William Blum : The United States and torture

The United States and torture

by William Blum | August 11th, 2014

Two of the things that governments tend to cover-up or lie about the most are assassinations and torture, both of which are widely looked upon as exceedingly immoral and unlawful, even uncivilized. Since the end of the Second World War the United States has attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders and has led the world in torture; not only the torture performed directly by Americans upon foreigners, but providing torture equipment, torture manuals, lists of people to be tortured, and in-person guidance and encouragement by American instructors, particularly in Latin America.

Thus it is somewhat to the credit of President Obama that at his August 1 press conference he declared “We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values.”

And he actually used the word “torture” at that moment, not “enhanced interrogation”, which has been the euphemism of preference the past decade, although two minutes later the president used “extraordinary interrogation techniques”. And “tortured some folks” makes me wince. The man is clearly uncomfortable with the subject.

But all this is minor. Much more important is the fact that for several years Mr. Obama’s supporters have credited him with having put an end to the practice of torture. And they simply have no right to make that claim.

Shortly after Obama’s first inauguration, both he and Leon Panetta, the new Director of the CIA, explicitly stated that “rendition” was not being ended. As the Los Angeles Times reported at the time: “Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.”

The English translation of “cooperate” is “torture”. Rendition is simply outsourcing torture. There was no other reason to take prisoners to Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, Somalia, Kosovo, or the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, to name some of the known torture centers frequented by the United States. Kosovo and Diego Garcia – both of which house large and very secretive American military bases – if not some of the other locations, may well still be open for torture business. The same for the Guantánamo Base in Cuba.

Moreover, the Executive Order referred to, number 13491, issued January 22, 2009, “Ensuring Lawful Interrogations”, leaves a major loophole. It states repeatedly that humane treatment, including the absence of torture, is applicable only to prisoners detained in an “armed conflict”. Thus, torture by Americans outside an environment of “armed conflict” is not explicitly prohibited. But what about torture within an environment of “counter-terrorism”?

The Executive Order required the CIA to use only the interrogation methods outlined in a revised Army Field Manual. However, using the Army Field Manual as a guide to prisoner treatment and interrogation still allows solitary confinement, perceptual or sensory deprivation, sensory overload, sleep deprivation, the induction of fear and hopelessness, mind-altering drugs, environmental manipulation such as temperature and noise, and stress positions.

After Panetta was questioned by a Senate panel, the New York Times wrote that he had “left open the possibility that the agency could seek permission to use interrogation methods more aggressive than the limited menu that President Obama authorized under new rules … Mr. Panetta also said the agency would continue the Bush administration practice of ‘rendition’ – picking terrorism suspects off the street and sending them to a third country. But he said the agency would refuse to deliver a suspect into the hands of a country known for torture or other actions ‘that violate our human values’.”

The last sentence is of course childishly absurd. The countries chosen to receive rendition prisoners were chosen precisely because they were willing and able to torture them.

No official in the Bush and Obama administrations has been punished in any way for torture or other war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and the other countries they waged illegal war against. And, it could be added, no American bankster has been punished for their indispensable role in the world-wide financial torture they inflicted upon us all beginning in 2008. What a marvelously forgiving land is America. This, however, does not apply to Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, or Chelsea Manning.

In the last days of the Bush White House, Michael Ratner, professor at Columbia Law School and former president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, pointed out:

The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it. I don’t see how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not held accountable.

I’d like at this point to once again remind my dear readers of the words of the “Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment”, which was drafted by the United Nations in 1984, came into force in 1987, and ratified by the United States in 1994. Article 2, section 2 of the Convention states: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

Such marvelously clear, unequivocal, and principled language, to set a single standard for a world that makes it increasingly difficult for one to feel proud of humanity.

The Convention Against Torture has been and remains the supreme law of the land. It is a cornerstone of international law and a principle on a par with the prohibition against slavery and genocide.

“Mr. Snowden will not be tortured. Torture is unlawful in the United States.” – United States Attorney General Eric Holder, July 26, 2013

John Brennan, appointed by President Obama in January 2013 to be Director of the CIA, has defended “rendition” as an “absolutely vital tool”; and stated that torture had produced “life saving” intelligence.

Obama had nominated Brennan for the CIA position in 2008, but there was such an outcry in the human-rights community over Brennan’s apparent acceptance of torture, that Brennan withdrew his nomination. Barack Obama evidently learned nothing from this and appointed the man again in 2013.

During Cold War One, a common theme in the rhetoric was that the Soviets tortured people and detained them without cause, extracted phony confessions, and did the unspeakable to detainees who were helpless against the full, heartless weight of the Communist state. As much as any other evil, torture differentiated the bad guys, the Commies, from the good guys, the American people and their government. However imperfect the US system might be – we were all taught – it had civilized standards that the enemy rejected.

Louisville Courier-Journal : Obama’s breezy words for post-9/11 torture

Obama’s breezy words for post-9/11 torture

By Leonard Pitts | August 6, 2014

“…but we tortured some folks.”

— President Barack Obama, Aug.1, 2014

OK, in the first place: “tortured some folks?” Really?

Was there not something annoyingly breezy in the president’s phrasing last week as he acknowledged the abuse of suspected terrorists in the wake of Sept. 11? Was there not something off-putting in the folksy familiarity of it?

“We tortured some folks.”

What’s next? “He raped a chick?” “They stabbed a dude?”

Granted, it’s a relatively minor point. But to whatever degree phrasing is a window into mindset, the president’s phrasing was jarring. It is, however, what he said next that we are gathered here to discuss.

Obama, speaking to reporters Friday, invoked the atmosphere after Sept. 11 to explain why the CIA, ahem, tortured some folks. He reminded us that we were all terrified more attacks were imminent and our national security people were under great pressure to prevent them. So while what they did was wrong, said Obama, “It’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had.”

In other words, we were all scared spitless, so it’s … understandable if not precisely condonable, that the CIA behaved in ways that betrayed our national values. But the president is wrong.

In fairness to him, though, let’s stipulate a few things:

One: Obama has never wavered in calling the torture of suspected terrorists precisely what it was, nor in defining it as a betrayal of what America is supposed to stand for. He did so again last week. “We did some things that were contrary to our values,” he said.

Two: Those things did not happen on Obama’s watch. It was George W. Bush’s administration that rationalized and justified the use of so-called “enhanced interrogation.” Bush made this mess. Obama is just the guy with the push broom.

Three: Obama was trying to walk a political tightrope that was probably unwalkable. Anticipating declassification of a Senate report that is said to cast a harsh light on these tactics, he sought to signal disapproval of what the CIA did, yet not throw its personnel — who now, after all, work for him — under the proverbial bus. That wouldn’t be great for morale.

All that said, it was disappointing to hear the president invoke the frenzy of that era as a mitigating factor. By that logic, you could justify the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942, the McCarthy witch hunt of the 1950s, or dozens of other sins against freedom strewn like scars across the face of American history. All were born of the same broken rationale: We were scared, so we did things we should not have done.

The thinking seems to be that sometimes fear makes our values too heavy to uphold. Actually, it is our capacity for fear that makes them more critical to uphold. And it is disingenuous to pretend the hysteria of the 9/11 era was such that anyone might have done the same thing.

Not only is that not true, but it also insults the moral courage of people like Sen. John McCain and Obama himself who did stand up and say, emphatically and at political risk, that this was unworthy of us. So it’s not that it was impossible to speak reason, but that the torturers refused to hear it.

They followed orders instead.

The president opposes the idea of prosecuting them for that and he’s right. That would cast a pall over American intelligence gathering for generations forward.

But there is a lesson here that urgently needs learning, an accounting that ought not be ignored. With the best of intentions and the approval of a morally blinkered White House, the CIA vandalized American honor and all involved must be called on it. That isn’t sanctimony.

It’s patriotism.

Write to Pitts at lpitts@miamiherald.com.

