Emptywheel:bmaz: OPR Report Altered to Exculpate Bybee and Yoo

OPR Report Altered To Cover Bush DOJ Malfeasance
By: bmaz Friday January 29, 2010  


Mike Isikoff and Dan Klaidman put up a post about an hour ago letting the first blood for the Obama Administration’s intentional tanking of the OPR (Office of Professional Responsibility) Report. In light of Obama’s focused determination to sweep the acts of the Bush Administration, no matter how malevolent, under the rug and “move forward” the report is not unexpected. However, digesting the first leak in what would appear to be a staged rollout is painful:

…an upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the “torture” memos of professional-misconduct allegations.

While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action—which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.

The news broken in the Newsweek Declassified post is huge, assuming it is accurate, and the sense is that it is. In spite of the weight of the report, the report tucks the substantive content behind the deceptively benign title “Holder Under Fire”. The subject matter is far too significant though for it to have been casually thrown out. Consider this description of the OPR finding on the nature and quality of the critical August 1, 2002 Torture Memo:

The report, which is still going through declassification, will provide many new details about how waterboarding was adopted and the role that top White House officials played in the process, say two sources who have read the report but asked for anonymity to describe a sensitive document. Two of the most controversial sections of the 2002 memo—including one contending that the president, as commander in chief, can override a federal law banning torture—were not in the original draft of the memo, say the sources. But when Michael Chertoff, then-chief of Justice’s criminal division, refused the CIA’s request for a blanket pledge not to prosecute its officers for torture, Yoo met at the White House with David Addington, Dick Cheney’s chief counsel, and then–White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. After that, Yoo inserted a section about the commander in chief’s wartime powers and another saying that agency officers accused of torturing Qaeda suspects could claim they were acting in “self-defense” to prevent future terror attacks, the sources say. Both legal claims have long since been rejected by Justice officials as overly broad and unsupported by legal precedent.

Hard to figure how this finding and conclusion could be determined by David Margolis to warrant the “softening” of the original finding of direct misconduct. Margolis is nearly 70 years old and has a long career at DOJ and is fairly well though of. Margolis was tasked by Jim Comey to shepherd Pat Fitzgerald’s Libby investigation. In short, the man has some bona fides.

Margolis is, however, also tied to the DOJ and its culture for over forty years, not to mention his service in upper management as Associate Attorney General during the Bush Administration when the overt acts of torture and justification by Margolis’ contemporaries and friends were committed. For one such filter to redraw the findings and conclusions of such a critical investigation in order to exculpate his colleagues is unimaginable.

One thing is for sure, with a leak like this being floated out on a late Friday night, the release of the full OPR Report, at least that which the Obama Administration will deem fit for the common public to see, is at hand. Mike Isikoff and Dan Klaidman have made sure the torturers and their enablers can have a comfortable weekend though. So we got that going for us.

Tom Burghardt: Global Research: Smoking Gun Disclosures of the Coverup of the Underwear Bomber Affair (Flight 253)

The interesting question that Burghardt raises is whether right wing Cheney embeds especially in the security apparat are in a conspiracy to embarrass and/or bring down the Obama administration. From where I sit, it's too early to say whether the Obama administration, i.e, Obama and Rahm Emanuel, knew in advance about the underwear bomber shenanigans. Obama first made statements to the effect that he'd punish the people responsible for not connecting the dots; statements he reversed within a week. Also notable was his 76 hour silence, consistent with his lack of foreknowledge. So we'll have to wait and see.

That being said, the article below leans too heavily for my taste on the side  of Obama as essentially a humane democrat, unwilling but forced into the ruthlessness that we have become accustomed to after 9/11. After all, the drone attacks started 3 days after he was in office. He deliberately fired the previous general in favor of McChrystal as top general in Afghanistan. And more. 

***

The Obama Administration's Cover-up of the Flight 253 Affair

"New Smoking Gun" Disclosures

by Tom Burghardt

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17184

Relevant questions begging for answers include: Who made the decision not to "connect the dots"? Are right-wing elements and holdovers from the previous administration actively conspiring to destabilize the Obama government? Was the attempted bombing a planned provocation meant to incite new conflicts in the Middle East and restrict democratic rights at home? 

As with the 9/11 attacks, these questions go unasked by corporate media. Indeed, such lines of inquiry are entirely off the table and are further signs that a cover-up is in full-swing, not a hard-hitting investigation. 

Nearly one month after passengers foiled an attempted suicide bomb attack aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 as it approached Detroit on Christmas Day, new information reveals that the White House and U.S. security agencies had specific intelligence on accused terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, far earlier than previously acknowledged. 

Along with new reports, evidence suggests that the administration's cover-up of the affair has very little to do with a failure by the intelligence apparatus to "connect the dots" and may have far more serious political implications for the Obama administration, and what little remains of a functioning democracy in the United States, than a botched bombing. 

What the White House and security officials have previously described only as "vague" intercepts regarding "a Nigerian" has now morphed into a clear picture of the suspect--and the plot.

The New York Times revealed January 18 that the National Security Agency "learned from a communications intercept of Qaeda followers in Yemen that a man named "Umar Farouk"--the first two names of the jetliner suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab--had volunteered for a coming operation."

According to Times' journalists Eric Lipton, Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti, "the American intelligence network was clearly listening in Yemen and sharing that information." Indeed, additional NSA intercepts in December "mentioned the date of Dec. 25, and suggested that they were 'looking for ways to get somebody out' or 'for ways to move people to the West,' one senior administration official said."

Clearly, the administration was "worried about possible terrorist attacks over the Christmas holiday." These concerns led President Obama to meet December 22 "with top officials of the C.I.A., F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security, who ticked off a list of possible plots against the United States and how their agencies were working to disrupt them," the Times reports.

"In a separate White House meeting that day" the Times disclosed, "Mr. Obama's homeland security adviser, John O. Brennan, led talks on Yemen, where a stream of disturbing intelligence had suggested that Qaeda operatives were preparing for some action, perhaps a strike on an American target, on Christmas Day."

In mid-January, Newsweek reported that the "White House report on the foiled Christmas Day attempted airliner bombing provided only the sketchiest of details about what may have been the most politically sensitive of its findings: how the White House itself was repeatedly warned about the prospect of an attack on the U.S.," Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff disclosed.

According to the newsmagazine, "intelligence analysts had 'highlighted' an evolving 'strategic threat,'" and that "'some of the improvised explosive device tactics AQAP might use against U.S. interests were highlighted' in other 'finished intelligence products'." 

However, the real bombshell came last Wednesday during hearings before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee when Bushist embed, and current Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Michael E. Leiter, made a startling admission. 

CongressDaily reported on January 22 that intelligence officials "have acknowledged the government knowingly allows foreigners whose names are on terrorist watch lists to enter the country in order to track their movement and activities." 

Leiter told the Committee: "I will tell you, that when people come to the country and they are on the watch list, it is because we have generally made the choice that we want them here in the country for some reason or another."

CongressDaily reporter Chris Strohm, citing an unnamed "intelligence official" confirmed that Leiter's statement reflected government policy and told the publication, "in certain situations it's to our advantage to be able to track individuals who might be on a terrorist watch list because you can learn something from their activities and their contacts."

An alternative explanation fully in line with well-documented inaction, or worse, by U.S. security agencies prior to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and now, Christmas Day's aborted airline bombing, offer clear evidence that a ruthless "choice" which facilitates the murder of American citizens are cynical pretexts in a wider game: advancing imperialism's geostrategic goals abroad and attacks on democratic rights at home.

Leiter's revelation in an of itself should demolish continued government claims that the accused terror suspect succeeded in boarding NW Flight 253 due to a failure to "connect the dots."

However, as far as Antifascist Calling can determine, no other media outlet has either reported or followed-up CongressDaily's disclosure; a clear sign that its explosive nature, and where a further investigation might lead, are strictly off-limits. 

Taking into account testimony by a high-level national security official that terrorists are allowed to enter the country for intelligence purposes, one can only conclude that the alleged "failure" to stop Abdulmutallab was neither a casual omission nor the result of bureaucratic incompetence but rather, a highly-charged political calculation. 

Bushist Embeds: Destabilizing the Obama Administration? 

One subject barely explored by corporate media throughout the Flight 253 affair, is the unsettling notion that the aborted Christmas day bombing may have been a move by rightist elements within the security apparatus to destabilize the Obama administration, a course of action facilitated by the Obama government itself as we will explore below. 

This is not as implausible as it might appear at first blush. When one takes into account the meteoric rise to power by the 40-year-old former Navy pilot and federal prosecutor, Michael Leiter's ascent tracks closely with his previous service as a cover-up specialist for the Bush-Cheney regime.

"In 2004, while working as a federal prosecutor," a New York Times puff piece informs us, "Mr. Leiter joined the staff of a commission, appointed by President George W. Bush, to examine intelligence failures leading up to the war in Iraq. That led to a series of jobs in the intelligence

world, and in 2008, Mr. Bush appointed him director of the counterterrorism center." 

