, the 9/11 issue threatens many things by discovering the truth: still less confidence in the US political system, government and public officials. Still more reason to ponder the incredible loss of life and national wealth in pursuing the Iraq war. In other words, revealing 9/11 truth offers the specter of a huge national bummer. Conversely, it would show the world that American democracy has integrity.

The second explanation for failure is that the truth movement itself is greatly to blame. It has been filled with nerdish, ego-centric and self-serving activists (often most interested in pushing their pet theory) unable to pursue strategies designed to face and overcome ugly, challenging realities. The truth movement became a cottage industry providing income and meaning for many individuals and groups feeding the committed with endless websites, public talks, videos, books and paraphernalia. They habitually preach to the choir. Applause substitutes for solid results. In particular, it embraces the simplistic (and obviously ineffective) belief that by revealing technical, scientific and engineering facts and evidence the public and political establishment would be compelled to see the light. Darkness has prevailed.

Proof of this are the views expressed days ago on the truth movement by Ben Cohen on the Huffington Post: “I have done some research on the topic, but stopped fairly quickly into when it dawned on me that: 1. Any alternative to the official account of what happened is so absurd it simply cannot be true. 2. No reputable scientific journal has ever taken any of the 'science' of the conspiracy seriously. 3. The evidence supporting the official story is overwhelming, whereas the 9/11 Truthers have yet to produce a shred of concrete evidence that members of the U.S. government planned the attacks in New York and Washington.” Similarly, in the London Times James Bone recently said a “gruesome assortment of conspiracy theorists insists that the attacks on the US of September 11, 2001 were an inside job. It is easy to mock this deluded gang of ageing hippies, anarchists and anti-Semites.” Truthers continue to face a very steep uphill battle.

A common lie about the truth movement is that there have been no credible scientific articles in peer reviewed journals supporting it. But those opposing the truth movement will and do find ways to attack whatever scientific evidence is produced and published. It takes more than good science and facts for the movement to succeed.

Besides the movement having too many genuine crackpots (possibly trying to subvert it), a larger problem is what has been missing from it: effective political strategies. Besides pushing scientific results and more credible supporters, it did nothing successful to make a new 9/11 investigation a visible issue in the last presidential campaign. It did nothing effective to put pressure on a new, Democrat controlled congress to consider legislation providing the authorization and funding for a new, credible investigation. It seems that people who want to blame the government are often unable to also see the political path forward that requires the government to fund a new investigation.

To its credit, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth does have a petition aimed at Congress, demanding a new investigation, but has fewer than 5,000 signers. The petition effort in New York City to get a new investigation is commendable, with just under 75,000 signers, but national action is needed. Pragmatically, both efforts are unimpressive compared to other campaigns seeking political action. To get both media attention and political support the movement needs a hundred times more documented supporters, willing to do a lot more than sign a petition.

The tenth anniversary of 9/11 will come fast. The opportunity is making 9/11 an issue in the 2012 presidential campaign. The least delusional and defensive in the truth movement should think deeply and seriously on what needs to change to accomplish the prime goal: having an official investigation that compels most people and history to accept the truth, no matter how painful it is, including the possibility that it finds no compelling evidence for government involvement.

Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com

Reuters : Iraq's second energy auction late Nov-Oil Ministry

2009-08-16T02:14:00.001-04:00

Iraq's second energy auction late Nov-Oil Ministry

July 30, 2009

BAGHDAD, July 30 (Reuters) - Iraq will hold an auction for its second major bidding round for energy fields at the end of November, the Oil Ministry spokesman said on Thursday.

Spokesman Asim Jihad also said that a new acting director had been named to head Iraq's state-run South Oil Company, after Fayad al-Nema, a critic of the ministry's plans for an initial bidding round giving foreign firms a chance to develop oilfields already in production, was removed from his post this week.

"Dhiya Jaafar was the head of the southern operations commission of the South Oil Company and he became head of the company," Jihad said. The government said Nema was removed for reasons related to 'restructuring' at the Oil Ministry.

(Reporting by Missy Ryan; editing by James Jukwey)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Financial Times : Critic of Iraq's oil plan transferred

2009-08-16T02:11:00.002-04:00

Critic of Iraq's oil plan transferred

By Anna Fifield | July 30, 2009

Iraq yesterday removed the director of its state-run South Oil Company, Fayad al-Nema, who had previously criticised the government's plans to auction large oil and gas fields, a spokesman said. He has been transferred to a different job at the ministry in Baghdad. No replacement was named.

Anna Fifield, Beirut | Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

AFP : Iraq fires head of state-owned oil company

2009-08-16T02:10:00.002-04:00

Iraq fires head of state-owned oil company

AFP | July 30, 2009

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi government has fired the head of state-owned South Oil Company (SOC), who publicly criticised Baghdad's auctioning off of oil and gas fields to foreign energy giants, an oil ministry spokesman said on Thursday.