WDTV [WV] : Obama's 'Torture' Comments Reopen 9/11 Debate

Obama's 'Torture' Comments Reopen 9/11 Debate

from WDTV, serving north central West Virginia

Lauren McMillen | August 2, 2014

"In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we did some things that were wrong. We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks"

That's what President Obama had to say after recognizing that the U.S. may have went to far in torturing al-Queda detainees.

Since in office, Obama has taken a stand against the enhanced interrogation tactics that were put into place by the Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks. But some of you believe that the harsh conditions were the only solution.

"They shouldn't have bothered us to begin with then we wouldn't have been there to torture them. You're not going to resolve anything over there. It's been going on for the beginning of time," said Jim Feeda, visiting from Pennsylvania.

"They torture us, so we have to do what we can to get the information we need to get the job done," said Cliff Fox, Harrison County resident.

This all comes on the brink on a new Senate report that is expected to be released in the coming weeks. The nearly 7,000 page report will describe in detail the CIA's treatment of terrorist suspects.

Officials expect the document will reveal that actions, like water boarding, did not help us get any further.

"We did some things that were contrary to our values," said President Obama.

Others agree that these acts violated the principles of our country and what we stand for.

"I think torturing people is something we not ought to do. I think there are other techniques we can use to get the same information. I don't know if anyone has ever shown that using torture gets more and better information," said Joe Burrman, visiting from Maryland.

Obama's comments are likely to draw heavy criticism from some Republicans and former members of the Bush administration.

L A Times : Could data collection have stopped 9/11? White House thinks so

Could data collection have stopped 9/11? White House thinks so

But critics of the National Security Agency's program to track Americans' phone data strenuously dispute the idea that it could have prevented the terrorist attacks.

By Christi Parsons and Ken Dilanian | January 13, 2014

WASHINGTON — Many of President Obama's closest advisors have embraced a controversial assessment of one of the National Security Agency's major data collection programs — the belief that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks could have been prevented had government then possessed the sort of vast trove of Americans' telephone records it holds now.

Critics of the NSA program, and some scholars of America's deadliest terrorist attack, strenuously dispute the view that the collection of phone data would necessarily have made a difference or that the possibility justifies the program now. The presidential task force that reviewed surveillance operations concluded last month that the program "was not essential" to preventing terrorist attacks.

But as the president finalizes plans for a speech on Friday announcing his proposals to change intelligence operations and oversight, the widespread agreement at the most senior levels of the White House about the program's value appears to be driving policy. As a result, the administration seems likely to modify, but not stop, the gathering of billions of phone call logs.

In recent White House meetings, Obama has accepted the "9/11" justification, aides say, expressing the belief that domestic phone records might have helped authorities identify some of the skyjackers who later crashed passenger jets in New York, the Washington area and Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people.

He believes the main problem with the program is one of perception: Many Americans don't trust the NSA, one of the most secretive of spy agencies, to respect civil liberties.

In Friday's speech, the president is expected to propose steps that he hopes will make Americans more comfortable with the program, but not greatly reduce its scope as a counter-terrorism tool. One such change would be to shift the assembling and archiving of telephone "metadata" from NSA servers in Ft. Meade, Md., back to the telephone companies, or to a private third party. But aides say he is unlikely to end the program altogether.

Under the current program, the government collects and stores metadata — numbers dialed and call times — involving virtually all telephone calls in or through the United States. The program does not collect the contents of conversations.

"This capability was put in place after 9/11 for a good reason," said a senior administration official who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive deliberations. "The question we have to examine is whether the perception of privacy intrusion outweighs the operational value. It's possible we could get that same information … in other ways, but it's slower."

Shifting the NSA archive to private control would be "tricky," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the Judiciary Committee. If the NSA can access the data too easily, Durbin said, "there's an assumption that it's partly created or controlled by government, and that doesn't change people's skepticism."

Privacy and civil liberties activists say the government has overstated the utility of amassing billions of phone call logs. They argue that it is too far-reaching and too intrusive, and that other effective counter-terrorism tools exist.

The "big question … [is] whether our government is going to spy on Americans," said Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the ACLU.

Over the last half-year, government officials have had to abandon several of their claims about the effectiveness of the metadata collection program. When former NSA contractor Edward Snowden began disclosing classified documents to the news media, intelligence officials initially said the ability to secretly trace a suspect's network of calling partners had helped prevent scores of terrorist attacks.

Pressed for details by members of Congress and others, officials steadily backed away from those assertions.

In the end, they cited only one U.S. case in which they still say the NSA archive played a crucial role: A San Diego cab driver and three others were convicted in November of sending about $8,500 to the Shabab, the extremist group in Somalia that has launched deadly attacks across East Africa, in part because of clues collected from the phone logs.

Whether U.S. authorities would have used similar data to identify any of the 19 hijackers before Sept. 11, and whether that would have stopped others in the plot, is impossible to know. The presidential commission that investigated the 2001 attack blamed more fundamental problems, including the CIA's failure to inform the FBI that several suspected Al Qaeda members had entered the United States and were living in San Diego.

The strongest argument for how the program might have helped, one cited in White House discussions, involves Khalid al Mihdhar, a Saudi who helped fly an American Airlines jet into the Pentagon.

After arriving in San Diego in January 2000, Mihdhar made several phone calls to an Al Qaeda safe house in Yemen. U.S. intelligence was monitoring calls made to the safe house, then-FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told Congress last summer, but didn't realize the caller was in America.

If the telephone archive had existed at the time, Mueller said, the NSA could have linked the numbers in Yemen and San Diego, identified Mihdhar and "derailed" the plot. Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA, made a similar argument.

According to the Sept. 11 Commission, however, the NSA already had learned Mihdhar's name in 1999 in a call that linked him to Al Qaeda, but did not pass his name or that of his friend Nawaf al Hazmi, another future hijacker, to the FBI.

In December that year, the CIA broke into Mihdhar's hotel room in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and photographed his passport, which had a U.S. visa. The CIA didn't warn the State Department to revoke the visas, didn't ask immigration authorities to bar Mihdhar or Hazmi at the border and didn't inform the FBI that suspected terrorists were in California.

If the FBI had been warned, agents already had ample legal authority to review Mihdhar's telephone records or get a warrant to tap his phones, read his emails and track his movements.

The FBI missed other opportunities to thwart the 2001 plot that it probably would pursue today.

In summer 2001, agents had arrested Zacarias Moussaoui, another Al Qaeda member, who aroused suspicion at a flight school in Minnesota. But they failed to obtain a search warrant for his computer. And FBI managers ignored a warning by a field agent in Phoenix that Osama bin Laden might be sending pilots to train at U.S. flight schools.

Today, as part of the initiatives implemented since 2001, federal watch lists bar suspected terrorists from boarding U.S.-bound aircraft or entering the country, and U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies share more information and work far more closely in counter-terrorism cases.

James R. Thompson, a former governor of Illinois who served on the Sept. 11 Commission, said the value of the bulk data collection was "a given" for counter-terrorism efforts even if it might not have prevented the 2001 attacks. He also said the concerns about abuse were overblown.

"We don't have any examples of how the average American citizen's privacy is being harmed by the collection of this data," he said.

NSA officials say they authorize analysts to access the database only a few hundred times a year, and only to determine whether suspected terrorists or spies overseas are in contact with people in the United States. In 2012, NSA analysts looked into calls involving 288 telephone numbers, John Inglis, the NSA's top civilian official, said in a recent interview with NPR. Examining the numbers that were in contact with those initial 288 as well as those in contact with that second tier meant the agency looked at about 6,000 phone numbers in total that year, he said.

To date, Snowden's disclosures have produced no evidence to suggest the NSA or other agencies have sought to search details about the personal lives or activities of Americans other than terrorism suspects.

christi.parsons@latimes.com

ken.dilanian@latimes.com

Investors Business Daily : Time To Declassify 9/11 Probe's Secret Saudi Section

Time To Declassify 9/11 Probe's Secret Saudi Section

December 11, 2013

Foreign Affairs: Congress might soon vote on a proposed bipartisan resolution calling for release of a secret Saudi section of the congressional 9/11 Joint Inquiry report. It's about time.