A rather curious appointment, if Leiter were simply an ingénue with no prior experience in the murky world of intelligence and covert operations. However the former Navy pilot, who participated in the U.S. wars of aggression against the former Yugoslavia and Iraq seemed to have the requisite qualifications for work as an intelligence "specialist."


While attending Harvard Law School, Leiter served as a "human rights fellow" with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, the U.S.-sponsored kangaroo court that has prosecuted America's official enemies in the Balkans whilst covering-up the crimes of their partners.


Amongst America's more dubious "allies" in the decade-long campaign to destabilize socialist Yugoslavia were al-Qaeda's Islamist brigade, responsible for carrying-out hideous massacres in Bosnia and Kosovo, with NATO approval and logistical support, as Global Research analyst Michel Chossudovsky, and others, have thoroughly documented.


As Deputy General Counsel and Assistant Director of the President's Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States, the so-called "Robb-Silberman" cover-up commission, Leiter focused on what are euphemistically described in the media as "reforms" with the U.S. "Intelligence Community," including the stand-up of the FBI's repressive National Security Branch.


Prior to joining NCTC, Leiter was the Deputy Chief of Staff for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under former NSA Director and ten-year senior vice president of the spooky Booz Allen Hamilton security firm, John "Mike" McConnell.


From his perch in ODNI, Leiter coordinated all internal and external operations for the Office, including relations with the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and the CIA.


Leiter's résumé, and his role in concealing Bush administration war crimes, predicated on ginned-up "intelligence" invented by Dick Cheney's minions in the Defense Department and the CIA, should have sent alarm bells ringing inside the incoming Obama administration.


As we have seen since Obama's inauguration however, rather than cleaning house--and settling accounts--with the crimes, and criminals, of the previous regime, the "change" administration chose to retain senior- and mid-level bureaucrats in the security apparatus; employing officials who share the antidemocratic ideology, penchant for secrecy and ruthlessness of the Bush administration.


While the Times claims his "unblemished résumé" has taken a hit over the Flight 253 plot, an interview with National Public Radio shortly before the Abdulmutallab affair, provides chilling insight into Leiter's agenda, particularly in light of his January 20 statement to the Senate Homeland Security Committee.


Presciently perhaps, the NCTC chief told NPR: "We're not going to stop every attack. Americans have to very much understand that it is impossible to stop every terrorist event. But we have to do our best, and we have to adjust, based on, again, how the enemy changes their tactics."


It becomes a painfully simple matter for "the enemy" to gain advantage and "change their tactics" when those charged with protecting the public actually facilitate their entrée into the country "for some reason or another"!


According to the Times, the White House has kept Leiter at the helm and that it came as "no surprise to Bush officials" because, get this, "Michael wasn't political," if we're to believe the carefully-constructed legend of former Bushist Deputy National Security Adviser Juan Zarate.


If the Bush-Cheney years tell us anything it's that appointments by the previous regime were ruthlessly political. As The Washington Post reported shortly after Obama's election, these appointments were made permanent across a multitude of federal agencies and departments, including the security apparat, in a cynical maneuver designed to reward Bush loyalists.


"The transfer of political appointees into permanent federal positions" the Post disclosed, "called 'burrowing' by career officials, creates security for those employees, and at least initially will deprive the incoming Obama administration of the chance to install its preferred appointees in some key jobs."


The Times reports that the White House has publicly defended Leiter "and aides to the president said Mr. Obama called to convey his support." Perhaps not so curiously, the allegedly "nonpolitical" NCTC Director "has been mentioned as a possible future head of the Central Intelligence Agency, and how he performs might help determine whether he remains on the fast track."


One can only wonder, how many other counterterrorist officials have "burrowed" their way into, and hold key positions in the current administration, ticking political time-bombs inside America's permanent shadow government.


Senate Whitewash Fuel Attacks on Democratic Rights


During Wednesday's Senate hearings, Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis C. Blair, in keeping with the former Bush administration's assault on democratic rights, assailed the decision by the Justice Department to try the suspect in a court of law.


This is fully in line with the rhetoric of ultra-right Republicans and so-called "centrist Democrats" such as arch neocon Senator Joseph Lieberman.


Newsweek reports that new details "surrounding the Christmas Day interrogation of the bombing suspect aboard Northwest Flight 253 raise questions about the accuracy of testimony provided Wednesday by senior U.S. intelligence and Homeland Security officials."


Last week, the newsmagazine reported that "Obama administration officials were flabbergasted Wednesday when Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair testified that an alleged Qaeda operative who tried to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day should have been questioned by a special interrogation unit that doesn't exist, rather than the FBI."


This theme was quickly picked-up by Senate Republicans.


The overarching sentiments expressed by this gaggle of war criminals and corporate toadies was not to demand accountability from the responsible parties, but to call for further attacks on Americans' democratic rights.


Republicans on the committee lambasted Obama's Justice Department for its decision to try Abdulmutallab in a civilian court. John McCain (R-AZ), the Republican party's failed candidate in the 2008 presidential election, said the decision was "a terrible, terrible mistake," while the execrable Jeff Sessions (R-AL) claimed that the hapless suspect should have been delivered to the U.S. military as an "enemy combatant."


Ranking Republicans on the committee, Susan Collins (R-ME) and John Ensign (R-NV) went so far as to imply that Abdulmutallab should have been tortured. Collins inquired: "how can we uncover plots" if accused criminal suspects are allowed to "lawyer up and stop answering questions?" Ensign, a staunch supporter of policies articulated by the Bush administration, particularly former Vice President and war criminal, Dick Cheney, argued that "limiting" CIA interrogators to the methods laid out in the Army Field Manual would allow terrorists to "train" in advance of interrogations.


But the harshest criticism of the administration came in the form of a stealth attack by Obama's own Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Blair.


The Wall Street Journal reported January 21 that "nation's intelligence chief said the man accused of trying to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day should have been questioned by a special interrogation team instead of being handled as an ordinary criminal suspect."


Rather than coming to terms and halting the Bush regime's practice of torturing so-called terrorist suspects, the Obama administration has compounded the crime by creating a secretive group of interrogators called the High-Value Interrogation Group or HIG.


Blair told the Senate that the administration had "botched" the handling of suspect Abdulmutallab, by, wait, not handing him over to a group that as of this writing, exists only on paper, a salient fact of which Blair was certainly knowledgeable!


In his testimony however, the DNI told the Homeland Security Committee that the HIG "was created exactly for this purpose--to make a decision on whether a certain person who's detained should be treated as a case for federal prosecution or for some of the other means."


Blair implicitly criticized the Justice Department's decision to uphold constitutional protections that guarantee a suspect a right to a trial in a court of law and not a one-way ticket to an American gulag. Blair said, "we did not invoke the HIG in this case; we should have. Frankly, we were thinking more of overseas people and, duh, you know, we didn't put it [in action] then."


Mendaciously, the DNI claimed "I was not consulted. The decision was made on the scene, [and] seemed logical to the people there, but it should have been taken using this HIG format, at a higher level."


Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff disclosed January 20 that "senior administration officials" told him that Blair was "misinformed on multiple levels" and that the DNI's assertions were "all the more damaging because they immediately fueled Republican criticism that the administration mishandled the Christmas Day incident in its treatment of the accused Qaeda operative as a criminal suspect rather than an enemy combatant."


Isikoff reported January 22 that Blair, Leiter and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano were asked about the decision to try Abdulmutallab and all gave the same answer when queried by right-wing Senator Susan Collins, the Committee's ranking Republican: "Were you consulted regarding the decision to file criminal charges against [suspect Umar Farouk] Abdulmutallab in civilian court?"


Leiter and Napolitano both replied: "I was not." According to Newsweek, Blair also said he was "not consulted" and claims that the government "should have" brought in the yet-to-be activated HIG "to conduct the questioning of the suspect."


As with every aspect of this strange affair, Newsweek reports, these statements are riddled with lies and mischaracterizations.


Isikoff writes that "all the relevant national-security agencies, including top aides to Blair and Napolitano, were fully informed about the plans to charge the suspect in federal court hours before he was read his Miranda rights and stopped cooperating."



Newsweek further reveals that a "key event" was a secure videoconference on Christmas Day "that included Leiter" and Jane Lute, DHS' No. 2 official and that "neither Leiter nor any of the other participants, including representatives from the FBI and the CIA, raised any questions about the Justice Department's plans to charge the suspect in federal court, the officials said."


"If you participate in a conference call and you don't raise any objections, that suggests you were consulted," said one senior law-enforcement official. Another added that "nobody at any point" raised any objections, either during the meeting or during a four-hour period afterward when Abdulmutallab was informed of his Miranda rights to be represented by a lawyer," according to Newsweek.


Ultra-right Senator Kit Bond (R-MO), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a witting accomplice to the previous regime's high crimes and misdemeanors against the American people said, "That this administration chose to shut out our top intelligence officials and forgo collecting potentially life-saving intelligence is a dangerous sign."


It's a "dangerous sign" to be sure, for America's battered democracy.


An On-Going Cover-Up


As events continue to unfold and new information shreds the official story, is Leiter's chilling testimony that suspected terrorists are allowed to enter the United States "because we have generally made the choice that we want them here in the country for some reason or another," merely a banal slip or something far more sinister that betrays the real order of things in post-democratic America?


