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Pakistan 
Tue Mar 09, 2010 at 19:36:33 PST
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(11 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Anybody remember this?
Monday, April 14, 2008 Obama would ask his AG to "immediately review" potential of crimes in Bush White House
Obama said that as president he would indeed ask his new Attorney General and his deputies to "immediately review the information that's already there" and determine if an inquiry is warranted -- but he also tread carefully on the issue, in line with his reputation for seeking to bridge the partisan divide. He worried that such a probe could be spun as "a partisan witch hunt." However, he said that equation changes if there was willful criminality, because "nobody is above the law."
The question was inspired by a recent report by ABC News, confirmed by the Associated Press, that high-level officials including Vice President Dick Cheney and former Cabinet secretaries Colin Powell, John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld, among others, met in the White House and discussed the use of waterboarding and other torture techniques on terrorism suspects.
Or this
Turley: Obama 'owns' Bush 'war crimes' if he looks the other way
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Raw Story
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
President George W. Bush's offhand acknowledgement in an interview Sunday with Fox's Brit Hume that he personally authorized the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed may create thorny legal and moral problems for incoming President Barack Obama.
Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Monday, "We now have President Bush speaking quite candidly that he was in the loop, we have Dick Cheney who almost bragged about it. The question for Barack Obama is whether he wants to own part of this by looking the other way."
Obama told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, "We have not made final decisions, but my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing. That doesn't mean that if somebody has blatantly broken the law, that they are above the law. But my orientation's going to be to move forward."
All most bragged about it? How about admitted it. Not only did the media "yawn", so did the Obama and the Justice Department
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Thu Mar 04, 2010 at 17:02:21 PST
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(11 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
October 29 2009
Honoring the Fallen of the worse day of the worse month of casulties from Afghanistan.
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Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 02:52:30 PST
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( - promoted by buhdydharma )
Crossposted at Daily Kos. If you choose to recommend it there, the Rec Button may have been pushed to the bottom after the last diary comment made.
THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS
This weekly diary takes a look at the past week's important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.
When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:
1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?
2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?
3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?
The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist's message.
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Chris Britt, see reader comments in the State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL)
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Tue Feb 16, 2010 at 21:03:48 PST
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Crossposted at Daily Kos
This will be, in the proper blogotoobz vernacular, a short diary.
Simply put, I DEMAND media coverage of America's wars NOW!
If these wars are NOT worth media coverage, they are not worth fighting. If the threat America faces from it's enemies is so great that it is absolutely necessary that we go to war, than it is absolutely necessary that the "free" press gives it ample coverage.
Since the Presidential Primaries back in the Spring of 2008 coverage of America's wars have almost entirely disappeared from the traditional media. With the exception of a few intrepid journalists the traditional media has given us NOTHING as far as details of what is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan except for the times when Dick Cheney emerges from his crypt, when President Obama sent more troops to Afghanistan, when an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at George Bush's idiot of a son and when Rudy "9/11,9/11,9/11" shows up to collect his royalty fee.
In short, I want DETAILS, and if you're not in the mood you better GET IN THE MOOD, Mister.
More below the fold
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Wed Feb 10, 2010 at 16:02:49 PST
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( - promoted by buhdydharma )
A British Court of Appeals has ruled against the Foreign Secretary David Milliband, that the British government can no longer refuse to disclose what MI5 knew about the torture of Binyam Mohamed while in US custody, according to an article published today in the Guardian UK.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl...
UK Foreign Secretary Milliband concured with the ruling only because of previous disclosures in a US Court, which would then preserve the "control principle" of one country doesn't turn loose intelligence without the cooperation of the other, if they share intelligence.
"The foreign secretary spoke last night to Hillary Clinton. He stressed to her that the court had strongly supported the control principle and would have agreed with HMG [her majesty's government] had it not been for the Kessler judgment in the US court last December, which had effectively disclosed the material in the seven paragraphs.
An MI5 officer known only as Witness B is being investigated by the Metropolitan police over his alleged role in questioning Mohamed incommunicado in a Pakistan jail.
Mohamed was detained in 2002 in Pakistan, where he was questioned incommunicado by an MI5 officer. The US flew him to Morocco, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay, where he says he was tortured with the knowledge of British agencies.
The 7 paragraphs that the British Government were trying to hide are below, below the fold. As noticed by commenters under another story at FDL, there are 2 dates. The date in the Guardian story says 17 May 2002 in the first paragraph. The date in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office dot gov dot uk site, has the date as 17 May 2001, with a disclaimer that "we have alerted the Court to a typographic error."