In 2002, President Bush censored 28 pages of the report dealing with foreign sponsorship of the grisly attacks on our nation. Some of the information has leaked out over the years, and it points back to Riyadh.

Now a couple of lawmakers who recently read the redacted portion and walked away "absolutely shocked" are demanding the White House make it public. Reps. Walter Jones, R-N.C., and Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., suggest the conspiracy was much wider than al-Qaida. They say every American deserves to know the truth.

Their resolution, H.R. 428, urges President Obama to declassify the 28-page section that deals with "foreign" sources of support for the 9/11 hijackers.

"The contents of the redacted pages are necessary for a full public understanding of the events and circumstances surrounding the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks upon the United States," it states.

"The executive branch's decision to maintain the classified status of these pages prevents the people of the United States from having access to information about the involvement of certain foreign governments in the terrorist attacks," the two-page resolution adds. It stresses that victims' families "deserve answers."

Indeed they do. Relatives have demanded the release of those redacted pages for years. We can't imagine the torture of living under that veil of secrecy. Or the anxiety of not knowing what really happened that day and who was really behind the murder of their loved ones.

The resolution sponsors insist that releasing the information won't violate national security, as the Bush administration claimed when it stepped in and erased it from a congressional report intended for public viewing.

Of course, that doesn't mean it won't hurt foreign relations. The fallout could be both diplomatically and economically damaging. There's also fear that openly punishing a Mideast ally could hurt efforts to box in a nuclear Iran. So the White House and State Department have to weigh these sensitive issues in making a decision.

But we believe it is worth the risks. The American public has a right to know if a foreign government aided the hijackers, whether that support was direct or indirect.

If a presumed ally knew of the plot to attack the very headquarters of the U.S. military, it certainly is no ally. And if there are no penalties for such a monumental betrayal, what message does that send to other nations that seek to do us harm?

Boston : Lawmakers: Declassify documents detailing foreign support for 9/11 hijackers

Lawmakers: Declassify documents detailing foreign support for 9/11 hijackers

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | December 3, 2013

WASHINGTON — Representative Stephen F. Lynch introduced a resolution Monday urging President Obama to make public 28 pages from a congressional investigation of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that remain secret.

Lynch said he believes it will shed new light on the worst terrorist assault in US history. The South Boston Democrat, along with Representative Walter B. Jones, a Republican from North Carolina, recently reviewed the findings, which were almost entirely blacked out when the panel issued its final report in December 2002.

“These pages contain information that is vital to a full understanding of the events and circumstances surrounding this tragedy,” the South Boston Democrat said in a statement Tuesday.

The withheld pages have long been a source of controversy and have fueled conspiracy theories that the US government covered up certain aspects of the plot to fly hijacked civilian airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people.

The final report of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees — called the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001 — did give some indication of what was contained.

The introduction stated the investigation uncovered “information suggesting specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers while they were in the United States.”

Many specialists have suggested that those sources of support for the Al Qaeda terrorists, most of whom were from Saudi Arabia, could have come from their home governments. But all the details were withheld on national security grounds.

Eleanor Hill, who served as the staff director of the inquiry and is now a Washington-based attorney, recalled Tuesday that the findings, gleaned through a combination of interviews at the time with FBI and CIA officials and a review of agency files, were alarming.

“It was disturbing,” she said. “Even back then I personally felt they could have released more of it. Somebody needs to look at it again.”

St. Petersburg Times : Russia Must Stop U.S. Aggression

Russia Must Stop U.S. Aggression

By Sergei Markov | September 26, 2013

Russia's dream is coming true: The peace-loving people of the world support Moscow's plan for resolving the Syrian crisis. What's more, Group of 20 member states have split into two camps. Тhe majority, headed by President Vladimir Putin, favor a peaceful resolution and the minority, led by U.S. President Barack Obama, advocate military intervention. The Russian plan has the advantage of thwarting the West from bombing Syria, reducing the number of chemical weapons in the world and preventing Islamic extremists from coming to power in Damascus. Russia has no vested interests in Syria, but it does have principles that it is upholding with firm determination. And amidst the growing chaos in the world, this turns out to be a winning strategy.

Most important, everything must conform to the framework of international law. This is not only a matter of respecting the law, but also a means of curbing the ambitions of NATO and the U.S. In this way, a temporarily weakened world power appeals to the law to contain the actions of a rival that is, at least for now, more powerful. And that is achieved by strengthening the authority of the United Nations. All foreign actions against Syria must be approved by the UN Security Council.

Above all, we must avoid war at all costs, a conviction born of Russia's suffering through the terrible war with Adolf Hitler. But Moscow has become especially firm on its anti-war principle during the last 10 years after seeing how readily the U.S. and NATO resort to military force. All U.S. military interventions over the past decade have led to negative results. These bombings deliver blows against not only the targeted countries but against the entire world order, as well.

Another principle is that the world community must respect the sovereignty of states. We must give each state the right to decide its own destiny. And the Syrians should be given the chance to negotiate peace and compromise. Russia defends its own sovereignty in the same way.

Another important principle is that the U.S. lied to Russia concerning Libya. Russia supported a no-fly zone, but not a massive bombing campaign and the overthrow of the regime. Our Western partners lied to Russian diplomats and then-President Dmitry Medvedev, an idealist who sincerely wanted Russia to be part of a united front with Western states. But in place of a united front, Russia was lied to and made party to an unauthorized use of force.

Moscow wants to avoid creating the military and political conditions in which jihadi can thrive, and which would prompt them to send militants from Iraq, Libya or Syria into Russia to continue their jihad. Confrontations with radical jihadi only tend to strengthen them. Russian analysts are convinced that Islamic extremists have become the dominant force among the Syrian rebels and that destabilizing actions by the West may let them seize power.

Russia is also opposed to the overthrow of governments. By contrast, the West works deliberately toward that goal, using a combination of soft power, like color revolutions, and hard power in the form of direct or threatened military intervention. This has been the case in Serbia, Georgia, Lebanon, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Who will be next? Belarus? Russia? That is why it is important that those advocating the overthrow of foreign governments pay the highest possible price for their actions and become mired down far away from Russia's borders.

The West has lost its moral legitimacy in the eyes of Russian leaders and public opinion. Its lies concerning Iraq, South Ossetia and Syria make it impossible for Russia to expect that the West's actions will be bound by any moral constraints or common sense. After all, they are strengthening their enemy, the jihadi, with their own hands. Many believe that the West is on a suicidal path toward the end of its civilization.

Chemical weapons were used in Syria, but by whom? Given the fact that the Syrian army is vanquishing the rebels, why would Syrian President Bashar Assad use chemical weapons? To do so on the very day that international inspectors arrived in Syria would make no political sense. Yet Russia is expected to take the word of the West that this is what happened, despite the fact that ample evidence indicates anti-government forces staged a provocation on Aug. 21. The West is unwilling to even discuss that, and it continues to block discussion of clear evidence that rebels used chemical weapons back in March.

That is why many observers believe that the U.S. and NATO are deliberately falsifying the facts, just as they did on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, intent on pressuring the international community and crushing Syria without regard to anyone or anything else. Why is Washington so persistent in its anti-Syria policy? Why is Obama willing to commit political suicide over Syria? A possible explanation is that he has become a hostage to his previous mistake of supporting the Syrian rebels and now cannot admit that they used chemical weapons. He spoke of a red line and fell hostage to his promises. What's more, any war against Syria means war against Iran, a regime that Washington has long dreamed of overthrowing.

Many observers also believe that Washington has fallen too heavily under the influence of Saudi Arabia, a regime that wants to depose Assad as a secular military dictator that the Wahhabist monarchy has feared for decades. In Syria, Sunni-dominated Riyadh is waging battle against the Shiites and a proxy war against Shiite Iran. The problem is that the war between the Sunnis and the Shiites has the potential to destabilize the entire region for decades, even possibly spreading to Europe and Russia.