Relevant questions begging for answers include: Who made the decision not to "connect the dots"? Are right-wing elements and holdovers from the previous administration actively conspiring to destabilize the Obama government? Was the attempted bombing a planned provocation meant to incite new conflicts in the Middle East and restrict democratic rights at home?


As with the 9/11 attacks, these questions go unasked by corporate media. Indeed, such lines of inquiry are entirely off the table and are further signs that a cover-up is in full-swing, not a hard-hitting investigation.


In truth, what we are dealing with here as we stagger into the second decade of the 21st century, is not a "conspiracy" per se but a modus operandi as the World Socialist Web Site has argued, rooted in a bankrupt system quickly reaching the end of the line.

Tom Burghardt is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Tom Burghardt

Is Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitic?
Jewish Critics Speak

Edward C. Corrigan

Middle East Policy, Vol. XVI, No. 4, Winter 2009

Mr. Corrigan, BA, MA, LL.B., is a lawyer certified as a specialist in Citizenship and Immigration Law and Immigration and Refugee Protection by the Law Society of Upper Canada in London, Ontario. He can be reached at corriganlaw@edcorrigan.ca or at (519) 439-4015.

When individuals, activists or politicians in the United States and Canada criticize human-rights problems in Israel or question the tenets of the political ideology of Zionism, they are attacked, and accusations of bias and even anti-Semitism are made in an attempt to discredit them.
The allegation that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic is used as an effective political weapon. To quote one anti-Zionist Jewish writer:
Criticizing Israel’s mistakes is acceptable. But questioning whether Israel is a Jewish state with a racist
apartheid system that renders non‑Jews second rate citizens — that is not acceptable. It makes little difference
whether the criticism is based on facts. Few people who cannot claim Jewish descent would dare to criticize publicly. They are afraid of being accused
of “anti‑semitism.”2
Joel Beinin in “Silencing Critics Not Way to Middle East Peace,” an article published in the San Francisco Chronicle, discussed the campaign to silence critics

of Israeli policy. Beinin, a professor of history at Stanford University, is active in Jewish Voice for Peace and an editor of Jewish Peace News.3 Here is what he had to say about the campaign to attack critics of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians:
Why discredit, defame and silence those with opposing viewpoints? I believe it is because the Zionist lobby knows it cannot win based on facts. An honest discussion can only lead to one conclusion: The status quo in which Israel declares it alone has rights and intends to impose its will on the weaker Palestinians, stripping them permanently of their land, resources and rights, cannot lead to a lasting peace. We need an open debate and the freedom to discuss uncomfortable facts and explore the full range of policy options.
Only then can we adopt a foreign policy that serves American interests and one that could actually bring a just peace to Palestinians and Israelis.4
In “Why It Is Essential for Jews to Speak Out as Jews, on Israel,” Internet blogger Philip Weiss interviewed long-time Jewish activist Dorothy Zellner. She is now working with “Jews Say No.” As Weiss notes, “A lot of activists would say that this is an American issue; everyone should be engaged. And a lot of left-wingers
would say, religion/ethnicity is a tiresome
traditional category, I don’t want to identify myself in such a manner.” Zellner responds to these arguments and explains why she believes that it is essential to address
the Palestinian issue “as Jews, and speak to other Jews as Jews”:
But the sight of us doing the unthinkable has many benefits: There are a few Jews who are happy and relieved to see us because it opens the door for them. They have felt uneasy about Israeli policies for a long time, and seeing us seems to give them more courage to speak their minds. There are also some gentiles who are happy to see us because they have been afraid for a long time of being called anti‑Semites if they criticize Israel.
Just think what it would mean if a significant number of people in our country started to break through the rigid, unthinking mindset of supporting
Israel right or wrong! And just think what it means if we could have weakened the stranglehold of Israeli policies but chose not to do it!
Because we are Jews, we naturally
have a certain currency in challenging
Israeli policies. We identify with the Jewish people, and we respect Jewish culture. Some of us are former Zionists, and we know that Israel was never an empty land. We’ve been to Israel and Palestine more than once, and we’ve seen the checkpoints and the barbed wire and the guard towers with our own eyes. We’ve been angry and ashamed that this occupation is supposedly being done to protect us. Some of us have relatives in Israel. Some of us are the children of Holo

Speakcaust survivors, and we say that what happened to our murdered relatives in Europe should not be the reason for Palestinian pain.5
Here is what Norman Solomon has to say about anti-Semitism: “As with all forms of bigotry, anti‑Semitism should be condemned. At the same time, these days, America's biggest anti‑Semitism problem has to do with the misuse of the label as a manipulative tactic to short‑circuit debate about Washington's alliance with Israel.”6 He added,
The failure to make a distinction between anti‑Semitism and criticism
of Israel routinely stifles public debate. When convenient, pro‑Israel groups in the United States will concede
that it’s possible to oppose Israeli policies without being anti‑Semitic. Yet many of Israel’s boosters reflexively
pull out the heavy artillery of charging anti‑Semitism when their position is challenged.7
Professor Michael Neumann had the following to say about anti-Semitism:
. . . to inflate the definition by including
critics of Israel is, if not exactly incorrect, self‑defeating and dangerous.
No one can stop you from proclaiming
all criticism of Israel anti‑Semitic.
But that makes anti‑Semites out of Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu, not to mention tens of thousands of Jews.

For more: See Middle East Policy, Vol. XVI, No. 4, Winter 2009

Xymphora: Did Berlusconi Fake the Attack?

Once again Xymphora comes through with the information. Nice Going.

Friday, December 25, 2009

http://xymphora.blogspot.com/

Oscar for Berlusconi
The Italians posting videos to YouTube (here and here and here and the one embedded here) make an excellent case that the attack on Berlusconi was faked;
the cameraman meticulously following Berlusconi's every move mysteriously turns away vaguely into the crowd just before the attack;
you can see the swing of the attacker at Berlusconi, which misses him;
Berlusconi immediately puts a black piece of plastic he had been holding in his hand (?) over his face (but in the moment before he does so you can see his face is unmarked);
there is no blood above the plastic at first, but when Berlusconi emerges from his car there is a new smear of blood under his eye;
his bodyguards spend some time obscuring our view while they apply the makeup in the car (and one may have a can of some spray-on substance);
the makeup appears as caked and dried blood, not what you would see as the result of a very recent attack.

The trickery worked - Berlusconi's personal popularity in Italy soared after the attack.

Jeremy Scahill: The Secret US War in Pakistan: Secret also from Congress

The Secret US War in Pakistan

by JEREMY SCAHILL

November 23, 2009

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.

The source, who has worked on covert US military programs for years, including in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has direct knowledge of Blackwater's involvement. He spoke to The Nation on condition of anonymity because the program is classified. The source said that the program is so "compartmentalized" that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence.

The White House did not return calls or email messages seeking comment for this story. Capt. John Kirby, the spokesperson for Adm. Michael Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Nation, "We do not discuss current operations one way or the other, regardless of their nature." A defense official, on background, specifically denied that Blackwater performs work on drone strikes or intelligence for JSOC in Pakistan. "We don't have any contracts to do that work for us. We don't contract that kind of work out, period," the official said. "There has not been, and is not now, contracts between JSOC and that organization for these types of services."

Blackwater's founder Erik Prince contradicted this statement in a recent interview, telling Vanity Fair that Blackwater works with US Special Forces in identifying targets and planning missions, citing an operation in Syria. The magazine also published a photo of a Blackwater base near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

The previously unreported program, the military intelligence source said, is distinct from the CIA assassination program that the agency's director, Leon Panetta, announced he had canceled in June 2009. "This is a parallel operation to the CIA," said the source. "They are two separate beasts." The program puts Blackwater at the epicenter of a US military operation within the borders of a nation against which the United States has not declared war--knowledge that could further strain the already tense relations between the United States and Pakistan. In 2006, the United States and Pakistan struck a deal that authorized JSOC to enter Pakistan to hunt Osama bin Laden with the understanding that Pakistan would deny it had given permission. Officially, the United States is not supposed to have any active military operations in the country.

Blackwater, which recently changed its name to Xe Services and US Training Center, denies the company is operating in Pakistan. "Xe Services has only one employee in Pakistan performing construction oversight for the U.S. Government," Blackwater spokesperson Mark Corallo said in a statement to The Nation, adding that the company has "no other operations of any kind in Pakistan."

A former senior executive at Blackwater confirmed the military intelligence source's claim that the company is working in Pakistan for the CIA and JSOC, the premier counterterrorism and covert operations force within the military. He said that Blackwater is also working for the Pakistani government on a subcontract with an Islamabad-based security firm that puts US Blackwater operatives on the ground with Pakistani forces in counter-terrorism operations, including house raids and border interdictions, in the North-West Frontier Province and elsewhere in Pakistan. This arrangement, the former executive said, allows the Pakistani government to utilize former US Special Operations forces who now work for Blackwater while denying an official US military presence in the country. He also confirmed that Blackwater has a facility in Karachi and has personnel deployed elsewhere in Pakistan. The former executive spoke on condition of anonymity.