Oh, those pesky typos. What's a year, here or there ? ask Bush & Cheney.
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Sun Feb 07, 2010 at 20:30:09 PST
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Original article via Fightback:
In a Taliban dominated area of Pakistan a Marxist lawyer has defeated the candidate of the Islamic fundamentalists. In spite of a Fatwa being issued against him, comrade Ahad stood firmly on the ideas of revolutionary socialism and won the position of President of the Malakand District Bar Association.
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Fri Feb 05, 2010 at 09:49:38 PST
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April 5, 2009 Dover 'Old Guard'
Dover 'Old Guard' team shoulders heavy burden
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Wed Feb 03, 2010 at 23:41:30 PST
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(10PM EST - promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
(AP/Huffington Post) -- SHAHI KOTO, Pakistan - A roadside bomb killed three U.S. soldiers and partly destroyed a girls' school in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday in an attack that drew attention to a little-publicized American military training mission in the al-Qaida and Taliban heartland.
They were the first known U.S. military fatalities in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions near the Afghan border and a major victory for militants who have been hit hard by a surge of U.S. missile strikes and a major Pakistani army offensive.
The blast also killed three schoolgirls and a Pakistani soldier who was traveling with the Americans. Two more U.S. soldiers were wounded, along with more than 100 other people, mostly students at the school, officials said.
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Tue Jan 19, 2010 at 16:48:26 PST
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(noon. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
By Kathy Kelly
January 19, 2010
I spent Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday in Washington, D.C. as part of the Witness Against Torture fast, which campaigns to end all forms of torture and has worked steadily for an end to indefinite detention of people imprisoned in Guantanamo, Bagram, and other secret sites where the U.S. has held and tortured prisoners. We're on day 9 of a twelve day fast to shut down Guantanmo, end torture, and build justice.
The community gathered for the fast has grown over the past week. This means, however, that as more people sleep on the floor of St. Stephen's church, there is a rising cacophony of snoring. Our good friend, Fr. Bill Pickard, suggested trying to hear the snores as an orchestra, when I told him I'd slept fitfully last night.
There is a young boy in Mir Ali, a town in North Waziristan, in Pakistan, who also lies awake at night, unable to sleep. Israr Khan Dawar is 17 years old. He told an AP reporter, on January 14th, that he and his family and friends had gotten used to the drones. But now, at night, the sound grows louder and the drones are flying closer, so he and his family realize they could be a target. He braces himself in fear of an attack.
We're told that we will be more secure if the CIA continually attack the so-called lawless tribal areas and eliminates "the bad guys."
In late May and early June of 2009, while visiting in Pakistan, a man from the village of Khaisor, also in North Waziristan, told us about his experience as a survivor of a drone attack. Jane Mayer, writing in The New Yorker, mentioned that the people operating the drones and analyzing the surveillance intelligence have a word for people like him who managed to survive a blast and run away. They are called "squirters." So, I suppose he would have been considered a squirter.
This man, at some risk to himself, walked a long distance and took two buses to meet with us. Because of travel restrictions, we would not have been allowed to visit him in North Waziristan. His village is so remote that there are no roads leading up to it. Five hundred people live there. Often, western media refers to his homeland as "the lawless tribal area." One day, three strangers entered Khaisor and went to the home of vigil elders. For centuries, villagers have followed a code of hospitality, which demands that when strangers come to your door, you feed them and give them drink. It's not as though you can point them toward a Motel 6 or a 7-11. The strangers were welcomed into the home they approached and they left after having been served a meal. They were long gone when, at 4:30 a.m. a U.S. drone, operated by the C.I.A., fired 2 Hellfire missiles into the home they had visited, killing 12 people, two of whom were village elders. Children were dismembered and maimed.
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Sat Jan 16, 2010 at 05:26:02 PST
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(8 pm. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Bill Moyers Journal: Education and Peace in Central Asia
January 15, 2010
Author and humanitarian Greg Mortenson, whose best-selling books Three Cups of Tea and Stones Into Schools argue that education is the best way to peace in Afghanistan and across the Islamic world.