Could Washington bomb Syria even after the fiasco with the Iraqi invasion? Yes, because the U.S. has not stopped talking of intervention even after the Russian peace initiative and its proven incapability of garnering support for its policies from Congress, public opinion or its NATO allies. The U.S. will coerce others into lending support, just as it did when it was discovered that Baghdad did not possess chemical weapons.

The Russian response to a U.S. missile strike against Syria would be asymmetrical. The Russian army would not go anywhere. Moscow would deploy its best air defense systems to the likely targets of any future U.S. strikes, starting with Iran. Moscow would also take the opportunity to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, an agreement that many consider disadvantageous for Russia and one that it was pressured into signing in 1987.

In addition, Russia will move to rapidly upgrade its army with the latest weapons systems and reconstruct its military-industrial complex because such policies by the U.S. and its NATO allies will inevitably lead to a new war that is likely to expand in scope.

At the very least, Russia must have a strong army to avoid getting drawn into such a major new war. Ideally, Russia would work to prevent any actions that could undermine the current situation and set the world into a downward slide toward such a large-scale war. This is primarily what Putin is seeking to accomplish in the Syrian crisis, and he has the support of public opinion not only in Russia but in most countries of the world — including NATO member states.

Sergei Markov is vice-rector of Plekhanov Economic University in Moscow.

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

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.

WaPo : Congress and the CIA: Time to Move On

Congress and the CIA: Time to Move On

By Leon Panetta | August 2, 2009

Last month, at a meeting overseas of intelligence service chiefs, one of my counterparts from a major Western ally pulled me aside. Why, he asked, is Washington so consumed with what the CIA did in the past, when the most pressing national security concerns are in the present? It was a very good question. In fact, I've become increasingly concerned that the focus on the past, especially in Congress, threatens to distract the CIA from its crucial core missions: intelligence collection, analysis and covert action.

In our democracy, effective congressional oversight of intelligence is important, but it depends as much on consensus as it does on secrecy. We need broad agreement between the executive and legislative branches on what our intelligence organizations do and why. For much of our history, we have had that. Over the past eight years, on specific issues -- including the detention and interrogation of terrorists -- the consensus deteriorated. That contributed to an atmosphere of declining trust, growing frustration and more frequent leaks of properly classified information.

In its earliest days, the Obama administration made policy changes in intelligence that ended some controversial practices. The CIA no longer operates black sites and no longer employs "enhanced" interrogation techniques. It is worth remembering that the CIA implements presidential decisions; we do not make them. Yet my agency continues to pay a price for enduring disputes over policies that no longer exist. Those conflicts fuel a climate of suspicion and partisanship on Capitol Hill that our intelligence officers -- and our country -- would be better off without. My goal as director is to do everything I can to build the kind of dialogue and trust with Congress that is essential to our intelligence mission.
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In that spirit, on June 24, I briefed the intelligence oversight committees of Congress on a highly classified program that had been brought to my attention the day before. Never fully operational, the program had not, in seven years, taken a single terrorist off the street, and information about it had not been shared appropriately with Congress. For me, this was more than just a simple question of law or legal requirements. Rather, it was a reflection of my firm belief that a straightforward and honest partnership with Congress can build support for intelligence. That's what I want, and I am convinced it's what our nation needs.

Unfortunately, rather than providing an opportunity to start a new chapter in CIA-congressional relations, the meeting sparked a fresh round of recriminations about the past. I recognize that there will always be tension in oversight relationships, but there are also shared responsibilities. Those include protecting the classified information that shapes our conversations. Together, the CIA and Congress must find a balance between appropriate oversight and a recognition that the security of the United States depends on a CIA that is totally focused on the job of defending America.

The time has come for both Democrats and Republicans to take a deep breath and recognize the reality of what happened after Sept. 11, 2001. The question is not the sincerity or the patriotism of those who were dealing with the aftermath of Sept. 11. The country was frightened, and political leaders were trying to respond as best they could. Judgments were made. Some of them were wrong. But that should not taint those public servants who did their duty pursuant to the legal guidance provided. The last election made clear that the public wanted to move in a new direction.

Intelligence can be a valuable weapon, but it is not one we should use on each other. As the president has said, this is not a time for retribution. Debates over who knew what when -- or what happened seven years ago -- miss a larger, more important point: We are a nation at war in a dangerous world, and good intelligence is vital to us all. That is where our focus should be. The CIA has plenty of tools to fight al-Qaeda and its allies. Unlike the effort I canceled in June, our present tools are effective, we use them aggressively to go after our enemies, and Congress has been briefed on them.

When President Obama visited the CIA in April, he told agency officers, "I am going to need you more than ever." The men and women of the CIA truly are America's first line of defense. They must run risks and make sacrifices to acquire the intelligence our country needs for its safety and security. Having spent 16 years in the House, I know that Congress can get the facts it needs to do its job without undue strife or name-calling. I also know that we can learn lessons from the past without getting stuck there. That is what the American people expect. The CIA is ready to do its part. The nation deserves no less.

The writer is director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

McClatchy : Iraq redux? Obama seeks funds for Pakistan super-embassy

Iraq redux? Obama seeks funds for Pakistan super-embassy

By Saeed Shah and Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers | May 27, 2009

ISLAMABAD — The U.S. is embarking on a $1 billion crash program to expand its diplomatic presence in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, another sign that the Obama administration is making a costly, long-term commitment to war-torn South Asia, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The White House has asked Congress for — and seems likely to receive — $736 million to build a new U.S. embassy in Islamabad, along with permanent housing for U.S. government civilians and new office space in the Pakistani capital.

The scale of the projects rivals the giant U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which was completed last year after construction delays at a cost of $740 million.

Senior State Department officials said the expanded diplomatic presence is needed to replace overcrowded, dilapidated and unsafe facilities and to support a "surge" of civilian officials into Afghanistan and Pakistan ordered by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Other major projects are planned for Kabul, Afghanistan; and for the Pakistani cities of Lahore and Peshawar. In Peshawar, the U.S. government is negotiating the purchase of a five-star hotel that would house a new U.S. consulate.

Funds for the projects are included in a 2009 supplemental spending bill that the House of Representatives and the Senate have passed in slightly different forms.

Obama has repeatedly stated that stabilizing Pakistan and Afghanistan, the countries from which al Qaida and the Taliban operate, is vital to U.S. national security. He's ordered thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan and is proposing substantially increased aid to both countries.

In Pakistan, however, large parts of the population are hostile to the U.S. presence in the region — despite receiving billions of dollars in aid from Washington since 2001 — and anti-American groups and politicians are likely to seize on the expanded diplomatic presence in Islamabad as evidence of American "imperial designs."

"This is a replay of Baghdad," said Khurshid Ahmad, a member of Pakistan's upper house of parliament for Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the country's two main religious political parties. "This (Islamabad embassy) is more (space) than they should need. It's for the micro and macro management of Pakistan, and using Pakistan for pushing the American agenda in Central Asia."

In Baghdad and other dangerous locales, U.S. diplomats have sometimes found themselves cut off from the population in heavily fortified compounds surrounded by blast walls, concertina wire and armed guards.

"If you're going to have people live in a car bomb-prone place, your are driven to not have a light footprint," said Ronald Neumann, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and the president of the American Academy of Diplomacy. Neumann called the planned expansions "generally pretty justified."

In Islamabad, according to State Department budget documents, the plan calls for the rapid construction of a $111 million new office annex to accommodate 330 workers; $197 million to build 156 permanent and 80 temporary housing units; and a $405 million replacement of the main embassy building. The existing embassy, in the capital's leafy diplomatic enclave, was badly damaged in a 1979 assault by Pakistani students.