His account and that of the military intelligence source were borne out by a US military source who has knowledge of Special Forces actions in Pakistan and Afghanistan. When asked about Blackwater's covert work for JSOC in Pakistan, this source, who also asked for anonymity, told The Nation, "From my information that I have, that is absolutely correct," adding, "There's no question that's occurring."

"It wouldn't surprise me because we've outsourced nearly everything," said Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, when told of Blackwater's role in Pakistan. Wilkerson said that during his time in the Bush administration, he saw the beginnings of Blackwater's involvement with the sensitive operations of the military and CIA. "Part of this, of course, is an attempt to get around the constraints the Congress has placed on DoD. If you don't have sufficient soldiers to do it, you hire civilians to do it. I mean, it's that simple. It would not surprise me."

The Counterterrorism Tag Team in Karachi

The covert JSOC program with Blackwater in Pakistan dates back to at least 2007, according to the military intelligence source. The current head of JSOC is Vice Adm. William McRaven, who took over the post from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC from 2003 to 2008 before being named the top US commander in Afghanistan. Blackwater's presence in Pakistan is "not really visible, and that's why nobody has cracked down on it," said the source. Blackwater's operations in Pakistan, he said, are not done through State Department contracts or publicly identified Defense contracts. "It's Blackwater via JSOC, and it's a classified no-bid [contract] approved on a rolling basis." The main JSOC/Blackwater facility in Karachi, according to the source, is nondescript: three trailers with various generators, satellite phones and computer systems are used as a makeshift operations center. "It's a very rudimentary operation," says the source. "I would compare it to [CIA] outposts in Kurdistan or any of the Special Forces outposts. It's very bare bones, and that's the point."

Blackwater's work for JSOC in Karachi is coordinated out of a Task Force based at Bagram Air Base in neighboring Afghanistan, according to the military intelligence source. While JSOC technically runs the operations in Karachi, he said, it is largely staffed by former US special operations soldiers working for a division of Blackwater, once known as Blackwater SELECT, and intelligence analysts working for a Blackwater affiliate, Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS), which is owned by Erik Prince. The military source said that the name Blackwater SELECT may have been changed recently. Total Intelligence, which is run out of an office on the ninth floor of a building in the Ballston area of Arlington, Virginia, is staffed by former analysts and operatives from the CIA, DIA, FBI and other agencies. It is modeled after the CIA's counterterrorism center. In Karachi, TIS runs a "media-scouring/open-source network," according to the source. Until recently, Total Intelligence was run by two former top CIA officials, Cofer Black and Robert Richer, both of whom have left the company. In Pakistan, Blackwater is not using either its original name or its new moniker, Xe Services, according to the former Blackwater executive. "They are running most of their work through TIS because the other two [names] have such a stain on them," he said. Corallo, the Blackwater spokesperson, denied that TIS or any other division or affiliate of Blackwater has any personnel in Pakistan.

The US military intelligence source said that Blackwater's classified contracts keep getting renewed at the request of JSOC. Blackwater, he said, is already so deeply entrenched that it has become a staple of the US military operations in Pakistan. According to the former Blackwater executive, "The politics that go with the brand of BW is somewhat set aside because what you're doing is really one military guy to another." Blackwater's first known contract with the CIA for operations in Afghanistan was awarded in 2002 and was for work along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

One of the concerns raised by the military intelligence source is that some Blackwater personnel are being given rolling security clearances above their approved clearances. Using Alternative Compartmentalized Control Measures (ACCMs), he said, the Blackwater personnel are granted clearance to a Special Access Program, the bureaucratic term used to describe highly classified "black" operations. "With an ACCM, the security manager can grant access to you to be exposed to and operate within compartmentalized programs far above 'secret'--even though you have no business doing so," said the source. It allows Blackwater personnel that "do not have the requisite security clearance or do not hold a security clearance whatsoever to participate in classified operations by virtue of trust," he added. "Think of it as an ultra-exclusive level above top secret. That's exactly what it is: a circle of love." Blackwater, therefore, has access to "all source" reports that are culled in part from JSOC units in the field. "That's how a lot of things over the years have been conducted with contractors," said the source. "We have contractors that regularly see things that top policy-makers don't unless they ask."

According to the source, Blackwater has effectively marketed itself as a company whose operatives have "conducted lethal direct action missions and now, for a price, you can have your own planning cell. JSOC just ate that up," he said, adding, "They have a sizable force in Pakistan--not for any nefarious purpose if you really want to look at it that way--but to support a legitimate contract that's classified for JSOC." Blackwater's Pakistan JSOC contracts are secret and are therefore shielded from public oversight, he said. The source is not sure when the arrangement with JSOC began, but he says that a spin-off of Blackwater SELECT "was issued a no-bid contract for support to shooters for a JSOC Task Force and they kept extending it." Some of the Blackwater personnel, he said, work undercover as aid workers. "Nobody even gives them a second thought."

The military intelligence source said that the Blackwater/JSOC Karachi operation is referred to as "Qatar cubed," in reference to the US forward operating base in Qatar that served as the hub for the planning and implementation of the US invasion of Iraq. "This is supposed to be the brave new world," he says. "This is the Jamestown of the new millennium and it's meant to be a lily pad. You can jump off to Uzbekistan, you can jump back over the border, you can jump sideways, you can jump northwest. It's strategically located so that they can get their people wherever they have to without having to wrangle with the military chain of command in Afghanistan, which is convoluted. They don't have to deal with that because they're operating under a classified mandate."

In addition to planning drone strikes and operations against suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan for both JSOC and the CIA, the Blackwater team in Karachi also helps plan missions for JSOC inside Uzbekistan against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, according to the military intelligence source. Blackwater does not actually carry out the operations, he said, which are executed on the ground by JSOC forces. "That piqued my curiosity and really worries me because I don't know if you noticed but I was never told we are at war with Uzbekistan," he said. "So, did I miss something, did Rumsfeld come back into power?"

Pakistan's Military Contracting Maze

Blackwater, according to the military intelligence source, is not doing the actual killing as part of its work in Pakistan. "The SELECT personnel are not going into places with private aircraft and going after targets," he said. "It's not like Blackwater SELECT people are running around assassinating people." Instead, US Special Forces teams carry out the plans developed in part by Blackwater. The military intelligence source drew a distinction between the Blackwater operatives who work for the State Department, which he calls "Blackwater Vanilla," and the seasoned Special Forces veterans who work on the JSOC program. "Good or bad, there's a small number of people who know how to pull off an operation like that. That's probably a good thing," said the source. "It's the Blackwater SELECT people that have and continue to plan these types of operations because they're the only people that know how and they went where the money was. It's not trigger-happy fucks, like some of the PSD [Personal Security Detail] guys. These are not people that believe that Barack Obama is a socialist, these are not people that kill innocent civilians. They're very good at what they do."

The former Blackwater executive, when asked for confirmation that Blackwater forces were not actively killing people in Pakistan, said, "that's not entirely accurate." While he concurred with the military intelligence source's description of the JSOC and CIA programs, he pointed to another role Blackwater is allegedly playing in Pakistan, not for the US government but for Islamabad. According to the executive, Blackwater works on a subcontract for Kestral Logistics, a powerful Pakistani firm, which specializes in military logistical support, private security and intelligence consulting. It is staffed with former high-ranking Pakistani army and government officials. While Kestral's main offices are in Pakistan, it also has branches in several other countries.

A spokesperson for the US State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC), which is responsible for issuing licenses to US corporations to provide defense-related services to foreign governments or entities, would neither confirm nor deny for The Nationthat Blackwater has a license to work in Pakistan or to work with Kestral. "We cannot help you," said department spokesperson David McKeeby after checking with the relevant DDTC officials. "You'll have to contact the companies directly." Blackwater's Corallo said the company has "no operations of any kind" in Pakistan other than the one employee working for the DoD. Kestral did not respond to inquiries from The Nation.

According to federal lobbying records, Kestral recently hired former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega, who served in that post from 2003 to 2005, to lobby the US government, including the State Department, USAID and Congress, on foreign affairs issues "regarding [Kestral's] capabilities to carry out activities of interest to the United States." Noriega was hired through his firm, Vision Americas, which he runs with Christina Rocca, a former CIA operations official who served as assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs from 2001 to 2006 and was deeply involved in shaping US policy toward Pakistan. In October 2009, Kestral paid Vision Americas $15,000 and paid a Vision Americas-affiliated firm, Firecreek Ltd., an equal amount to lobby on defense and foreign policy issues.

For years, Kestral has done a robust business in defense logistics with the Pakistani government and other nations, as well as top US defense companies. Blackwater owner Erik Prince is close with Kestral CEO Liaquat Ali Baig, according to the former Blackwater executive. "Ali and Erik have a pretty close relationship," he said. "They've met many times and struck a deal, and they [offer] mutual support for one another." Working with Kestral, he said, Blackwater has provided convoy security for Defense Department shipments destined for Afghanistan that would arrive in the port at Karachi. Blackwater, according to the former executive, would guard the supplies as they were transported overland from Karachi to Peshawar and then west through the Torkham border crossing, the most important supply route for the US military in Afghanistan.