Fayadh Hassan Nima was replaced as SOC's chief executive by the head of the company's department of oil fields, Dia Jaafar, ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said.

"The oil ministry and the government are always looking for ways to improve administration of the oil sector," Jihad said, referring to the reasons Nima was dismissed.

Nima had loudly protested the public auction for six giant oil fields and two major gas fields, arguing that the SOC should be given the task of exploiting the fields in southern Iraq with only technical assistance from foreign companies.

Baghdad held the sale at the end of June, but reached agreement on only one of the fields, with the government facing accusations that the sale had been a failure.

It was the first time Iraq's oil industry was opened up to foreign companies since its nationalisation four decades ago.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

Sky News : Captain Removed After Slamming Afghan War

2009-08-15T03:25:00.001-04:00

Captain Removed After Slamming Afghan War

August 14, 2009

A British Army captain who anonymously wrote a scathing attack about the Afghan war has been removed from his unit, Sky News understands.

The unnamed officer wrote the emotive article in Monday's Independent newspaper.

"My motivation is simple" he said.

"Writing this helps vent off some of the frustration at what is happening out here in Afghanistan to those serving in the British Army, where death and serious injury are sickeningly common occurrences."

The officer, who has been in the Army for eight years, is likely to be brought back from Afghanistan and faces disciplinary action and a possible court martial.

It is thought he was identified because he revealed the unit he was serving with - the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards Battle Group.

He wrote in detail about coping with the loss of fellow soldiers and the injuries sustained by many more.

"I am talking about limbs removed, double or even triple amputations, on a scale that we've never seen before," he said.

Serving members of the Armed forces are banned from speaking to the media without prior agreement from the Ministry of Defence.

But just this month, new guidelines were drawn up by the Government which encouraged soldiers to talk about their work online.

An MoD press release read: "Service and MoD personnel are being encouraged to talk about themselves and their work online within new guidelines which give advice on how they can protect their security, reputation and privacy."

But the guidelines also clearly state that any communication with the media "must be referred, through the line manager/chain of command".

The captain clearly breached a number of these guidelines.

He gained no authorisation before writing the article, he questioned the purpose of the mission in Afghanistan, and he complained of a lack of equipment.

In his article he also said: "Then there are the equipment shortages. Due to the pitiful numbers of support helicopters and Apaches needed to escort them, every day troops on the ground are forced to expend an enormous amount of hours and manpower just standing still."

He concluded the article with: "We seem to know and say that it is not worth it, whilst instinctively reacting and saying that it is worth it - it has to be worth it.

"If I am honest, I do not know what I think about it all conclusively; my reasoning is lost in the storm of media, opinions, analysis that are at play here."

It is understood that he already had plans to leave the Army soon.

WSJ : Killing of Militant Shows Cementing U.S.-Pakistan Ties

2009-08-14T23:39:00.000-04:00

Killing of Militant Shows Cementing U.S.-Pakistan Ties

By GERALD F. SEIB | August 14, 2009

The headlines a few days ago told a seemingly simple story, of a missile strike launched from an American drone that killed Pakistan's top Taliban leader.

But that missile strike, in Pakistan's remote South Waziristan province, did more than kill one terrorist thug, a man named Baitullah Mehsud. The attack may well have cemented a much tighter U.S.-Pakistani bond in the broader fight against Islamic extremism.

If so, that represents a significant development and quite a change from just a few months ago. At that time, it was easy to cruise around Washington and find U.S. officials who would complain that Pakistani officials weren't taking the threat they faced from the Taliban seriously enough and were balking at real cooperation with the U.S. in fighting it.

In one of the big and underappreciated stories of the year, that has turned around. Starting early this year, there was a marked pickup in an officially unacknowledged program in which Pakistani and American intelligence officials cooperate to pinpoint Taliban and al Qaeda leaders and strongholds, then strike at them from unmanned Predator drones under American control.

One by one, the U.S. and Pakistan, in this new partnership, have been seeking out a list of some 20 high-value al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. More than half of them now have been killed or captured.

The strike against Mr. Mehsud illustrates how far the program has come and may open the way for deeper cooperation. (Some Taliban spokesmen have insisted since that Mr. Mehsud wasn't actually killed in the strike, but both U.S. and Pakistani officials are confident he was.)

Indeed, a similar missile strike in the same region was launched Tuesday, reportedly targeting another Taliban compound.

For their part, American officials describe the strike as a sign of much better cooperation between two intelligence agencies, Pakistan's ISI security services and America's Central Intelligence Agency. Those two have tended to view each other with a healthy degree of mutual suspicion.

The CIA has long thought the ISI harbored agents sympathetic with Islamic extremists. The ISI viewed the CIA as an organization with too little appreciation for the nuances of the fight against Islamic extremism.