The U.S. government also plans to revamp its consular buildings in the eastern city of Lahore and in Peshawar, the regional capital of the militancy plagued North West Frontier Province. The consulate in the southern megacity of Karachi has just been relocated into a new purpose-built accommodation.

A senior State Department official confirmed that the U.S. plan for the consulate in Peshawar involves the purchase of the luxury Pearl Continental hotel. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

The Pearl Contintental is the city's only five-star hotel, set in its own expansive grounds, with a swimming pool. It's owned by Pakistani tycoon Sadruddin Hashwani.

Peshawar is an important station for gathering intelligence on the tribal area that surrounds the city on three sides and is a base for al Qaida and the Taliban. The area also will be a focus for expanded U.S. aid programs, and the American mission in Peshawar has already expanded from three U.S. diplomats to several dozen.

In all, the administration requested $806 million for diplomatic construction and security in Pakistan.

"For the strong commitment the U.S. is making in the country of Pakistan, we need the necessary platform to fulfill our diplomatic mission," said Jonathan Blyth of the State Department's Overseas Buildings Operations bureau. "The embassy is in need of upgrading and expansion to meet our future mission requirements."

A senior Pakistani official said the expansion has been under discussion for three years. "Pakistanis understand the need for having diplomatic missions expanding and the Americans always have had an enclave in Islamabad," said the official, who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the matter publicly. "Will some people exploit it? They will."

In Kabul, the U.S. government is negotiating an $87 million purchase of a 30- to 40-acre parcel of land to expand the embassy. The Senate version of the appropriations bill omits all but $10 million of those funds.

(Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent. Jonathan S. Landay contributed to this article.)

Telegraph : Abu Ghraib abuse photos 'show rape'

Abu Ghraib abuse photos 'show rape'

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent and Paul Cruickshank | May 27, 2009

Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.

Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.

“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.

“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”

In April, Mr Obama’s administration said the photographs would be released and it would be “pointless to appeal” against a court judgment in favour of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

But after lobbying from senior military figures, Mr Obama changed his mind saying they could put the safety of troops at risk.

Earlier this month, he said: “The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.”

It was thought the images were similar to those leaked five years ago, which showed naked and bloody prisoners being intimidated by dogs, dragged around on a leash, piled into a human pyramid and hooded and attached to wires.

Mr Obama seemed to reinforce that view by adding: “I want to emphasise that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.”

The latest photographs relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Mr Obama said the individuals involved had been “identified, and appropriate actions” taken.

Maj Gen Taguba’s internal inquiry into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, included sworn statements by 13 detainees, which, he said in the report, he found “credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses.”

Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”

The translator was an American Egyptian who is now the subject of a civil court case in the US.

Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick” all of which were apparently photographed.

The Australian : Obama to confront anger over order to shut Guantanamo Bay

Obama to confront anger over order to shut Guantanamo Bay

Agence France-Presse | May 21, 2009

BARACK Obama will today use a national security speech to attempt to quell concern on both sides of politics over his order to shut Guantanamo Bay.

The President has chosen the National Archives, which houses the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, to argue his effort to reframe the legal front in the battle against terror honours bedrock US values.

But he will step to centre stage just a day after his plan to close the “war on terror” camp in Cuba suffered a rebuke in the Senate, and following a tough FBI warning not to bring detainees to US soil.

Mr Obama's speech comes on the heels of reports that the US government will bring a top al-Qa'ida suspect held at Guantanamo to trial in New York.

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian accused in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, would be the first former detainee at Guantanamo, the US naval base where 240 terror suspects are held, to face trial in a civilian court in the United States.

The speech comes as an unreleased Pentagon report _ cited in The New York Times _ concludes that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from Guantanamo Bay has returned to terrorism or militant activity.

And as Mr Obama makes his speech, ex-vice president Dick Cheney will deliver his own address, leading Republican charges that Mr Obama's national security policies leave America vulnerable to terrorists.

Mr Obama's Democratic allies joined Republican critics in a lopsided vote that stripped $US80 million dollars he requested to shutter the facility.

Still, the White House insists Mr Obama will work with Congress to honour his vow to shut Guantanamo in January 2010, a year after taking office.

Obama aides decry the heavily fortified encampment as a recruiting tool for al-Qa'ida and other extremist groups and a stain on the US image abroad.

But working out how to close the facility, and bring its inmates to justice, or send them to third countries, is proving a political headache.

Mr Obama is under intense pressure to decide the fate of the detainees from 30 nations at the camp, many of whom have not been charged.

Some may be impossible to try - as their evidence may be inadmissible due to interrogation methods branded as torture - but may also be judged too dangerous to release.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said earlier this week the speech would contain a “hefty” helping of Mr Obama's plans to try or disperse inmates, including a number of top al-Qa'ida terror suspects.

Mr Gibbs backtracked slightly yesterday, saying Mr Obama would provide a framework of “decisions that he knows have to be made in conjunction with other agencies in this administration, as well as members of Congress”.

Republicans have battered the White House in the debate about Guantanamo and harsh CIA interrogation tactics now banned by Mr Obama, seeking to wound the new president and portray majority congressional Democrats as weak on terror.

John Boehner, the top Republican in the House of Representatives, called on Mr Obama to keep “all of the terrorists at the Guantanamo prison off American soil”, tweaking skittish Democrats who fear a backlash from constituents if al-Qa'ida detainees enter US prisons in their states.

While under attack from Republicans seeking to make a rare dent in his political armour, Mr Obama will also hope to lance the fury of his own supporters.

Many liberals and civil liberties groups were dismayed by his decision to reconstitute Bush-era military tribunals for terror suspects, despite deriding them as a failure during his election campaign.

Rights groups were also dismayed by the president's announcement that he will attempt to block the release of new photos showing abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr Cheney is scheduled to speak to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank, the latest in a string of appearances in which he has been highly critical of Mr Obama's anti-terror policies.

FBI Director Robert Mueller dealt another blow to Mr Obama's goal of shutting the prison by a self-imposed January 22, 2010 deadline by challenging Democratic assertions that maximum-security US prisons can safely hold accused terrorists.

“The concerns we have about individuals who may support terrorism being in the United States run from concerns about providing financing to terrorists, radicalising others with regard to violent extremism, the potential for individuals undertaking attacks in the United States,” he said.

Telegraph : Pakistan: origin of three-quarters of all terror plots

Pakistan: origin of three-quarters of all terror plots

At least three in every four terror plots currently under investigation in the UK have their roots in Pakistan, according to the security services.

By Dean Nelson, South Asia Editor | April 10, 2009

Whilst Afghanistan was seen as the training ground of terrorists in the immediate aftermath of the September 2001 attacks, recent experience has shown that increasing numbers of al-Qaeda extremists are being trained across the border in the tribal areas in the north west of Pakistan.

President Obama openly refers to his “Af-Pak” strategy for combating militancy, such is the prevalance of terror suspects who have been radicalised in Pakistan.

Of the four men who carried out the London suicide bombings in July 2005, three were young British men of Pakistani origin who had travelled to the country to receive religious and military training.

Mohammed Siddique Khan, the leader of the plot, was raised in Beeston, West Yorkshire, but was understood to have made regular trips to terrorist training camps in southern Punjab, and was captured on video at Karachi airport in November 2004 with his accomplice Shehzad Tanweer, 22, another British national of Pakistan origin. They returned to Britain the following February.

The third bomber of Pakistani origin, Hasib Hussain, aged 18, had travelled to Pakistan 12 months before the attack.

Meanwhile, the alleged plot to bomb shopping centres in Manchester has been linked by MI5 to two al-Qaeda suspects in Pakistan - British Pakistani Rashid Rauf, who has been implicated in at least one other alleged terror plot, and Baitullah Mahsud, the leader of Pakistan’s Taliban movement who has promised attacks on the West in hate-filled pronouncements in recent weeks.

So many UK terror suspects have links to Pakistan that thousands of innocent travellers between the two countries every year are now closely monitored for signs of suspicious activity.