According to the former executive, Blackwater operatives also integrate with Kestral's forces in sensitive counterterrorism operations in the North-West Frontier Province, where they work in conjunction with the Pakistani Interior Ministry's paramilitary force, known as the Frontier Corps (alternately referred to as "frontier scouts"). The Blackwater personnel are technically advisers, but the former executive said that the line often gets blurred in the field. Blackwater "is providing the actual guidance on how to do [counterterrorism operations] and Kestral's folks are carrying a lot of them out, but they're having the guidance and the overwatch from some BW guys that will actually go out with the teams when they're executing the job," he said. "You can see how that can lead to other things in the border areas." He said that when Blackwater personnel are out with the Pakistani teams, sometimes its men engage in operations against suspected terrorists. "You've got BW guys that are assisting... and they're all going to want to go on the jobs--so they're going to go with them," he said. "So, the things that you're seeing in the news about how this Pakistani military group came in and raided this house or did this or did that--in some of those cases, you're going to have Western folks that are right there at the house, if not in the house." Blackwater, he said, is paid by the Pakistani government through Kestral for consulting services. "That gives the Pakistani government the cover to say, 'Hey, no, we don't have any Westerners doing this. It's all local and our people are doing it.' But it gets them the expertise that Westerners provide for [counterterrorism]-related work."

The military intelligence source confirmed Blackwater works with the Frontier Corps, saying, "There's no real oversight. It's not really on people's radar screen."

In October, in response to Pakistani news reports that a Kestral warehouse in Islamabad was being used to store heavy weapons for Blackwater, the US Embassy in Pakistan released a statement denying the weapons were being used by "a private American security contractor." The statement said, "Kestral Logistics is a private logistics company that handles the importation of equipment and supplies provided by the United States to the Government of Pakistan. All of the equipment and supplies were imported at the request of the Government of Pakistan, which also certified the shipments."

Who is Behind the Drone Attacks?

Since President Barack Obama was inaugurated, the United States has expanded drone bombing raids in Pakistan. Obama first ordered a drone strike against targets in North and South Waziristan on January 23, and the strikes have been conducted consistently ever since. The Obama administration has now surpassed the number of Bush-era strikes in Pakistan and has faced fierce criticism from Pakistan and some US lawmakers over civilian deaths. A drone attack in June killed as many as sixty people attending a Taliban funeral.

In August, the New York Times reported that Blackwater works for the CIA at "hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the company's contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft." In February, The Times of London obtained a satellite image of a secret CIA airbase in Shamsi, in Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan, showing three drone aircraft. The New York Times also reported that the agency uses a secret base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to strike in Pakistan.

The military intelligence source says that the drone strike that reportedly killed Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, his wife and his bodyguards in Waziristan in August was a CIA strike, but that many others attributed in media reports to the CIA are actually JSOC strikes. "Some of these strikes are attributed to OGA [Other Government Agency, intelligence parlance for the CIA], but in reality it's JSOC and their parallel program of UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] because they also have access to UAVs. So when you see some of these hits, especially the ones with high civilian casualties, those are almost always JSOC strikes." The Pentagon has stated bluntly, "There are no US military strike operations being conducted in Pakistan."

The military intelligence source also confirmed that Blackwater continues to work for the CIA on its drone bombing program in Pakistan, as previously reported in the New York Times, but added that Blackwater is working on JSOC's drone bombings as well. "It's Blackwater running the program for both CIA and JSOC," said the source. When civilians are killed, "people go, 'Oh, it's the CIA doing crazy shit again unchecked.' Well, at least 50 percent of the time, that's JSOC [hitting] somebody they've identified through HUMINT [human intelligence] or they've culled the intelligence themselves or it's been shared with them and they take that person out and that's how it works."

The military intelligence source says that the CIA operations are subject to Congressional oversight, unlike the parallel JSOC bombings. "Targeted killings are not the most popular thing in town right now and the CIA knows that," he says. "Contractors and especially JSOC personnel working under a classified mandate are not [overseen by Congress], so they just don't care. If there's one person they're going after and there's thirty-four people in the building, thirty-five people are going to die. That's the mentality." He added, "They're not accountable to anybody and they know that. It's an open secret, but what are you going to do, shut down JSOC?"

In addition to working on covert action planning and drone strikes, Blackwater SELECT also provides private guards to perform the sensitive task of security for secret US drone bases, JSOC camps and Defense Intelligence Agency camps inside Pakistan, according to the military intelligence source.

Mosharraf Zaidi, a well-known Pakistani journalist who has served as a consultant for the UN and European Union in Pakistan and Afghanistan, says that the Blackwater/JSOC program raises serious questions about the norms of international relations. "The immediate question is, How do you define the active pursuit of military objectives in a country with which not only have you not declared war but that is supposedly a front-line non-NATO ally in the US struggle to contain extremist violence coming out of Afghanistan and the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan?" asks Zaidi, who is currently a columnist for The News, the biggest English-language daily in Pakistan. "Let's forget Blackwater for a second. What this is confirming is that there are US military operations in Pakistan that aren't about logistics or getting food to Bagram; that are actually about the exercise of physical violence, physical force inside of Pakistani territory."

JSOC: Rumsfeld and Cheney's Extra Special Force

Colonel Wilkerson said that he is concerned that with General McChrystal's elevation as the military commander of the Afghan war--which is increasingly seeping into Pakistan--there is a concomitant rise in JSOC's power and influence within the military structure. "I don't see how you can escape that; it's just a matter of the way the authority flows and the power flows, and it's inevitable, I think," Wilkerson toldThe Nation. He added, "I'm alarmed when I see execute orders and combat orders that go out saying that the supporting force is Central Command and the supported force is Special Operations Command," under which JSOC operates. "That's backward. But that's essentially what we have today."

From 2003 to 2008 McChrystal headed JSOC, which is headquartered at Pope Air Force Base and Fort Bragg in North Carolina, where Blackwater's 7,000-acre operating base is also situated. JSOC controls the Army's Delta Force, the Navy's SEAL Team 6, as well as the Army's 75th Ranger Regiment and 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, and the Air Force's 24th Special Tactics Squadron. JSOC performs strike operations, reconnaissance in denied areas and special intelligence missions. Blackwater, which was founded by former Navy SEALs, employs scores of veteran Special Forces operators--which several former military officials pointed to as the basis for Blackwater's alleged contracts with JSOC.

Since 9/11, many top-level Special Forces veterans have taken up employment with private firms, where they can make more money doing the highly specialized work they did in uniform. "The Blackwater individuals have the experience. A lot of these individuals are retired military, and they've been around twenty to thirty years and have experience that the younger Green Beret guys don't," said retired Army Lieut. Col. Jeffrey Addicott, a well-connected military lawyer who served as senior legal counsel for US Army Special Forces. "They're known entities. Everybody knows who they are, what their capabilities are, and they've got the experience. They're very valuable."

"They make much more money being the smarts of these operations, planning hits in various countries and basing it off their experience in Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia, Ethiopia," said the military intelligence source. "They were there for all of these things, they know what the hell they're talking about. And JSOC has unfortunately lost the institutional capability to plan within, so they hire back people that used to work for them and had already planned and executed these [types of] operations. They hired back people that jumped over to Blackwater SELECT and then pay them exorbitant amounts of money to plan future operations. It's a ridiculous revolving door."

While JSOC has long played a central role in US counterterrorism and covert operations, military and civilian officials who worked at the Defense and State Departments during the Bush administration described in interviews with The Nation an extremely cozy relationship that developed between the executive branch (primarily through Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) and JSOC. During the Bush era, Special Forces turned into a virtual stand-alone operation that acted outside the military chain of command and in direct coordination with the White House. Throughout the Bush years, it was largely General McChrystal who ran JSOC. "What I was seeing was the development of what I would later see in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Special Operations forces would operate in both theaters without the conventional commander even knowing what they were doing," said Colonel Wilkerson. "That's dangerous, that's very dangerous. You have all kinds of mess when you don't tell the theater commander what you're doing."

Wilkerson said that almost immediately after assuming his role at the State Department under Colin Powell, he saw JSOC being politicized and developing a close relationship with the executive branch. He saw this begin, he said, after his first Delta Force briefing at Fort Bragg. "I think Cheney and Rumsfeld went directly into JSOC. I think they went into JSOC at times, perhaps most frequently, without the SOCOM [Special Operations] commander at the time even knowing it. The receptivity in JSOC was quite good," says Wilkerson. "I think Cheney was actually giving McChrystal instructions, and McChrystal was asking him for instructions." He said the relationship between JSOC and Cheney and Rumsfeld "built up initially because Rumsfeld didn't get the responsiveness. He didn't get the can-do kind of attitude out of the SOCOM commander, and so as Rumsfeld was wont to do, he cut him out and went straight to the horse's mouth. At that point you had JSOC operating as an extension of the [administration] doing things the executive branch--read: Cheney and Rumsfeld--wanted it to do. This would be more or less carte blanche. You need to do it, do it. It was very alarming for me as a conventional soldier."