But the combination of a new Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, and a new Pakistani army chief of staff, Ashfaq Kayani, has changed the atmosphere.

Despite deep initial American doubts about Mr. Zardari's commitment and courage, and uncertainty about the attitude of Mr. Kayani, they have cleared the way for greater, if still-quiet, cooperation.

U.S. officials say that intelligence on the whereabouts of extremist leaders increasingly is shared in real time and that a system for making decisions on when to strike them has become sleeker.

Pakistan often condemns American airstrikes in public, to deflect charges that it is allowing U.S. forces free rein, but the pattern of attacks in the past six months bespeaks a high level of cooperation, which pleases the Obama administration.

More important, though, may be the effect the Mehsud attack has on Pakistani attitudes.

Previously, Pakistani officials suspected that their American partners were far more interested in hunting for targets of concern to the U.S. -- principally al Qaeda leaders and the camps they used to plot attacks on American targets in neighboring Afghanistan -- rather than those Pakistani officials viewed as most directly threatening them.

Mr. Mehsud, though, was the terrorist leader at the top of Pakistan's most-wanted list; he was, after all, thought to be behind the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Hence, the complex effort to track him down and take him out had more to do with eliminating a threat to Pakistan's government than with making the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan easier.

As a result, this attack, unlike many other Predator strikes, was met with general public approval in Pakistan. Now one Pakistani official says it will open "a new era of trust between the two intelligence services."

We'll have to see, of course, and suspicions about motives and intentions on both sides won't go away overnight or because of one success.

There also are some analysts who think the Predator strikes, by arousing anger among Pakistanis sympathetic to the Taliban and antagonistic toward the U.S., may do as much long-term harm as good.

Still, U.S. officials consider the strike both a milestone in its own right, as well as an event that might have a positive spillover on the effort to stabilize Afghanistan next door.

While Mr. Mehsud was principally focused on making trouble in Pakistan, he had experience fighting in Afghanistan as well, and he had a network of supporters there.

Perhaps more important, U.S. officials think he was instrumental in facilitating cross-border traffic between Taliban groups on both sides of the border and also helped al Qaeda fighters move back and forth.

To the extent the Mehsud organization now is disrupted or locked in a succession struggle, that can't be bad for U.S. efforts.

More broadly, while Pakistan remains a nation with deep problems, and one facing manifold threats, a simple missile strike has offered at least a glimmer of good news, for Pakistani officials and for America's own long struggle in the region..

Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com

Independent : 'There is no refuge, no place to go to deal with your grief'

2009-08-11T23:58:00.004-04:00

'There is no refuge, no place to go to deal with your grief'

In the first ever unauthorised dispatch from an officer on the frontline, one young Captain offers a brutally honest account of life in Afghanistan, revealing the pain of losing comrades, the frustration at the lack of equipment, and the sense that the conflict seems unending and, at times, unwinnable

author's name withheld | August 10, 2009

My motivation is simple. Writing this helps vent off some of the frustration at what is happening out here in Afghanistan to those serving in the British Army, where death and serious injury are sickeningly common occurrences.

Before coming here, I had done two tours in Iraq which saw fierce fighting against the enemy. But, sometimes out here I feel I might as well be on my first tour, as a novice second lieutenant instead of a so-called senior captain with over eight years experience in the Army, due to a shocking rate of attrition that I have never encountered before.

Commentators keep citing previous figures for casualty rates in the Falkland's conflict, as well as the years in Northern Ireland, suggesting that, spread over the time we have been in Afghanistan, the figures here are not that bad.

How reassuring. For a moment I thought the rates might be quite bad; but thank goodness I have been shown that what we are experiencing is in fact a tolerable "medium" number of casualties.

Can we really only analyse the death and injury rate, or view it as a cause for concern, once we get past a certain benchmark or once the average number outstrips a previous average? I had hoped that human progression was a bit more advanced than that, and that there might be more to the situation than a comparison of statistics.

Then there are the injuries. I am talking about limbs removed, double or even triple amputations, on a scale that we've never seen before.

When you read about a "very seriously injured" casualty, that person's life is never going to be the same, nor is it for the rest of their family, who will be sucked in and forever affected by the aftermath.

So what effect does this have on us all out in Afghanistan? My experience of this is from the 1st Battalion Welsh Guard's Battle Group, who have endured a significant number of fatalities and seriously injured personnel, including the death of their commanding officer.

With each death I think each of us experiences a feeling of total shock, powerlessness and impotence. Within your mind you feel you have to do something, especially if you knew the individual. Back at home that might be to jump in the car and drive to some secluded spot where you can get out and scream at the top of your lungs to let out all the anguish. But here nothing of the sort is possible. You are all enclosed within your camp or patrol base; there is no refuge, no private corner to go to, to deal with your grief.