BILL MOYERS: Beyond his domestic woes, certainly the issue that has preoccupied President Obama the most since he took office is Afghanistan. The war he inherited from George W. Bush is now its ninth year and seems no closer to resolution. Almost daily, it seems, there are more stories of fighting in far off mountains, of suicide bombers killing CIA operatives, of drones raining bombs down on villages and killing innocent people. THE NEW YORK TIMES reports this week that unlike the past, when Afghanistan's brutal winters would slow the violence for awhile, "both sides seem determined to make a larger political point by continuing to fight through the snow season."
Hard sometimes to remember that this whole thing began in pursuit of Osama Bin Laden and his accomplices in the attacks of 9/11....>>>>>
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Sat Jan 09, 2010 at 09:43:40 PST
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(11 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
By Kathy Kelly
January 8, 2010
 There's a phrase originating with the peace activism of the American Quaker movement: "Speak Truth to Power." One can hardly speak more directly to power than addressing the Presidential Administration of the United States. This past October, students at Islamabad's Islamic International University had a message for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. One student summed up many of her colleagues' frustration. "We don't need America," she said. "Things were better before they came here." The students were mourning loss of life at their University where, a week earlier, two suicide bombers walked onto the campus wearing explosive devices and left seven students dead and dozens of others seriously injured. Since the spring of 2009, under pressure from U.S. leaders to "do more" to dislodge militant Taliban groups, the Pakistani government has been waging military offensives throughout the northwest of the country. These bombing attacks have displaced millions and the Pakistani government has apparently given open permission for similar attacks by unmanned U.S. aerial drones. Every week, Pakistani militant groups have launched a new retaliatory atrocity in Pakistan, killing hundreds more civilians in markets, schools, government buildings, mosques and sports facilities. Who can blame the student who believed that her family and friends were better off before the U.S. began insisting that Pakistan cooperate with U.S. military goals in the region?
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Fri Dec 25, 2009 at 02:47:08 PST
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( - promoted by mishima)
For better then a week now there have been reports that the Taliban were going to release a video of Pfc Bergdahl and than just silence till this morning.
This is just starting to hit the many outlets in many places, the AP seems to have released the video a few hours ago and others are picking up the story now as I refresh google search!
Purported Taliban footage of U.S. soldier
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Tue Dec 15, 2009 at 22:05:12 PST
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(10:00 PM EST - promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
This will be brief! Brevity because of too much going on today, but I think it's very important that everyone gets a glimpse of this. I can hardly digest this news, without a feeling of deep, down illness. And, worse, it's something that I don't know if any of us have actually been anticipating or suspecting!
Yemen: Pentagon's War On The Arabian Peninsula
Yemen will become a battleground for a proxy war between the United States and Saudi Arabia - whose state-to-state relations are among the strongest and most durable of the entire post-World War II era - on one hand and Iran on the other.
It is perhaps impossible to determine the exact moment at which a U.S.- supported self-professed holy warrior - trained to perpetrate acts of urban terrorism and to shoot down civilian airliners - ceases to be a freedom fighter and becomes a terrorist. But a safe assumption is that it occurs when he is no longer of use to Washington. A terrorist who serves American interests is a freedom fighter; a freedom fighter who doesn't is a terrorist.
Yemenis are the latest to learn the Pentagon's and the White House's law of the jungle. Along with Iraq and Afghanistan which counterinsurgency specialist Stanley McChrystal used to perfect his techniques, Yemen is joining the ranks of other nations where the Pentagon is engaged in that variety of warfare, fraught with civilian massacres and other forms of so-called collateral damage: Colombia, Mali, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia and Uganda.
BBC News reported on December 14 that 70 civilians were killed when aircraft bombed a market in the village of Bani Maan in northern Yemen.
The nation's armed forces claimed responsibility for the deadly attack, but a website of the Houthi rebels against whom the bombing was ostensibly directed stated "Saudi aircraft committed a massacre against the innocent residents of Bani Maan." [1] . . . .
The conjuring up of the al-Qaeda bogey, however, is a decoy. The rebels in the north of the nation are Shi'ites and not Sunnis, much less Wahhabi Sunnis of the Saudi variety, and as such are not only not linked with any group of groups that could be categorized as al-Qaeda, but instead would be a likely target thereof. . . .
Please read! Be aware of this latest aggression!
Feeling near "faintness" right now -- it all goes ahead without us or any resistance -- it's all so unstoppable, as is so far the reality!