Wilkerson said the JSOC teams caused diplomatic problems for the United States across the globe. "When these teams started hitting capital cities and other places all around the world, [Rumsfeld] didn't tell the State Department either. The only way we found out about it is our ambassadors started to call us and say, 'Who the hell are these six-foot-four white males with eighteen-inch biceps walking around our capital cities?' So we discovered this, we discovered one in South America, for example, because he actually murdered a taxi driver, and we had to get him out of there real quick. We rendered him--we rendered him home."

As part of their strategy, Rumsfeld and Cheney also created the Strategic Support Branch (SSB), which pulled intelligence resources from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA for use in sensitive JSOC operations. The SSB was created using "reprogrammed" funds "without explicit congressional authority or appropriation," according to the Washington Post. The SSB operated outside the military chain of command and circumvented the CIA's authority on clandestine operations. Rumsfeld created it as part of his war to end "near total dependence on CIA." Under US law, the Defense Department is required to report all deployment orders to Congress. But guidelines issued in January 2005 by former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone stated that Special Operations forces may "conduct clandestine HUMINT operations...before publication" of a deployment order. This effectively gave Rumsfeld unilateral control over clandestine operations.

The military intelligence source said that when Rumsfeld was defense secretary, JSOC was deployed to commit some of the "darkest acts" in part to keep them concealed from Congress. "Everything can be justified as a military operation versus a clandestine intelligence performed by the CIA, which has to be informed to Congress," said the source. "They were aware of that and they knew that, and they would exploit it at every turn and they took full advantage of it. They knew they could act extra-legally and nothing would happen because A, it was sanctioned by DoD at the highest levels, and B, who was going to stop them? They were preparing the battlefield, which was on all of the PowerPoints: 'Preparing the Battlefield.'"

The significance of the flexibility of JSOC's operations inside Pakistan versus the CIA's is best summed up by Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "Every single intelligence operation and covert action must be briefed to the Congress," she said. "If they are not, that is a violation of the law."

Blackwater: Company Non Grata in Pakistan

For months, the Pakistani media has been flooded with stories about Blackwater's alleged growing presence in the country. For the most part, these stories have been ignored by the US press and denounced as lies or propaganda by US officials in Pakistan. But the reality is that, although many of the stories appear to be wildly exaggerated, Pakistanis have good reason to be concerned about Blackwater's operations in their country. It is no secret in Washington or Islamabad that Blackwater has been a central part of the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan and that the company has been involved--almost from the beginning of the "war on terror"--with clandestine US operations. Indeed, Blackwater is accepting applications for contractors fluent in Urdu and Punjabi. The US Ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, has denied Blackwater's presence in the country, stating bluntly in September, "Blackwater is not operating in Pakistan." In her trip to Pakistan in October, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dodged questions from the Pakistani press about Blackwater's rumored Pakistani operations. Pakistan's interior minister, Rehman Malik, said on November 21 he will resign if Blackwater is found operating anywhere in Pakistan.

The Christian Science Monitor recently reported that Blackwater "provides security for a US-backed aid project" in Peshawar, suggesting the company may be based out of the Pearl Continental, a luxury hotel the United States reportedly is considering purchasing to use as a consulate in the city. "We have no contracts in Pakistan," Blackwater spokesperson Stacey DeLuke said recently. "We've been blamed for all that has gone wrong in Peshawar, none of which is true, since we have absolutely no presence there."

Reports of Blackwater's alleged presence in Karachi and elsewhere in the country have been floating around the Pakistani press for months. Hamid Mir, a prominent Pakistani journalist who rose to fame after his 1997 interview with Osama bin Laden, claimed in a recent interview that Blackwater is in Karachi. "The US [intelligence] agencies think that a number of Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders are hiding in Karachi and Peshawar," he said. "That is why [Blackwater] agents are operating in these two cities." Ambassador Patterson has said that the claims of Mir and other Pakistani journalists are "wildly incorrect," saying they had compromised the security of US personnel in Pakistan. On November 20 the Washington Times, citing three current and former US intelligence officials, reported that Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban, has "found refuge from potential U.S. attacks" in Karachi "with the assistance of Pakistan's intelligence service."

In September, the Pakistani press covered a report on Blackwater allegedly submitted by Pakistan's intelligence agencies to the federal interior ministry. In the report, the intelligence agencies reportedly allege that Blackwater was provided houses by a federal minister who is also helping them clear shipments of weapons and vehicles through Karachi's Port Qasim on the coast of the Arabian Sea. The military intelligence source did not confirm this but did say, "The port jives because they have a lot of [former] SEALs and they would revert to what they know: the ocean, instead of flying stuff in."

The Nation cannot independently confirm these allegations and has not seen the Pakistani intelligence report. But according to Pakistani press coverage, the intelligence report also said Blackwater has acquired "bungalows" in the Defense Housing Authority in the city. According to the DHA website, it is a large residential estate originally established "for the welfare of the serving and retired officers of the Armed Forces of Pakistan." Its motto is: "Home for Defenders." The report alleges Blackwater is receiving help from local government officials in Karachi and is using vehicles with license plates traditionally assigned to members of the national and provincial assemblies, meaning local law enforcement will not stop them.

The use of private companies like Blackwater for sensitive operations such as drone strikes or other covert work undoubtedly comes with the benefit of plausible deniability that places an additional barrier in an already deeply flawed system of accountability. When things go wrong, it's the contractors' fault, not the government's. But the widespread use of contractors also raises serious legal questions, particularly when they are a part of lethal, covert actions. "We are using contractors for things that in the past might have been considered to be a violation of the Geneva Convention," said Lt. Col. Addicott, who now runs the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas. "In my opinion, we have pressed the envelope to the breaking limit, and it's almost a fiction that these guys are not in offensive military operations." Addicott added, "If we were subjected to the International Criminal Court, some of these guys could easily be picked up, charged with war crimes and put on trial. That's one of the reasons we're not members of the International Criminal Court."

If there is one quality that has defined Blackwater over the past decade, it is the ability to survive against the odds while simultaneously reinventing and rebranding itself. That is most evident in Afghanistan, where the company continues to work for the US military, the CIA and the State Department despite intense criticism and almost weekly scandals. Blackwater's alleged Pakistan operations, said the military intelligence source, are indicative of its new frontier. "Having learned its lessons after the private security contracting fiasco in Iraq, Blackwater has shifted its operational focus to two venues: protecting things that are in danger and anticipating other places we're going to go as a nation that are dangerous," he said. "It's as simple as that."

About Jeremy Scahill

Jeremy Scahill, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, published by Nation Books. He is an award-winning investigative journalist and correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!. more...

• Copyright © 2009 The Nation

Mort Zukerman Defends Massacre in Gaza: Letter to the NY Daily News

New York Daily News:

December 17, 2009

Letter to the Editor:

To the Editor

Thank you for your editorial “Sneak Attack on Israel” (12.16.09) ; You object to the recent British threat to arrest former Israel Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni for human rights violations. You write that Israel merely used “necessary force to disarm Hamas terrorists.” But the highly regarded Goldstone report found that Israel used “disproportionate force to punish, humiliate and terrorize“ the civilian population as they killed more than 1400 Palestinians and wounded perhaps thousands in their Dec-Jan 2009 attack -–more properly termed a massacre -- on the helpless people of Gaza.

The Goldstone report also accused Israel of successfully targeting a wide range of Gaza’s infrastructure, including mosques, schools and universities, bakeries, chicken farms, factories, and many hundreds of homes, forcing thousands of people into the street.

I gather you also support the Obama administration’s apparent disinterest in pressing Israel to allow Gazans to import concrete and other materials to rebuild their destroyed territory.

Sincerely,

Ronald Bleier

Webster Tarpley: Obama Declares War on Pakistan (after Bush declared war on Afganistan which Obama continues

Note: I'm sort of half a fan of Webster Tarpley. He comes up with more than his fair share of howlers. But this article is far and away the best I've read or heard about  what the US is doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I've believed for some time that it was the Bush-Cheney plan to destabilize Pakistan and do something crazy about its nukes, but this article gives valuable details. --Ronald Bleier

Obama Declares War On Pakistan

Webster G. Tarpley
Infowars.com
December 14, 2009

http://www.infowars.com/obama-declares-war-on-pakistan/

Obama declared all-out war on Pakistan during his December 1, 2009,
West Point speech.

Obama's West Point speech of December 1 represents far more than the obvious
brutal escalation in Afghanistan - it is nothing less than a declaration of
all-out war by the United States against Pakistan. This is a brand-new war,
a much wider war now targeting Pakistan, a country of 160 million people
armed with nuclear weapons. In the process, Afghanistan is scheduled to be
broken up. This is no longer the Bush Cheney Afghan war we have known in the
past. This is something immensely bigger: the attempt to destroy the
Pakistani central government in Islamabad and to sink that country into a
chaos of civil war, Balkanization, subdivision and general mayhem. The
chosen strategy is to massively export the Afghan civil war into Pakistan
and beyond, fracturing Pakistan along ethnic lines. It is an oblique war
using fourth-generation or guerrilla warfare techniques to assail a country
which the United States and its associates in aggression are far too weak to
attack directly. In this war, the Taliban are employed as US proxies. This
aggression against Pakistan is Obama's attempt to wage the Great Game
against the hub of Central Asia and Eurasia or more generally.