Around you everything else has to continue, and cannot stop. The radios still have to be manned and answered, the patrols still have to be planned, the convoys have to be organised. It is not as if you can take a day off to deal with the grief, to come to terms with it. And even if you could, what good would that do?

Who wants to go and sit in their tent, sweating in temperatures in the high 40s, brooding on the possibilities: what were they thinking in those last few moments, did they know what had happened, did they know they were dying, how terrified and alone did they feel?

The only option available is to embrace the alternative: keep joking with your friends, maintain the banter levels, swapping smutty jokes and stories – literally forcing yourself to keep smiling.

I do not say that as a praiseworthy example of that renowned, age-old, plucky, English stiff upper lip. Far from it – it may be our worst enemy.

After death, life obviously has to go on, but I have always felt that life should go on having learnt a lesson from that death, improving your life as a testament to that life robbed – not merely moving on with a smile, whilst showing "fortitude".

I am just speaking for those of us who deal with the deaths and injuries in Afghanistan indirectly, as an explosion in the distance, followed by a report on the radio, then a helicopter coming in to pick up the casualty.

As for those who deal directly with the deaths and injuries, who have to go into the Viking vehicles after the explosion to pull out the casualties, who have to tourniquet the remaining stumps after both the legs of a person have been blown off, those who have to pick up the leftover pulpy fragments of a disintegrated body and put them into a bag, I am not sure how they react.

I would imagine in a similar way to the rest of us: you put it aside as soon as you can, as there is nothing to be achieved in thinking about it. All you will do is think yourself into a corner, where you are faced with the absurdity and horrid waste of it all. And if you let that take a hold, how are you meant to perform, drag yourself out of your tent at 4am after just three hours sleep, to go on another foot patrol, another 18-hour convoy, another 12-hour shift in the operations room? It does not work.

There is so much that still needs to be done, there are still weeks to get through, more patrols and convoys that need to be completed. So the event of each death is placed away, zipped up in a mental body bag, back in the recesses of your mind.

However, unlike a real body bag, which fortunately disappears, that mental body bag remains in the morgue of your sub-conscious, quite possibly to come out and be re-opened, once you return home and have the chance to think about each death, each injury, each friend gone.

Then there are the equipment shortages. Due to the pitiful numbers of support helicopters and Apaches needed to escort them, every day troops on the ground are forced to expend an enormous amount of hours and manpower just standing still. They sacrifice their reserves of energy, motivation and willpower securing and picketing routes for the never-ending vehicle convoys that have to keep happening in order to resupply the patchy spread of patrol bases with water, ammo and rations; as well as recovering the vehicles that invariably go into ditches and securing helicopter landing-sites for the evacuation of casualties from improvised explosive device strikes.

I think if Sisyphus (the Greek mythological character cursed to roll a huge boulder repeatedly up a hill, only to watch it roll back down again, throughout eternity) could see us now, he would offer his sincere condolences and offer a friendly arm around the shoulder, saying that he knew what it felt like.

If someone provided one of those garishly coloured (army) pie charts depicting the percentage of time and effort sucked up into the black hole of orchestrating these road moves, it would provide a statistic that would be both shocking and embarrassing. It might also partly explain why the military is struggling to gain an advantage over the Taliban and cannot hold a significant amount of ground. Its energy, time and focus is bound up with those road moves, and our most vital asset, our troops, are either sweating on the sides of the roads, securing them, or sweating inside the vehicles of those often doomed convoys. I am not criticising the military on the ground, who have to deal with this dilemma. Everyone seems to already agree on this issue of the equipment, in particular the lack of support helicopters – which rather begs the question of how on earth is nothing done about it? And how does the fact that nothing gets done about it seem to be the status quo and keeps occurring year after year, budgetary policy after budgetary policy, operational tour after operational tour? If a magic genie were to appear in front of my eyes, who in keeping with the spirit of the present credit crunch cutbacks, could afford to grant me just one wish, I think I would simply choose a massive increase in helicopters and pilots – a wish that would have such a crucial influence on what is happening to the British Army out here.

We are dealing here with a tenacious and stubborn enemy. Despite our dropping bombs on compounds that the enemy is using as firing-points, the very next day, new enemy fighters are back.

On the one hand, perhaps the enemy command is so feared, authoritative and manipulative that they force unwilling fighters into those compounds as pure cannon fodder. On the other, perhaps, the fighters willingly go back, despite their comrades having been killed there, so strong is their faith in an afterlife, or so strong is their belief in the jihad they are fighting.

Whatever the reason, they come back undaunted to the same firing-points, despite our overwhelming fire power. Their numbers seem to stay constant, as opposed to decreasing – all of which gives a strong indication that we will not be able to reduce their numbers to a level where they are tactically defeated.