Latest estimates suggest 4,000 young British Muslims have been trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan, and with 400,000 British citizens visiting Pakistan each year, there are fears that many more will become radicalised.

Monitoring of regular visitors has intensified, which has raised the possibility of a change in tactics by terrorists, who may have switched to using Pakistani nationals who may not be so closely monitored when they visit the UK.

Shahid Aslam, a British employment solicitor who runs an immigration consultancy in Lahore, said terrorists could easily take advantages of gaps in the British visa application process to enter Britain on a valid visa.

He claimed there had been a number of cases where employees of agencies processing visa applications in Pakistan had accepted inducements to speed and guarantee entry visas.

NYT : In Baghdad, Obama Presses Iraqi Leader to Unite Factions

In Baghdad, Obama Presses Iraqi Leader to Unite Factions

By STEVEN LEE MYERS and HELENE COOPER | April 7, 2009

CAMP VICTORY, Iraq — President Obama made an unannounced trip to Iraq on Tuesday, his first visit as commander in chief to the site of one of the two wars he inherited and must now see through to an end.

President Obama spoke to American troops at Camp Victory, Iraq, on Tuesday. The president said that it was time for Iraqis “to take responsibility for their country and for their sovereignty.”

He returned to Washington early Wednesday, The Associated Press reported, landing at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland and then proceeding by helicopter to the White House.

In Baghdad, reiterating his pledge to end a war he opposed from the start, he told a cheering crowd of American troops that it was time for Iraqis “to take responsibility for their country and for their sovereignty.” Later, with a hint of impatience in his words, he urged Iraq’s leaders to unite the country’s deeply divided ethnic and sectarian factions and to incorporate them all into government and security forces.

“It is time for us to transition to the Iraqis,” Mr. Obama told hundreds of American troops jammed into Al Faw Palace, an imposing sandstone building in an artificial lake that once belonged to Saddam Hussein. The uniformed crowd greeted that remark specifically with rousing applause.

Since becoming president less than three months ago, Mr. Obama has moved swiftly to reshape the war in Iraq. He announced plans to withdraw all combat forces by August 2010, as he sought to shift the military’s focus to the troubled war in Afghanistan.

He chose to visit Iraq first, though. The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said he did so because of Iraq’s proximity to Turkey, where he began his day; the need to urge the Iraqis to do more to seek political reconciliation; and a desire to support “our men and women who are in harm’s way, either in Iraq or Afghanistan.”

Mr. Obama’s visit punctuated a trip that took him from an economic summit meeting in London to a NATO gathering and finally to Turkey, where during a discussion with students on Tuesday he faced a probing question of whether his policies were not in substance more like those of his predecessor, George W. Bush, than he liked to acknowledge.

“I have a responsibility to make sure that as we bring troops out, that we do so in a careful enough way that we don’t see a complete collapse into violence,” he replied, discussing Iraq among other issues. He added: “Moving the ship of state is a slow process. States are like big tankers. They’re not like speedboats.”

Mr. Obama arrived here aboard Air Force One at 4:42 p.m. after a flight carried out in secrecy and with heightened security, which included the closing of the main road to Baghdad International Airport. His visit was not a total surprise, because it had been widely discussed here since he arrived in Turkey on Sunday.

A pall of dust hung over Baghdad, grounding the helicopters that were to take the president and his entourage into the city itself, where a news conference with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki had been scheduled.

Mr. Obama instead met Mr. Maliki and several other senior officials in another palace near the airport before leaving Iraq, less than five hours after he arrived.

One of the Iraqis in the meeting, Saif Abdul Rahman, a senior adviser to Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Obama focused on building institutions in Iraq, including the army and security forces, that were free of the sectarian tensions that still haunt this country.

He said that Mr. Obama pledged to abide by American commitments to Iraq, including the timetable for withdrawing all troops by the end of 2011. Mr. Rahman said he welcomed the president’s attention to a conflict and a country that seemed to demand less as of late than Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“That he chose to come to Iraq — that the first visit in the Middle East of a sitting American president is Iraq — is an important message,” he said.

Mr. Obama arrived only hours after a car bomb exploded in Kadhimiya, a predominately Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad that includes one of Shiite Islam’s holiest shrines. At least eight people were killed and nearly two dozen were wounded. That attack was carried out a day after a series of six car bombings killed at least 33 people and wounded scores in and around Baghdad, one of the bloodiest days in Iraq this year.

Mr. Obama, appearing briefly with Mr. Maliki on Tuesday night, referred to what he called “this senseless violence,” expressing condolences to the victims’ families and adding, “I remain convinced that our shared resolve and commitment to progress is greater than the obstacles that stand in our way.”

Their appearance, held at Camp Victory, was a contrast to Mr. Bush’s last visit here in December, which was marred when an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at him during an appearance beside Mr. Maliki. By coincidence, an Iraqi appeals court on Tuesday reduced the sentence that the journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, received last month to one year in prison, instead of three, his lawyer and a spokesman for Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said.

Mr. Obama’s plan to begin withdrawing the roughly 140,000 American troops in Iraq on a strict timetable that would leave 35,000 to 50,000 by August 2010 has faced wariness from commanders, who fear that the security improvements remain fragile and could still be reversed. The troops who greeted him, however, appeared to support him enthusiastically. So many filled the vast, chandeliered rotunda where he spoke that people were being turned away.

Mr. Obama praised the troops for their accomplishments in a war he did not, as a candidate and a senator, support. “You have given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own as a democratic country,” he said. “That is an extraordinary achievement, and for that you have the thanks of the American people.”

His remarks with Mr. Maliki had a more cautionary tone. He emphasized the need for Iraq to do more to advance political reconciliation, to improve governance and basic services, and to create security.

“Overall violence continues to be down,” Mr. Obama said. “There has been movement on important political questions. But we have been reminded that there’s more work to do.”

Mr. Maliki responded that “dialogue should be the only way to resolve any issue, whether it was between the Iraqi security components, or in the region.”

Earlier Tuesday, in Istanbul, Mr. Obama called for Israelis and Palestinians to make the compromises necessary to reach a Middle East peace accord. During his meeting with students, Mr. Obama said he still believed that peace was possible but added pointedly, “What we need is political will and courage on the part of the leadership.”

His comments came a day after he publicly repudiated statements from Israel’s hawkish new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, that agreements reached at an American-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Md., in 2007 had “no validity.” Speaking before the Turkish Parliament on Monday, Mr. Obama said that Palestinian statehood was “a goal that the parties agreed to in the ‘road map’ and at Annapolis. That is a goal that I will actively pursue as president.”

Steven Lee Myers reported from Camp Victory, and Helene Cooper from Istanbul. Alissa J. Rubin and Rod Nordland contributed reporting from Baghdad.

Guardian : US will appoint Afghan 'prime minister' to bypass Hamid Karzai

US will appoint Afghan 'prime minister' to bypass Hamid Karzai

White House plans new executive role to challenge corrupt government in Kabul

Julian Borger in Brussels and Ewen MacAskill in Washington | March 22, 2009

The US and its European allies are ­preparing to plant a high-profile figure in the heart of the Kabul government in a direct challenge to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, the Guardian has learned.

The creation of a new chief executive or prime ministerial role is aimed at bypassing Karzai. In a further dilution of his power, it is proposed that money be diverted from the Kabul government to the provinces. Many US and European officials have become disillusioned with the extent of the corruption and incompetence in the Karzai government, but most now believe there are no credible alternatives, and predict the Afghan president will win re-election in August.

A revised role for Karzai has emerged from the White House review of Afghanistan and Pakistan ordered by Barack Obama when he became president. It isto be unveiled at a special conference on Afghanistan at The Hague on March 31.

As well as watering down Karzai's personal authority by installing a senior official at the president's side capable of playing a more efficient executive role, the US and Europeans are seeking to channel resources to the provinces rather than to central government in Kabul.