US DETERRED FROM OPEN WAR BY PAKISTAN'S NUKES

The ongoing civil war in Afghanistan is merely a pretext, a cover story
designed to provide the United States with a springboard for a geopolitical
destabilization campaign in the entire region which cannot be publicly
avowed. In the blunt cynical world of imperialist aggression à la Bush and
Cheney, a pretext might have been manufactured to attack Pakistan directly.
But Pakistan is far too large and the United States is far too weak and too
bankrupt for such an undertaking. In addition, Pakistan is a nuclear power,
possessing atomic bombs and medium range missiles needed to deliver them.
What we are seeing is a novel case of nuclear deterrence in action. The US
cannot send an invasion fleet or set up airbases nearby because Pakistani
nuclear weapons might destroy them. To this extent, the efforts of Ali
Bhutto and A.Q. Khan to provide Pakistan a deterrent capability have been
vindicated. But the US answer is to find ways to attack Pakistan below the
nuclear threshold, and even below the conventional threshold. This is where
the tactic of exporting the Afghan civil war to Pakistan comes in.

The architect of the new Pakistani civil war is US Special Forces General
Stanley McChrystal, who organized the infamous network of US torture
chambers in Iraq. McChrystal's specific credential for the Pakistani civil
war is his role in unleashing the Iraqi civil war of Sunnis versus Shiites
by creating "al Qaeda in Iraq" under the infamous and now departed double
agent Zarkawi. If Iraqi society as a whole had lined up against the US
invaders, the occupiers would have soon been driven out. The counter-gang
known as "Al Qaeda in Iraq" avoided that possibility by killing Shiites, and
thus calling forth massive retaliation in the form of a civil war. These
tactics are drawn from the work of British General Frank Kitson, who wrote
about them in his book Low Intensity Warfare. If the United States possesses
a modern analog to Heinrich Himmler of the SS, it is surely General
McChrystal, Obama's hand-picked choice. McChrystal's superior, Gen Petraeus,
wants to be the new Field Marshal von Hindenburg - in other words, he wants
to be the next US president.

The vulnerability of Pakistan which the US and its NATO associates are
seeking to exploit can best be understood using a map of the prevalent
ethnic groups of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and India. Most maps show only
political borders which date back to the time of British imperialism, and
therefore fail to reflect the principal ethnic groups of the region. For the
purposes of this analysis, we must start by recognizing a number of groups.
First is the Pashtun people, located mainly in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Then we have the Baluchis, located primarily in Pakistan and Iran. The
Punjabis inhabit Pakistan, as do the Sindhis. The Bhutto family came from
Sind.

PASHTUNISTAN

The US and NATO strategy begins with the Pashtuns, the ethnic group from
which the so-called Taliban are largely drawn. The Pashtuns represent a
substantial portion of the population of Afghanistan, but here they are
alienated from the central government under President Karzai in Kabul, even
though the US puppet Karzai passes for a Pashtun himself. The issue involves
the Afghan National Army, which was created by the United States after the
2001 invasion. The Afghan officer corps are largely Tajiks drawn from the
Northern Alliance that allied with the United States against the Pashtun
Talibans. The Tajiks speak Dari, sometimes known as eastern Persian. Other
Afghan officers come from the Hazara people. The important thing is that the
Pashtuns feel shut out.

The US strategy can best be understood as a deliberate effort at
persecuting, harassing, antagonizing, strafing, repressing, and murdering
the Pashtuns. The additional 40,000 US and NATO forces which Obama demands
for Afghanistan will concentrate in Helmand province and other areas where
the Pashtuns are in the majority. The net effect will be to increase the
rebellion of the fiercely independent Pashtuns against Kabul and the foreign
occupation, and at the same time to push many of these newly radicalized
mujaheddin fighters across the border into Pakistan, where they can wage war
against the central government in Islamabad. US aid will flow directly to
war lords and drug lords, increasing the centrifugal tendencies.

On the Pakistani side, the Pashtuns are also alienated from the central
government. Islamabad and the army are seen by them as too much the
creatures of the Punjabis, with some input from the Sindhis. On the
Pakistani side of the Pashtun territory, US operations include wholesale
assassinations from unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, murders by CIA and
reportedly Blackwater snipers, plus blind terrorist massacres like the
recent ones in Peshawar which the Pakistani Taliban are blaming on
Blackwater, acting as a subcontractor of the CIA. These actions are
intolerable and humiliating for a proud sovereign state. Every time the
Pashtuns are clobbered, they blame the Punjabis in Islamabad for the dirty
deals with the US that allow this to happen. The most immediate goal of
Obama's Afghan-Pakistan escalation is therefore to promote a general
secessionist uprising of the entire Pashtun people under Taliban auspices,
which would already have the effect of destroying the national unity of both
Kabul and Islamabad.

BALUCHISTAN

The other ethnic group which the Obama strategy seeks to goad into
insurrection and secession is the Baluchis. The Baluchis have their own
grievances against the Iranian central government in Tehran, which they see
as being dominated by Persians. An integral part of the new Obama policy is
to expand the deadly flights of the CIA Predators and other assassination
drones into Baluchistan. One pretext for this is the report, peddled for
example by Michael Ware of CNN, that Osama bin Laden and his MI-6 sidekick
Zawahiri are both holed up in the Baluchi city of Quetta, where they operate
as the kingpins of the so-called "Quetta Shura." Blackwater teams cannot be
far behind. In Iranian Baluchistan, the CIA is funding the murderous
Jundullah organization, which was recently denounced by Teheran for the
murder of a number of top officials of the Iranian Pasdaran Revolutionary
guards. The rebellion of Baluchistan would smash the national unity of both
Pakistan and Iran, thus helping to destroy two of the leading targets of US
policy.

OBAMA'S RUBE GOLDBERG STRATEGY

Even Chris Matthews of MSNBC, normally a devoted acolyte of Obama, pointed
out that the US strategy as announced at West Point very much resembles a
Rube Goldberg contraption. (In the real world, "al Qaeda" is of course the
CIA's own Arab and terrorist legion.) In the world of official US myth, the
enemy is supposed to be "Al Qaeda." But, even according to the US
government, there are precious few "Al Qaeda" fighters left in Afghanistan.
Why then, asked Matthews, concentrate US forces in Afghanistan where "Al
Qaeda" is not, rather than in Pakistan where "Al Qaeda" is now alleged to
be?

One elected official who has criticized this incongruous mismatch is
Democratic Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who said in a television
interview that 'Pakistan, in the border region near Afghanistan, is perhaps
the epicenter [of global terrorism], although al Qaida is operating all over
the world, in Yemen, in Somalia, in northern Africa, affiliates in Southeast
Asia. Why would we build up 100,000 or more troops in parts of Afghanistan
included that are not even near the border? You know, this buildup is in
Helmand Province. That's not next door to Waziristan. So I'm wondering, what
exactly is this strategy, given the fact that we have seen that there is a
minimal presence of Al Qaida in Afghanistan, but a significant presence in
Pakistan? It just defies common sense that a huge boots on the ground
presence in a place where these people are not is the right strategy. It
doesn't make any sense to me.' Indeed. 'The Wisconsin Democrat also warned
that U.S. policy in Afghanistan could actually push terrorists and
extremists into Pakistan and, as a consequence, further destabilize the
region: "You know, I asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Admiral Mullen, and Mr. Holbrooke, our envoy over there, a while ago, you
know, is there a risk that if we build up troops in Afghanistan, that will
push more extremists into Pakistan?" he told ABC. "They couldn't deny it,
and this week, Prime Minister Gilani of Pakistan specifically said that his
concern about the buildup is that it will drive more extremists into
Pakistan, so I think it's just the opposite, that this boots-on-the-ground
approach alienates the Afghan population and specifically encourages the
Taliban to further coalesce with Al Qaida, which is the complete opposite of
our national security interest."'1 Of course, this is all intentional and
motivated by US imperialist raison d'état. .

MALICK: "DID OBAMA DECLARE WAR ON PAKISTAN?"

Obama's speech did everything possible to blur the distinction between
Afghanistan and Pakistan, which are after all two sovereign states and both
members of the United Nations in their own right. Ibrahim Sajid Malick, US
correspondent for Samaa TV, one of the largest Pakistan television networks,
called attention to this ploy: 'Speaking to a hall full of cadets at the US
Military Academy of West Point, President Barack Obama almost seemed like he
might be declaring war on Pakistan. Every time he mentioned Afghanistan,
Pakistan preceded mention.. Sitting at the back benches of the hall at one
point I almost jumped out of my chair when he said: "the stakes are even
higher within a nuclear-armed Pakistan, because we know that al Qaeda and
other extremists seek nuclear weapons, and we have every reason to believe
that they would use them." I was shocked because a succession of American
officials recently confirmed that the Pakistani arsenal is secure.'2 This
article is entitled "Did Obama Declare War On Pakistan?", and we can chalk
the question mark up to diplomatic discretion. During congressional hearings
involving General McChrystal and US Ambassador Eikenberry, Afghanistan and
Pakistan were simply fused into one sinister entity known as "Afpak" or even
"Afpakia."

a.. A d v e r t i s e m e n t
b..
In the summer of 2007, Obama, coached by Zbigniew Brzezinski and other
controllers, was the originator of the unilateral US policy of using
Predator drones for political assassinations inside Pakistan. This
assassination policy is now being massively escalated along with the troop
strength: "Two weeks ago in Pakistan, Central Intelligence Agency
sharpshooters killed eight people suspected of being militants of the
Taliban and Al Qaeda, and wounded two others in a compound that was said to
be used for terrorist training.. The White House has authorized an expansion
of the C.I.A.'s drone program in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, officials
said this week, to parallel the president's decision.to send 30,000 more
troops to Afghanistan. American officials are talking with Pakistan about
the possibility of striking in Baluchistan for the first time - a
controversial move since it is outside the tribal areas - because that is
where Afghan Taliban leaders are believed to hide."3 The US is now training
more Predator operators than combat pilots.