It seems increasingly true that a stable Afghanistan will only be possible with some sort of agreement, involvement or power-sharing deal with the Taliban.

However, as the British Army units here are increasingly sucked into the turmoil of the latest "fighting season" there seems little evidence that anything is happening on the political and diplomatic stage. In the meantime, tour follows tour, during which the most intense fighting appears to achieve not much more than extremely effectively inflicting casualties on both sides, whilst Afghanistan remains the sick man of Central Asia.

I think of a scene near the end of Pat Barker's novel The Ghost Road, set at the end of the First World War, in which a seriously injured soldier lies in hospital, gradually dying. The soldier regains consciousness but due to his injuries can only slur a sentence together, which he keeps repeating. His family agonisingly try to decipher what he might be saying, which sounds like "shotvarfet, shotvarfet". His doctor realises what he is trying to say and translates: "He's saying, 'It's not worth it' ."

The man's father, a retired Army major, in grief blurts out: "Oh, it is worth it, it is."

This incredibly powerful passage goes some way to articulating our response to this conflict. We seem to know and say that it is not worth it, whilst instinctively reacting and saying that it is worth it – it has to be worth it. If I am honest, I do not know what I think about it all conclusively; my reasoning is lost in the storm of media, opinions, analysis that are at play here.

However, I know that no matter how hard I try to see through the clutter of opinions and utter something of my own in order to explain or justify what I'm involved in, I just cannot shake off that nagging, repetitive voice in my head that says "shotvarfet, shotvarfet".

The Welsh Guards' casualties

Guardsman Christopher King a 20-year-old from Merseyside was killed in an explosion while on patrol in Helmand on 20 July.

Private John Brackpool was killed by a gunshot wound on 9 July while attached to the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards. The 27-year-old from Sussex was shot near Lashkar Gah.

Lance Corporal Dane Elson was 22 when he was killed by an improvised explosive device during an attack on a compound in Babaji, near Gereshk on 5 July.

Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe was a 39 year old from Oxfordshire. He was killed by an IED in Lashkar Gah on 1 July.

Major Sean Birchall a 33-year-old, was killed in an explosion on 19 June while on patrol in Basharan near Lashkar Gah.

Lieutenant Mark Evison, 26-year-old from London, died in hospital in Birmingham on 12 May after being shot in Helmand.

Lance Sergeant Tobie Fasfous was killed by an explosion while on patrol in Helmand on 28 April.

LAT : The CIA, licensed to kill

2009-08-11T20:51:00.001-04:00

The CIA, licensed to kill

The agency has been involved in planning assassinations since at least 1954.

By David Wise | July 22, 2009

Back in 1960, the CIA hatched a plan to kill Patrice Lumumba by infecting his toothbrush with a deadly disease. The Congolese leader would brush his teeth and, presto, in a few days or weeks he would be gone.

Around the same time, the CIA's Health Alteration Committee -- who thought that name up? -- sent a monogrammed, poisoned handkerchief to Gen. Abdul Karim Kassem, the leader of Iraq.

And the CIA's "executive action" unit plotted for years to murder Fidel Castro. It hired the Mafia to poison his food and tried to give him a diving suit contaminated with Madura foot, a rare tropical disease that starts in the foot and moves upward, slowly destroying the body. The CIA also considered offing the Cuban leader with an exploding cigar, a poison pen and a seashell that would blow up underwater when he touched it.

Not one of the plots was successful. Lumumba and Kassem were executed by their foes, and Castro is still alive. But the plots make clear that the CIA has been licensed to kill for decades.

Congress -- especially congressional Democrats -- was outraged earlier this month when it was disclosed that, apparently on orders from Vice President Dick Cheney, the CIA for eight years concealed from Congress a program to assassinate the leaders of Al Qaeda, starting with Osama bin Laden. But they shouldn't have been surprised that such a plan was being hatched.

The CIA's involvement in planning assassinations goes back at least to 1954, when it prepared a manual for killings as part of a U.S.-run coup against the leftist government of Guatemala. The 19-page manual, which was declassified in 1997, makes chilling reading. "The essential point of assassination is the death of the subject," it declares, noting that while it "is possible to kill a man with the bare hands ... the simplest local tools are often much the most efficient means of assassination. A hammer, ax, wrench, screwdriver, fire poker, kitchen knife, lamp stand or anything hard, heavy and handy will suffice."

The agency's manual recommends "the contrived accident" as the best way to dispose of someone. "The most efficient accident ... is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface. Elevator shafts, stairwells, unscreened windows and bridges will serve." The manual suggests grabbing the victim by the ankles and "tipping the subject over the edge. ... Falls before trains or subway cars are usually effective, but require exact timing."