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Sat Dec 12, 2009 at 09:37:56 PST
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I want to start with great interview with Webster Tarpley on Bonnie Faulkner's show on KPFA. First a few things about Webster. He's one of the more interesting minds (if you pardon that expression) writing and speaking about politics in the world. I'm impressed with erudition and he travels and knows the world very well. His flaw is that he builds a theory and then fits the facts to it. However, the theory he builds are very good and connect with the facts enough to make him very useful. He and Peter Dale Scott seem to understand what is going on as well as anyone. And Tarpley, who I disagree on a number of matters, did call the Obama fraud a fraud before anyone and thus I'm inclined to believe him -- plus he wrote the definitive books on the Bush family and has put 9/11 in a firm historical context in his book 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA.
If you listen to the interview you will see, as most of us here suspect, that we are not in Afghanistan to save Aghani women from harm or to bring democracy or even defeat the Taliban or even "get" Bin Laden and Al-qaida. It is much more interesting and complex than that.
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Fri Dec 04, 2009 at 09:56:27 PST
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(9 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Today, Dec 4th, they're already into day eight of the Inquiry with that covering "Military Planning" and "The view from London and Baghdad 2004-2007".
But so far some of what has come forth has been that the administration, long before Sept 11 2001 were focusing on regime change in Iraq and probably looking for ways to justify their wants. On 9/11 Condi Rice mentioned not only al Qaeda as being suspected guilty parties to the attacks that day but also Saddam might have had a hand in them. This while the rest of the Country was intently focused on the devastating Deaths and Destruction and while the President was flying around the Country instead of directly back to Washington from the Florida visit when the attacks took place. Not three days later even President Bush was talking up possible Saddam's guilt
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Mon Nov 30, 2009 at 18:24:15 PST
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(noon. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
I've always loved the little-known Maurice Hinchey, from New York State.
Back in 2005, I wrote about him in one of my very first Dailykos essays. Here's what he said then:
New York congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) delivered a fiery critique of the Bush Administration's drive to war in Iraq, labeling the push part of a "conspiracy" to deceive Congress and occupy the country.
(snip)
Speaking of the four protesters who spilled their own blood at a military recruiting center, Hinchey said "what they were protesting was the conspiracy of the Administration of George W. Bush to bring about an attack and then an occupation of the country of Iraq, and as a result making the world a much more dangerous and difficult place than it was prior to those actions."
"It is that conspiracy," he added, "that conspiracy which has now been documented by among other things official British documents called the Downing Street Memo which are communications between the highest ranking officials of the British government - the head of the British Intelligence, the foreign officer, the prime minister himself."
Hinchley's remarks break ranks with most Democrats in Congress, who have been critical of the leadup and operations surrounding the Iraq war, but who have been loath to deliver stinging perorations. The New York Democrat said he saw the trial as somewhat Orwellian -- a move towards curtailing speech.
"We do not want to see an end to this democratic republic," Hinchey quipped. "We want it to be strengthened. We want it to go on forever. We don't want it to be ended by people who are telling us, or who would like to tell us, what we can do and say and even think. But that's what this Administration is engaged in."
No wonder this guy doesn't get any press.
But check out what he said today:
Rep. Hinchey: Bush 'intentionally let Bin Laden get away'
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Tue Nov 24, 2009 at 18:49:50 PST
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(10 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Crossposted at Daily Kos
Can anybody explain why Bush/Cheney Accountability is NOT happening?
Jeremy Scahill blows the lid off "Blackwater's Secret War in Pakistan" in an article just published in The Nation. This story brings together an amazing array of bad actors: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Stanley McChrystal and Blackwater. It should come as no surprise, then, that the outcome of this team working together is a jaw-dropping tale of war crimes that continue to be carried out.
The entire story should be read . . . .
Jim White at Firedoglake.com
Bold text added by the diarist
Quotes from Scahill's article, commentary and more below the fold, but I SERIOUSLY urge you to read Scahill's article in it's entirety first.
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Tue Nov 17, 2009 at 13:24:12 PST
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You'd think a terrorist organization would welcome being responsible for terrorist attacks, wouldn't you?
In fact, don't terrorist organizations often claim responsibility for incidents that they had nothing to do with? Isn't that how they gain cred? Isn't their whole purpose of being to create "terror"?
Then why would the Taliban disvow responsibility for the recent attacks in Pakistan?
Taliban: Blackwater to blame for Pakistan attacks
The Pakistani arm of the Taliban has denied responsibility for a recent series of terrorist attacks in Pakistan, instead pointing the finger at Xe Services, the security contractor formerly known as Blackwater, as well as the country's own security services.