BLACKWATER ACCUSED IN PESHAWAR MASSACRE OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN

The CIA, the Pentagon, and their various contractors among the private
military firms are now on a murder spree across Pakistan, attacking peaceful
villages and wedding parties, among other targets. Blackwater, now calling
itself Xe Services and Total Intelligence Solutions, is heavily involved:
'At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations
Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite
division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they
plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives,
"snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside
and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The
Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct
a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the
well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source
within the US military intelligence apparatus.' 4

As shocking as Scahill's report is, it must nevertheless be viewed as a
limited hangout, since there is no mention of the persistent charges that a
large part of the deadly bombings in Peshawar and other Pakistani cities are
being carried out by Blackwater, as this news item suggests: "ISLAMABAD Oct.
29 (Xinhua) - Chief of Taliban movement in Pakistan Hakimullah Mehsud has
blamed the controversial American private firm Blackwater for the bomb blast
in Peshawar which killed 108 people, local news agency NNI reported
Thursday."5 This was blind terrorism designed for maximum slaughter,
especially among women and children.

US ALSO AT WAR WITH UZBEKISTAN?

Scahill's report also suggests that US black ops have reached into
Uzbekistan, a post-Soviet country of 25 million which borders Afghanistan to
the north: 'In addition to planning drone strikes and operations against
suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan for both JSOC and the CIA,
the Blackwater team in Karachi also helps plan missions for JSOC inside
Uzbekistan against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, according to the
military intelligence source. Blackwater does not actually carry out the
operations, he said, which are executed on the ground by JSOC forces. "That
piqued my curiosity and really worries me because I don't know if you
noticed but I was never told we are at war with Uzbekistan," he said. "So,
did I miss something, did Rumsfeld come back into power?"' 6 Such are the
ways of hope and change.

The role of US intelligence in fomenting the Baluchistan rebellion for the
purpose of breaking Pakistan apart is also confirmed by Professor
Chossudovsky: 'Already in 2005, a report by the US National Intelligence
Council and the CIA forecast a "Yugoslav-like fate" for Pakistan "in a
decade with the country riven by civil war, bloodshed and inter-provincial
rivalries, as seen recently in Baluchistan." (Energy Compass, 2 March 2005).
According to the NIC-CIA, Pakistan is slated to become a "failed state" by
2015, "as it would be affected by civil war, complete Talibanization and
struggle for control of its nuclear weapons". (Quoted by former Pakistan
High Commissioner to UK, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Times of India, 13 February
2005).. Washington favors the creation of a "Greater Baluchistan" which
would integrate the Baluch areas of Pakistan with those of Iran and possibly
the Southern tip of Afghanistan, thereby leading to a process of political
fracturing in both Iran and Pakistan.'7 The Iranians, for their part, are
adamant that the US is committing acts of war on their territory in
Baluchistan: "TEHRAN, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) - Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali
Larijani said .that there are some concrete evidences showing U.S.
involvement in recent deadly bomb explosions in the country's
Sistan-Baluchistan province, the official IRNA news agency reported. .. The
deadly suicide attack by Sunni rebel group Jundallah (God's soldiers)
occurred on Oct. 18 in Iran's Sistan-Baluchistan province near the border
with Pakistan when the local officials were preparing a ceremony in which
the local tribal leaders were to meet the military commanders of Iran's
Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).8

US GOAL: CUT THE PAKISTAN ENERGY CORRIDOR BETWEEN IRAN, CHINA

Why would the United States be so obsessed with the breakup of Pakistan? One
reason is that Pakistan is traditionally a strategic ally and economic
partner of China, a country which the US and British are determined to
oppose and contain on the world stage. Specifically, Pakistan could function
as an energy corridor linking the oil fields of Iran and possibly even Iraq
with the Chinese market by means of a pipeline that would cross the
Himalayas above Kashmir. This is the so-called "Pipelinestan" issue. This
would give China a guaranteed land-based oil supply not subject to
Anglo-American naval superiority, while also cutting out the 12,000 mile
tanker route around the southern rim of Asia. As a recent news report points
out: 'Beijing has been pressuring Tehran for China's participation in the
pipeline project and Islamabad, while willing to sign a bilateral agreement
with Iran, has also welcomed China's participation. According to an
estimate, such a pipeline would result in Pakistan getting $200 million to
$500 million annually in transit fees alone. China and Pakistan are already
working on a proposal for laying a trans-Himalayan pipeline to carry Middle
Eastern crude oil to western China. Pakistan provides China the shortest
possible route to import oil from the Gulf countries.. The pipeline, which
would run from the southern Pakistan port of Gwadar and follow the Karakoram
highway, would be partly financed by Beijing. The Chinese are also building
a refinery at Gwadar. Imports using the pipeline would allow Beijing to
reduce the portion of its oil shipped through the narrow and unsafe Strait
of Malacca, which at present carries up to 80% of its oil imports. Islamabad
also plans to extend a railway track to China to connect it to Gwadar. The
port is also considered the likely terminus of proposed multibillion-dollar
gas pipelines reaching from the South Pars fields in Iran or from Qatar, and
from the Daulatabad fields in Turkmenistan for export to world markets. Syed
Fazl-e-Haider, "Pakistan, Iran sign gas pipeline deal," Asia Times, 27 May
2009.9 This is the normal, peaceful economic progress and cooperation which
the Anglo-Americans are hell-bent on stopping.

Oil and natural gas pipelines from Iran across Pakistan and into China would
carry energy resources into the Middle Kingdom, and would also serve as
conveyor belts for Chinese economic influence into the Middle East. This
would make Anglo-American dominion increasingly tenuous in a part of the
world which London and Washington have traditionally sought to control as
part of their overall strategy of world domination.

US domestic propaganda is already portraying Pakistan as the new home base
of terrorism. The four pathetic patsies going on trial for an alleged plot
to bomb a synagogue in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx in New York
City had been carefully sheep-dipped to associate them with the shadowy and
suspicious Jaish-e-Mohammad, allegedly a Pakistani terrorist group. The same
goes for the five Moslems from Northern Virginia who have just been arrested
near Lahore in Pakistan.

INDIA AND IRAN

As far as the neighboring states are concerned, India under the unfortunate
Manmohan Singh seems to be accepting the role of continental dagger against
Pakistan and China on behalf of the US and the British. This is a recipe for
a colossal tragedy. India should rather make permanent peace with Pakistan
by vacating the Vale of Kashmir, where 95% of the population is Moslem and
would like to join Pakistan. Without a solution to this issue, there will be
no peace on the subcontinent.

Regarding Iran, George Friedman, the head of the Stratfor outlet of the US
intelligence community recently told Russia Today that the great novelty of
the next decade will be an alliance of the United States with Iran directed
against Russia. In that scenario, Iran would cut off oil to China
altogether. That is the essence of the Brzezinski strategy. It is urgent
that the antiwar movement in the United States regroup and begin a new
mobilization against the cynical hypocrisy of Obama's war and escalation
policy, which suprasses even the war crimes of the Bush-Cheny neocons. In
this new phase of the Great Game, the stakes are incalculable.

1
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/06/feingold-why-surge-where_n_381729.html

2 Ibrahim Sajid Malick, "Did Obama Declare War On Pakistan?," Pakistan for
Pakistanis Blog, 2 December 2009.
http://ibrahimsajidmalick.com/did-Obama-declare-war-on-pakistan/484/

3 Scott Shane, "C.I.A. to Expand Use of Drones in Pakistan," New York Times,
December 3, 2009. See also David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt, "Between the
Lines, an Expansion in Pakistan," New York Times, 1 December 2009.

4 Jeremy Scahill, "The Secret US War in Pakistan," The Nation, November 23,
2009

5 "Taliban in Pakistan blame U.S. Blackwater for deadly blast," Xinhua News
Agency, 29 October 2009,
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-10/29/content_12358907.htm

6 Jeremy Scahill, "The Secret US War in Pakistan," The Nation, November 23,
2009

7 Michel Chossudovsky, The Destabilization of Pakistan, Global Research,
December 30, 2007

8 "Iran says having evidences of U.S. involvement in suicide bomb attacks,"
Xinhua, 29 October 2009.

9 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KE27Df03.html