The manual goes on to discuss "blunt weapons," noting that "a hammer can be picked up almost anywhere in the world" and that baseball bats are also excellent. The manual explains the best place in the body to stab people or how to bash their skulls in and the pros and cons of rifles, pistols, submachine guns and other weapons.

During the Cold War years, the CIA plotted against eight foreign leaders, five of whom died violently. The agency's role varied in each case.

After the plots were publicized by a Senate committee, President Ford issued an executive order in 1976 barring political assassination. President Reagan broadened the ban, dropping the word "political" and extending the prohibition to include contract killers as well as government employees.

Although the ban remains in effect, it has largely been ignored on the premise that it does not apply in a military setting. Consider the following:

In 1986, Reagan ordered the bombing of Libya in retaliation for a terrorist attack on a Berlin disco that killed three people, including two U.S. servicemen, and wounded more than 200 others. In the airstrike, Libya's leader, Moammar Kadafi, a target of the raid, escaped unharmed, but his 2-year-old adopted daughter was killed.

During the Persian Gulf War in 1991, when the first Bush administration bombed Baghdad, Robert M. Gates, the former CIA director and current Defense secretary, said White House officials hoped that "Saddam Hussein would be killed in a bunker." At an air base in Saudi Arabia that year, Cheney, then secretary of Defense, and Gen. Colin L. Powell signed a 2,000-pound laser-guided bomb destined for Iraq. "To Saddam with affection," Cheney wrote.

In 1998, President Clinton ordered a cruise missile strike on Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan after the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa. The White House was clearly disappointed when the strike failed to kill Bin Laden, who reportedly left one of the camps shortly before the attack.

A year later, again during the Clinton administration, NATO bombed Belgrade after Serbia forced ethnic Albanians to flee from Kosovo. A cruise missile was lobbed right into the bedroom of Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader and Yugoslav president, but he was not sleeping there and escaped injury.

In Yemen in 2002, a CIA Predator drone fired a Hellfire missile that destroyed a car in which a top Al Qaeda leader, Qaed Sinan Harithi, was riding.

The problem with assassination, morality aside, is that the U.S. is not very good at it, as the CIA's farcical efforts to murder Castro demonstrate. It seems unlikely that the CIA will kill Bin Laden with a baseball bat. And there is the real possibility of retaliation for a state-sponsored assassination. President Kennedy was quoted as saying, "We can't get into that kind of thing or we would all be targets." Perhaps CIA Director Leon Panetta had that in mind when he canceled the assassination program.

David Wise writes frequently about intelligence. He is the author of "Nightmover: How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million" and "Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America."

Long War Journal : Analysis: Pakistani claims on Baitullah’s death, shura clash, are suspect

2009-08-09T02:43:00.003-04:00

Analysis: Pakistani claims on Baitullah’s death, shura clash, are suspect

By Bill Roggio | August 9, 2009

After several senior Taliban leaders went on the record to deny the reports that Baitullah was killed in a US airstrike in South Waziristan, the Pakistani government's claim that Baitullah is dead is now in doubt. Similarly, Pakistani government claims of infighting between potential successors to Baitullah also have to be looked upon with skepticism. Given the Pakistani government's poor track record when claiming senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders have been killed, the reports of Baitullah's death are now suspect.

Taliban leaders Hakeemullah Mehsud and Qari Hussain Mehsud, spokesman Maulvi Omar, and aide Qari Hidayatullah spoke forcefully today insisting that reports of Baitullah's death were false and said that Baitullah would be issuing proof he was indeed alive.

Despite the Taliban's denial that Baitullah was killed, Rehman Malik, Pakistan's Interior Minister, is insisting Baitullah was killed and upped the ante by claiming two potential successors battled over leadership of the Pakistani Taliban.

Malik, who admitted to the BBC that he has no hard evidence Baitullah was killed, said Hakeemullah Mehsud and Waliur Rehman Mehsud had a shootout at a shura meeting sometime on Friday in the Ladha region in South Waziristan. The meeting was purportedly held to choose a successor to Baitullah. The report was rebroadcast on Pakistani state television. Malik claimed that Hakeemullah and possibly Waliur were killed during the clash.

"Obviously, it is not a story made up by us," Malik told the BBC "This fight must have happened because of the succession."

"They [Hakeemullah and Waliur] had been fighting in the past and we have information that there has been enmity between Waliur and Hakeemullah since they were fighting together in Kurram valley," he said. "Hakeemullah was replaced by Baitullah Mehsud with Waliur."

But a Taliban leader from the Ladha region denied a clash ever took place and claimed to have spoken to Waliur since the incident was said to have taken place.

"There was no fighting in the Shura," a local Taliban commander named Noor Sayed told the media. "Both Waliur Rehman and Hakeemullah are safe and sound."

Hakeemullah confirmed he was alive when he spoke to the media one day after Malik claimed he was killed.