A diplomat with knowledge of the review said: "Karzai is not delivering. If we are going to support his government, it has to be run properly to ensure the levels of corruption decrease, not increase. The levels of corruption are frightening."

Another diplomat said alternatives to Karzai had been explored and discarded: "No one could be sure that someone else would not turn out to be 10 times worse. It is not a great position."

The idea of a more dependable figure working alongside Karzai is one of the proposals to emerge from the White House review, completed last week. Obama, locked away at the presidental retreat Camp David, was due to make a final decision this weekend.

Obama is expected to focus in public on overall strategy rather than the details, and, given its sensitivity, to skate over ­Karzai's new role. The main recommendation is for the Afghanistan objectives to be scaled back, and for Obama to sell the war to the US public as one to ensure the country cannot again be a base for al-Qaida and the Taliban, rather than the more ambitious aim of the Bush administration of trying to create a European-style democracy in Central Asia.

Other recommendations include: increasing the number of Afghan troops from 65,000 to 230,000 as well as expanding the 80,000-strong police force; ­sending more US and European civilians to build up Afghanistan's infrastructure; and increased aid to Pakistan as part of a policy of trying to persuade it to tackle al-Qaida and Taliban elements.

The proposal for an alternative chief executive, which originated with the US, is backed by Europeans. "There needs to be a deconcentration of power," said one senior European official. "We need someone next to Karzai, a sort of chief executive, who can get things done, who will be reliable for us and accountable to the Afghan people."

Money and power will flow less to the ministries in Kabul and far more to the officials who run Afghanistan outside the capital – the 34 provincial governors and 396 district governors. "The point on which we insist is that the time is now for a new division of responsibilities, between central power and local power," the senior European official said.

No names have emerged for the new role but the US holds in high regard the reformist interior minister appointed in October, Mohammed Hanif Atmar.

The risk for the US is that the imposition of a technocrat alongside Karzai would be viewed as colonialism, even though that figure would be an Afghan. Karzai declared his intention last week to resist a dilution of his power. Last week he accused an unnamed foreign government of trying to weaken central government in Kabul.

"That is not their job," the Afghan president said. "Afghanistan will never be a puppet state."

The UK government has since 2007 advocated dropping plans to turn Afghanistan into a model, European-style state.

Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who will implement the new policy, said it would represent a "vastly restructured effort". At the weekend in Brussels, he was scathing about the Bush administration's conduct of the counter-insurgency. "The failures in the civilian side ... are so enormous we can at least hope that if we get our act together ... we can do a lot better," he said.

NYT : Obama Plans to Retain Gates at Defense Department

Obama Plans to Retain Gates at Defense Department

By PETER BAKER and THOM SHANKER | November 25, 2008

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama has decided to keep Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in his post, a show of bipartisan continuity in a time of war that will be the first time a Pentagon chief has been carried over from a president of a different party, Democrats close to the transition said Tuesday.

Mr. Obama’s advisers were nearing a formal agreement with Mr. Gates to stay on for perhaps a year, the Democrats said, and they expected to announce the decision as early as next week, along with other choices for the national security team. The two sides have been working out details on how Mr. Gates would wield authority in a new administration.

The move will give the new president a defense secretary with support on both sides of the aisle in Congress, as well as experience with foreign leaders around the world and respect among the senior military officer corps. But two years after President Bush picked him to lead the armed forces, Mr. Gates will now have to pivot from serving the commander in chief who started the Iraq war to serving one who has promised to end it.

In deciding to ask Mr. Gates to stay, Mr. Obama put aside concerns that he would send a jarring signal after a political campaign in which he made opposition to the war his signature issue in the early days. Some Democrats who have advised his campaign quietly complained that he was undercutting his own message and risked alienating war critics who formed his initial base of support, especially after tapping his primary rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, for secretary of state.

But advisers argued that Mr. Gates was a practical public servant who was also interested in drawing down troops in Iraq when conditions allow.

“From our point of view, it looks pretty damn good because of continuity and stability,” said an Obama adviser, who insisted on anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations. “And I don’t think there are any ideological problems.”

Associates said Mr. Gates was torn between a desire to retire to a home in Washington State and a sense of duty as the military faces the daunting challenges of reducing forces in Iraq and increasing them in Afghanistan.

As Mr. Obama moved closer to assembling his national security team Tuesday, he lost a top candidate for director of the Central Intelligence Agency. John O. Brennan, an agency veteran who was widely seen as the front-runner, withdrew from consideration amid concerns that he was linked to controversial intelligence programs authorized by Mr. Bush.

In a letter to Mr. Obama, Mr. Brennan said he did not want those concerns to be a “distraction” for the incoming administration. At the same time, he vigorously defended his record and called himself a “strong opponent” of the harsh interrogation methods the agency used in recent years, including waterboarding, the practice of making a suspect experience the sensation of drowning.

The developments came as Mr. Obama prepared to begin unveiling his national security team after the long Thanksgiving weekend. Besides formally announcing his nomination of Mrs. Clinton as secretary of state, Mr. Obama was expected to appoint Gen. James L. Jones, a retired Marine commandant and NATO supreme commander, as his national security adviser.

Other front-runners have emerged in recent days, including Adm. Dennis Blair, retired from the Navy, for director of national intelligence; Susan E. Rice, a former assistant secretary of state, for ambassador to the United Nations; James B. Steinberg, a former deputy national security adviser, for deputy secretary of state; and Thomas E. Donilon, a former chief of staff at the State Department, for deputy national security adviser.

The team is shaping up as one of experience more than change, figures with long résumés but at times conflicting backgrounds. Nothing reflects that more than keeping a Republican-appointed defense secretary. Although Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Gerald R. Ford made no change at the top of the Pentagon when they took office, no president has kept a defense secretary from a predecessor in another party, Donald Ritchie, a Senate historian, said.

Mr. Gates, who served as C.I.A. director under the first President Bush, would not have to be reconfirmed by the Senate. The prospect of retaining him generated praise from the military establishment and Capitol Hill, where he is viewed as a pragmatist who turned the Pentagon around after the tumultuous tenure of Donald H. Rumsfeld.

But it also stirred a debate inside Mr. Obama’s circles, where some advisers worried that the decision to turn to a Republican appointee — something President Bill Clinton did in naming William S. Cohen to the defense post in 1997 — would reinforce the notion that Democrats could not manage the military. “It makes them look like they’re too wimpy to be trusted to run the building,” said one adviser who asked not to be named.

Keeping Mr. Gates after a polarizing campaign on the war also seemed incongruous to some. “I really can’t begin to understand from a political point of view how Barack Obama, a person who got the nomination because he ran against the Iraq war, can keep around the guy who’s been in charge of it for the last two years,” said Loren B. Thompson, head of the Lexington Institute, a research organization.

Mr. Gates talked with Mr. Obama’s team about how to make the arrangement work. One adviser familiar with the discussions said the final issue was the choice of senior Pentagon personnel and whether a small circle of Gates advisers would remain.

Obama advisers have talked about Richard J. Danzig, a former Navy secretary, as a possible deputy and heir apparent to Mr. Gates, but some acknowledged that the prospect could raise concerns. If Mr. Danzig is sitting down the hall from the secretary’s office and seen as Mr. Obama’s real choice, some said, then his presence could undercut Mr. Gates’s authority.

But Mr. Gates has shown an ability to manage the Pentagon even with a small inner circle. When he took over from Mr. Rumsfeld after the 2006 midterm elections, Mr. Gates did not bring a single new aide. And the senior military officer corps will remain unchanged at the start of the administration, including Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Admiral Mullen made an unannounced trip to Chicago on Friday for a 45-minute meeting with Mr. Obama on a wide range of national security issues, Pentagon officials said. Before going, Admiral Mullen received approval from both Mr. Gates and Mr. Bush, the officials said.

The decision by Mr. Brennan to pull out of consideration for a senior intelligence job surprised specialists and lawmakers, some of whom questioned whether he had been forced by Mr. Obama’s team to withdraw. Mr. Obama’s office denied pushing Mr. Brennan aside.