"The Tehreek-e-Taliban are not responsible for the bombings, but Blackwater and Pakistan's spy agency are behind them," said Pakistani Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq, according to a translation from Al-Jazeera English.
''The dirty Pakistani intelligence agencies, for the sake of creating mistrust and hatred among people against the Taliban, are carrying out blasts at places like the Islamic university, Islamabad, and the Khyber bazaar, Peshawar,'' the Associated Press quoted Tariq as saying.
Just to refresh people's memories, or maybe to inform them for the first time, there has been a long, incestuous relationship between Pakistan's secret police, the ISI, and the Taliban. In fact, the Taliban would not have survived, or possibly even existed, without the support of the ISI over the years.
Also, there is a great deal of evidence that the ISI is, and has been, responsible for a great deal of "Islamic terrorism" over the years, and were even directly involved in 9/11:
The Pakistan connection -- There is evidence of foreign intelligence backing for the 9/11 hijackers. Why is the US government so keen to cover it up?
Omar Sheikh, a British-born Islamist militant, is waiting to be hanged in Pakistan for a murder he almost certainly didn't commit - of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. Both the US government and Pearl's wife have since acknowledged that Sheikh was not responsible. Yet the Pakistani government is refusing to try other suspects newly implicated in Pearl's kidnap and murder for fear the evidence they produce in court might acquit Sheikh and reveal too much.
Significantly, Sheikh is also the man who, on the instructions of General Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), wired $100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker. It is extraordinary that neither Ahmed nor Sheikh have been charged and brought to trial on this count. Why not?
Ahmed, the paymaster for the hijackers, was actually in Washington on 9/11, and had a series of pre-9/11 top-level meetings in the White House, the Pentagon, the national security council, and with George Tenet, then head of the CIA, and Marc Grossman, the under-secretary of state for political affairs. When Ahmed was exposed by the Wall Street Journal as having sent the money to the hijackers, he was forced to "retire" by President Pervez Musharraf. Why hasn't the US demanded that he be questioned and tried in court?
You can easily look up the history of the ISI as it relates to the very existence of the Taliban and "Al Queda".
Well, interestingly enough, just yesterday the LA Times published an article about how our very own CIA has funded the ISI over the years. And I mean funded it.
CIA says it gets its money's worth from Pakistani spy agency
It has given hundreds of millions to the ISI, for operations as well as rewards for the capture or death of terrorist suspects. Despite fears of corruption, it is money well-spent, ex-officials say.
The CIA has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Pakistan's intelligence service since the Sept. 11 attacks, accounting for as much as one-third of the foreign spy agency's annual budget, current and former U.S. officials say.
The Inter-Services Intelligence agency also has collected tens of millions of dollars through a classified CIA program that pays for the capture or killing of wanted militants, a clandestine counterpart to the rewards publicly offered by the State Department, officials said.
The payments have triggered intense debate within the U.S. government, officials said, because of long-standing suspicions that the ISI continues to help Taliban extremists who undermine U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and provide sanctuary to Al Qaeda members in Pakistan.
But U.S. officials have continued the funding because the ISI's assistance is considered crucial: Almost every major terrorist plot this decade has originated in Pakistan's tribal belt, where ISI informant networks are a primary source of intelligence.
The White House National Security Council has "this debate every year," said a former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official involved in the discussions. Like others, the official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. Despite deep misgivings about the ISI, the official said, "there was no other game in town."
The payments to Pakistan are authorized under a covert program initially approved by then-President Bush and continued under President Obama. The CIA declined to comment on the agency's financial ties to the ISI.
U.S. officials often tout U.S.-Pakistani intelligence cooperation. But the extent of the financial underpinnings of that relationship have never been publicly disclosed. The CIA payments are a hidden stream in a much broader financial flow; the U.S. has given Pakistan more than $15 billion over the last eight years in military and civilian aid.
Congress recently approved an extra $1 billion a year to help Pakistan stabilize its tribal belt at a time when Obama is considering whether to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan.
The ISI has used the covert CIA money for a variety of purposes, including the construction of a new headquarters in Islamabad, the capital. That project pleased CIA officials because it replaced a structure considered vulnerable to attack; it also eased fears that the U.S. money would end up in the private bank accounts of ISI officials.
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Fri Oct 30, 2009 at 08:12:44 PDT
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(11 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
For your thoughts on Samhein
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March on Washington
Saturday, March 20
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