Malik is now insisting the Taliban provide evidence they are alive rather than offering proof that they are dead.

"If Baitullah Mehsud is alive, or Hakeemullah is alive, why don't they bring out a video," Malik said to the BBC. "Every telephone has a camera on it. They can just get one out and show people that they are alive. I challenge them."

Recent history favors the Taliban's account

While it is still unknown if Baitullah survived the strike or perished, the Pakistani government's track record accurately reporting on the death of senior Taliban and al Qaeda leaders is poor [see the list below]. The Taliban, on the other hand, have been honest about the death of their senior leaders. Each time they refuted a claim of a leader being killed, they have been able to prove the commander is alive.

Since 2006, the Pakistani government has inaccurately reported on the death of 10 senior al Qaeda leaders. Some of these leaders were reported killed multiple times, only to resurface. Also during that timeframe, the Pakistani government wrongly claimed eight senior Taliban leader were killed. Again, these reports were disproved.

Most recently, Malik claimed Swat Taliban leader Mullah Fazlullah was killed or seriously wounded during fighting against the Pakistani military. Multiple Taliban leaders denied the claim and Fazlullah later broadcast on his illegal FM radio station in Swat despite the ongoing offensive.

The Pakistani Taliban and al Qaeda have been accurate about the death of their senior leaders, and have issued martyrdom statements or eulogies for those killed. These extremist groups view the death of their leaders and fighters while waging jihad to be an honor, and the deaths are used as propaganda for recruitment. Accurately reporting the status of the senior commanders is also crucial to maintain command and control among the rank and file.

For as long as The Long War Journal has tracked the reports of deaths of senior al Qaeda and Taliban commanders, there is not one single instance where these groups practiced deception when it came to official reports on the death of leaders.

Given these facts, the likelihood is that Baitullah Mehsud survived the strike, as reported first here at The Long War Journal, on Aug. 6. And, if Baitullah survived the strike, there would be no need for the Taliban shura to hold a meeting to select a successor to Baitullah.

It may be possible the Taliban shura was held to discuss other issues, and Hakeemullah and Waliur did indeed clash, but this is also out of character for the Taliban. There is not a single recorded instance of such a shootout or armed clash at a Pakistani Taliban shura meeting.

Contentious meeting have been held between rivals such as Baitullah and Mullah Nazir, and yet these meetings have ended successfully. Also, any meeting to select Baitullah's replacement would likely be attended by senior most Taliban and al Qaeda leaders, such as Siraj Haqqani and Abu Yahya al Libi. Lower level Taliban commanders would place themselves, their families, and tribes at great risk if they endangered the lives the likes of Siraj and Yahya.

The Taliban typically carry out their vendettas via a war of assassins or by armed clashes or raids. One such recent example is the feud between Baitullah and Zainuddin Mehsud. There forces clashed regularly in South Waziristan, Tank, and Dera Ismail Khan. Baitullah ultimately had a bodyguard assassinate Zainuddin.

False reports:

The following al Qaeda and Taliban leaders were reported kill by Pakistani intelligence sources. These leaders later appeared in the media or on propaganda tapes.

Al Qaeda leaders reported killed who later resurfaced:

Ayman al Zawahiri: Several large news outlets reported that al Qaeda's second in command was killed or seriously wounded in the May 14, 2008, airstrike in South Waziristan that killed al Qaeda WMD chief Abu Khabab al Masri. The Long War Journal was highly critical that Zawahiri was killed at the time. Zawahiri appeared on a videotape a week later urging Pakistanis to fight the government.

Mustafa Abu Yazid: The Pakistani military claimed Mustafa Abu Yazid, al Qaeda's senior commander in Afghanistan, was killed in a battle in the Bajaur tribal agency in August 2008. The Long War Journal was highly critical of the reports of Yazid's death. Al Qaeda never confirmed Yazid's death, and the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies never presented evidence he was killed. Yazid has since appeared on multiple videotapes, including the Oct. 4 release that featured Adam Gadahn. The Pakistani military, who refer to Yazid as Abu Saeed al Masri, claimed Yazid was dead as recently as Sept. 26.

Abu Khabab al Masri, Khalid Habib, Abd al Hadi al Iraqi, Abd Rahman al Masri al Maghribi, Abu Obaidah al Masri, and Marwan al Suri

Pakistani intelligence reported that six senior al Qaeda operatives killed in a US airstrike in Damadola in January 2006. The six operatives reported killed were: Abu Khabab al Masri, the WMD committee chief and senior bomb maker; Khalid Habib, a senior military commander in eastern Afghanistan who later became chief of al Qaeda's paramilitary Shadow Army; Abd Rahman al Masri al Maghribi, Zawahiri's son-in-law and a military commander; Abu Obaidah al Masri, al Qaeda's external operations chief and commander in Afghanistan's Kunar province; Marwan al Suri, the Waziristan operations chief; and Abd al Hadi al Iraqi, the external operations chief who also served as a commander in southwestern Afghanistan.