The episode underscored how the C.I.A.’s secret detention program remained an incendiary issue. Mr. Brennan, who will continue to work on Mr. Obama’s transition team, was a senior adviser during the campaign and said an Obama administration would ban coercive interrogation.

Yet a group of psychologists posted a letter on the Internet last weekend calling for Mr. Obama to pass over Mr. Brennan, quoting a 2006 interview in which he seemed to defend C.I.A. operations after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Stephanie Cutter, an Obama spokeswoman, said, “John Brennan has served our nation with honor and is a man of talent and integrity,” adding that Mr. Obama “is grateful for John’s continuing assistance as a valuable member of our transition team.”

Jeff Zeleny and Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.

The Times : Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda deputy brands Barack Obama a 'house negro'

Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda deputy brands Barack Obama a 'house negro'

From Times Online | November 19, 2008

Al-Qaeda today invoked the speeches of Malcolm X in a propaganda exercise designed to divide African-Americans, accusing Barack Obama of being a "house negro".

In his first video message to Mr Obama since the Illinois senator was elected on November 4, Ayman Zawahiri attempted to vilify the president-elect in comparison with the black power radical, whom he described as an "honourable" African-American.

His message, entitled The departure of Bush and arrival of Obama, appeared to have been carefully choreographed. It was staged in front of pictures of Mr Obama praying at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem during a pre-election visit to Israel, and Malcolm X, who was murdered in 1965.

As Osama bin Laden's deputy spoke, old footage of the black power leader's speeches was played in the background. In one of the speeches, Malcolm X used the term "house negroes" in reference to domestic slaves who were considered more docile towards their masters than the field slaves.

“It is true about you and people like you . . . what Malcolm X said about the house negroes,” he said, naming Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State, and his successor, Condoleezza Rice.

“You represent the opposite to honourable Black Americans like . . . Malcolm X."

He scolded Mr Obama for “choosing to be an enemy of Islam and Muslims”, saying that the Muslim “nation had bitterly received” the US President-elect's pledge of support for Israeli security and the peace process with the Palestinians.

“You have chosen to stand in the ranks of the enemies of Muslims and pray the prayer of the Jews, although you claim that your mother is Christian,” Mr Zawahiri added.

Also in his video, he threatened to work towards Mr Obama's removal if he went ahead with his proposals to withdraw troops from Iraq in order to concentrate on Afghanistan, urging him to remember "the fate" of President Bush, President Musharraf of Pakistan and Afganistan's former Soviet occupiers.

The recording came after an interview, broadcast on Sunday, in which Mr Obama said that he would push ahead with his campaign promise to begin pulling troops out of Iraq and switch the military focus to Afghanistan.

“What you have announced before . . . that you will withdraw [US] troops from Iraq [and send them] to Afghanistan is a policy that is doomed to failure,” Mr Zawahiri said in the message, made available by the SITE Intelligence Group.

"If you still want to be stubborn about America’s failure in Afghanistan, then remember the fate of Bush and Pervez Musharraf, and the fate of the Soviets and British before them,” he added.

Mr Obama refused to comment, declining to get into a "tit for tat with a terrorist group", according to CNN.

The tape was not unexpected. Intelligence officials and Mr Obama's campaign team have been bracing themselves for terrorist groups to take advantage of the presidential transition period.

Both President Bush and Mr Obama have acknowledged that extremists could stage attacks to destabilise the period, which ends when Mr Obama is inaugurated on January 20.

MSNBC : Al-Qaida No. 2 insults Obama with race epithet

Al-Qaida No. 2 insults Obama with race epithet

In first video since election, he says president-elect does bidding of whites

November 19, 2008

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader slurred Barack Obama with a demeaning racial term for a black American who does the bidding of whites in a new Web message posted Wednesday.

Ayman al-Zawahri's speech was al-Qaida's first reaction to Obama's election victory — and it suggested the terror network is worried the new American leader could undermine its rallying cry that the United States is an enemy oppressor.

Obama has been welcomed by many in the Middle East who hope he will end what they see as American aggression against Muslims and Arabs under President George W. Bush. Some believe his race and Muslim family connections could make him more understanding of the developing world's concerns.

Al-Zawahri dug into U.S. racial history to try to directly knock down that belief and argue Obama will be no more sympathetic than white leaders to what the al-Qaida leader called "the oppressed" of the world.

He said Obama was the "direct opposite of honorable black Americans" like Malcolm X, the 1960s Muslim African-American rights leader, who is known among some in the Arab world and seen as a symbol of anti-imperialism.

Al-Zawahri also called Obama — along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice — "house Negroes."

Reference to slavery

The video included old footage of speeches by Malcolm X in which he explains the term, saying black slaves who worked in their white masters' house were more servile than those who worked in the fields. Malcolm X used the term to criticize black leaders he accused of not standing up to whites and discrimination.

Speaking in Arabic, al-Zawahri used the phrase "abeed al-beit," which literally translates as "house slaves." But in the video message, posted on Islamic militant Web sites Wednesday, al-Qaida supplied English subtitles of the speech that translated the phrase as "house Negroes."

In Washington, White House press secretary Dana Perino said the tape is a reminder that al-Qaida is irrational.

"What we have here is more despicable and pathetic comments by al-Qaida terrorists," Perino said. "And in America, we are going to have a smooth transition from one administration to the next, and that will be a period of change in our country. What won't change is our commitment as a country to fighting terrorism. And I think that these comments just remind everybody of the kind of people that we're dealing with."

There was no immediate reaction from Obama's transition team.

'Heart full of hate'

The 11-minute, 23-second video featured an audio message by al-Zawahri, played over a still image of the al-Qaida No. 2.

The video graphics underlined the contrast al-Zawahri aimed to show: On one side of the screen was a photo of Obama wearing a Jewish skullcap and meeting Jewish leaders. On the other side was a photo of Malcolm X praying in a mosque. Interspersed was footage of Malcolm X talking of a "worldwide revolution" against the "Western power structure."

Al-Zawahri addressed "all the world's weak and oppressed," and warned them: "America has put on a new face, but its heart full of hate, mind drowning in greed and spirit which spreads evil, murder, repression and despotism continue to be the same as always."

Accuses Obama of turning back on heritage

He accused Obama of turning his back on his heritage to gain power.

"You were born to a Muslim father, but you chose to stand in the ranks of the enemies of the Muslims, and pray the prayer of the Jews, although you claim to be Christian, in order to climb the rungs of leadership in America," he said.

"It appears that you continue to be captive to the same criminal American mentality towards the world and towards the Muslims," he said.

Jeremy Binnie, an analyst with Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center, said al-Zawahri's message suggests al-Qaida leaders are worried "that Obama could be effective in rebuilding America's image."

"They hated Bush, but Bush was good for them in many ways because he was such a polarizing figure. But Obama seems at the moment to be a more uniting figure," Binnie said. "Al-Qaida very much would like the U.S. to stay with its old policies that put it in opposition to much of the Muslim world."

Warning on Afghanistan

Al-Zawahri proclaimed Obama's victory a sign that Americans had realized the failure of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He urged Islamic militants everywhere to continue their jihad, or holy war, saying, "Your enemy's stagger has begun, so don't stop hitting him."

Al-Zawahri said Obama's plan to shift troops to Afghanistan is doomed to failure, because Afghans will resist.

"Be aware that the dogs of Afghanistan have found the flesh of your soldiers to be delicious, so send thousands after thousands to them," he said.

Al-Zawahri specifically addressed al-Qaida fighters in Iraq, saying, "your enemy has admitted defeat," and that as U.S. troops withdraw, "you must persevere, for victory is in an hour of perseverance."

He also told Islamic militants in Somalia, who have been capturing towns in an advance against the tenuous central government, "don't put down your weapons before the Mujahed state of Islam ... has been set up in Somalia."