Nineteen month later, The Washington Post reported that all of the al Qaeda commanders survived the strike.

Four of the six later were killed, captured, or died of natural causes. Abd al Hadi al Iraqi was captured while attempting to enter Iraqi in late 2006. Abu Obaidah al Masri died of natural causes sometime in late 2007 or early 2008. Abu Khabab al Masri was killed in an airstrike in July 2008. Khalid Habib was killed in an airstrike in October 2008.

Adam Gadahn: Numerous Pakistani sources told multiple major news outlets that Gadahn was killed in the Jan. 28, 2008, airstrike in North Waziristan that killed senior al Qaeda leader Abu Laith al Libi. The Long War Journal was highly critical of the reports of Gadahn's death. Speculation grew after Gadahn failed to appear on al Qaeda propaganda tapes, As Sahab stopped producing English translations for the tapes, and some problems were reported with the release of videos and audio. Gadahn later appeared on a tape on Oct. 4, along with Yazid. Gadahn is the American al Qaeda spokesman who is wanted by the US for treason.

Rashid Rauf: US intelligence, based on reports from Pakistani intelligence, claimed that Rashid Rauf, an al Qaeda leader who is in charge of al Qaeda's external operations branch responsible for attacks in Europe, was killed during the November 2008 Predator strike in North Waziristan that was also thought to have killed Abu Zubair al Masri and two other al Qaeda operatives. He was later reported to have trained European al Qaeda operatives to conduct attacks in Belgium, France, Holland, and England.

The Long War Journal was skeptical of the claims that Rauf had been killed. US military and intelligence officials have told The Long War Journal that Rauf's death was never confirmed and that reports that he was killed in the November strike in South Waziristan were premature. Shortly after the November strike, Rauf's family and his lawyer claimed his was still alive. Taliban fighters close to Rauf also said he was alive.

Taliban leaders reported killed who later resurfaced:

Baitullah Mehsud: On Sept. 30, 2008, several major news sources reported that Pakistani Taliban leader and South Waziristan warlord Baitullah Mehsud died of natural causes related to kidney problems. The Long War Journal was highly critical that Baitullah was dead, and intelligence sources said he was alive. On Oct. 1, the Taliban denied the report. Baitullah was seen visiting villages in South Waziristan to celebrate Eid-al-Fitr on Oct. 4. Baitullah was also thought to have been killed in an airstrike earlier in 2009.

Mullah Sangeen Zadran: Pakistani intelligence sources claimed that Sangeen, the right hand man of Haqqani Network military commander Siraj, was killed along with Baitullah and Qari Hussain during an airstrike at the funeral of one of Baitullah's commanders. The Taliban quickly debunked these claims.

Faqir Mohammed: The Pakistani military claimed Faqir Mohammed, the deputy commander of the Pakistani Taliban and the group's leader in the Bajaur tribal agency, was killed in a battle in Bajaur in August 2008. A Taliban spokesman immediately denied the report and Faqir appeared in front to the media a day later to dispute the claim of his death. The Pakistani military also claimed Faqir's son, Abdullah Mohammed, was killed, although no proof of his death has been offered.

Mullah Fazlullah: The Pakistani military and the interior ministry claimed Mullah Fazlullah was killed several times during the military operation during the 2009 offensive in Swat. Fazlullah's aides denied the reports, and in July 2009, Fazlullah was later heard giving a speech on the radio.

Omar Khalid: The military said Omar Khalid, the commander of Taliban forces in the Mohmand tribal agency, was killed during operations in the region in January 2009. Taliban commanders denied the claims, and Khalid later spoke to the media.

Ibn Amin: The Pakistani military and the interior ministry claimed Ibn Amin, the leader of al Qaeda's paramilitary brigade in Swat, was killed in May 2009 during the Swat offensive. Amin later resurfaced and took control of the Taliban forces in Swat after Shah Doran, Fazlullah's deputy and Swat's military commander, was killed. Doran is the only senior Swat Taliban leader killed during the three-month battle.

Qari Hussain: The Pakistani military claimed Qari Hussain, a senior lieutenant to Baitullah Mehsud who ran a suicide bomber nursery in South Waziristan, was killed during operations in January 2008. Hussain held a press conference in South Waziristan on May 23, 2008, and mocked the Pakistani military. "I am alive, don't you see me?" Hussain said.

Maulvi Omar: The Pakistani military claimed Omar, who is the spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, was killed during an October 2008 airstrike in the Badano region in Taliban-controlled Bajaur. Omar later appeared on television. The Long War Journal was skeptical of the reports of Omar's death.