Tuesday, December 29, 2009
BREAKING: U.S. CITIZENS ATTACKED BY EGYPTIAN RIOT POLICE OUTSIDE U.S. EMBASSY
BREAKING: U.S. Citizens attacked by Egyptian Riot Police in Cairo outside of U.S. Embassy
Cindy Sheehan
One of my friends, Joshua Smith, just texted me from Cairo and said that some U.S. citizens of the Gaza Freedom March went to the U.S. Embassy today there to try and implore the staff there to intercede on behalf of the March to help get them into Gaza--they were not so warmly welcomed.
Recently, almost 1400 people from around the globe met in Cairo to march into Gaza to join Gazans in solidarity and to help expose their plight after years of blockade and exactly a year after the violent attack in what Israel called "Operation Cast Lead" that killed hundreds of innocent Gazan civilians. So far the Marchers have been denied access (Egypt closed the Rafah crossing) and their gatherings have become increasingly and more violently suppressed.
In my understanding of world affairs, embassies are stationed in various countries so citizens who are traveling can seek help in times of trouble, but this doesn’t appear to be so right at this moment in Cairo.
Josh reports, and I also just got off the phone with my good friend and Veterans for Peace board member, Mike Hearington, that about 50 U.S. citizens were very roughly seized and thrown (in at least one case literally) into a detention cell at the U.S. embassy. We are talking about U.S. citizens here being manhandled by Egyptian riot police. According to Josh and Mike (who both just narrowly escaped), it appears that people with cameras are especially being targeted. Another good friend of mine, and good friend of peace, Fr. Louis Vitale is one of those being detained. Fr. Louis is well into his seventies!
Josh posted this on his Facebook wall about his near-detention experience:
We just got away. They were trying to drag me in but we kept moving... And most were dog piling another guy. Then they drug him into the parking lot barricaded riot police zone, lifted him up and threw him over the police and down into the zone. And attacking those taking pictures or attempting to.
When I was talking to Mike he said that an Egyptian told him that all Egyptians are in solidarity with the Marchers and with the people of Gaza/Palestine, of course, but the “Big Boss” (the U.S.) is calling the shots.
Egypt is third in line for U.S. foreign aid (behind Iraq and Israel) and its dictator for life, Hosni Mubarek, is a willing puppet for his masters: the US/Israeli cabal. Israel could not pursue its apartheid policies without the U.S. and it’s equally important for this cabal to have a sold-out ally as its neighbor.
Today also happens to be the anniversary of the 1890 U.S. massacre of Native Americans (Lakota Sioux) at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. It is sad enough that we are also living on stolen land, but also that the Israeli government had good teachers in disposing of its indigenous population!
What are the Israeli settlements on the West Bank, if not stolen land from the indigenous population and what is Gaza if not a mega-reservation? As at Wounded Knee 119 years ago, the Israeli siege and attack on Gaza is nothing more than big bullies shooting fish in a barrel.
Call the U.S. Embassy to demand the release of those detained/that permission is granted for the March to cross into Gaza: Telephone: (20-2) 2797 3300.
Please re-post this alert and spread the word.
Weren’t things supposed to “change” in the Age of Obama?
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
CARBON TAXES?FORCED HEALTH CARE?WHERE WILL THE MONEY COME FROM?
I do realize that there are genuine issues in some places but the scam they are setting up to combat all of this "climate change" is not going to fix anything. it will only tax us poor people more then we all-ready are taxed and the major offenders will move their factories to countries without regulations (thank you nafta and gat) ....the car companies will continue to make cars that run on oil (when the technology exists to move beyond this) and they will just tax tax tax ....i am not convinced of this so called climate change (go to youtube and check out "the great global warming swindle") but that is besides the point...my point is they are not actually going to do a damn thing about the real issues except tax us and i highly doubt that money will do any more then line the pockets of people at the imf and world bank, and the federal reserve (they will of course loan the money back out to poorer countries with interest of course)...i am so tired of these scammers taking legitimate issues(we do have major real environmental problems ie contaminated water, genetically modified foods, and a slew of other toxicities in our atmospheres) and exploiting us and getting us to fight amongst ourselves instead of against them...oh yea isn't the health bill about to pass also? where they force us to buy insurance or pay a fine ?....Plus they have admitted to setting limits on what can be covered?....we allready pay at least 1/3 of what we make right back to the federal reserve...what is it gonna take before america and the world wakes up and says no more?
Congress investigating charges of 'protection racket' by Afghanistan contractors
Congress investigating charges of 'protection racket' by Afghanistan contractors
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...1604126_pf.html
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 17, 2009; A21
A House oversight subcommittee said Wednesday that it has begun a wide-ranging investigation into allegations that private security companies hired to protect Defense Department convoys in Afghanistan are paying off warlords and the Taliban to ensure safe passage.
"If shown to be true, it would mean that the United States is unintentionally engaged in a vast protection racket and, as such, may be indirectly funding the very insurgents we are trying to fight," said Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.), chairman of the House oversight subcommittee on national security and foreign affairs.
Two weeks ago, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described the same situation before a Senate committee while discussing the truck convoys that bring supplies into landlocked Afghanistan. "You offload a ship in Karachi [Pakistan]. And by the time whatever it is -- you know, muffins for our soldiers' breakfast or anti-IED equipment -- gets to where we're headed, it goes through a lot of hands," she said. "And one of the major sources of funding for the Taliban is the protection money."
A preliminary inquiry by Tierney's investigators determined that the allegations warranted a full-scale inquiry, focused initially on eight trucking companies that share a $2.2 billion Defense Department contract to carry goods and material from main supply points inside Afghanistan -- primarily Bagram air base -- to more than 100 forward operating bases and other military facilities in the country. The eight companies have completed 40,000 missions since May, carrying food, water, fuel, equipment and ammunition, according to Tierney.
The congressman has written to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates requesting records on all the trucking contractors as well as their subcontractors and expenses for convoy security.
In addition, he has sought the records of the Armed Contractor Oversight Directorate, the unit within the military's Afghanistan command that is responsible for overseeing private security companies. Tierney sent letters Wednesday to the companies that share the trucking contracts, three of which have offices in the Washington area.
Tierney is seeking access to their records for the contracts, including those related to security and the companies' possible use of licensed or unlicensed private security providers. He has requested that the documents be provided by Jan. 15.
One of the companies, NCL Holdings, in McLean, was awarded a two-year trucking contract this year that could reach $360 million. The company's chairman and chief operating officer is Hamed Wardak, the Georgetown-educated son of Afghanistan's defense minister, Rahim Wardak. NCL Holdings also has a five-year contract to provide guard services.
The two other area companies are Anham of Vienna and the Sandi Group, based in todayimmediately returned.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...1604126_pf.html
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 17, 2009; A21
A House oversight subcommittee said Wednesday that it has begun a wide-ranging investigation into allegations that private security companies hired to protect Defense Department convoys in Afghanistan are paying off warlords and the Taliban to ensure safe passage.
"If shown to be true, it would mean that the United States is unintentionally engaged in a vast protection racket and, as such, may be indirectly funding the very insurgents we are trying to fight," said Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.), chairman of the House oversight subcommittee on national security and foreign affairs.
Two weeks ago, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described the same situation before a Senate committee while discussing the truck convoys that bring supplies into landlocked Afghanistan. "You offload a ship in Karachi [Pakistan]. And by the time whatever it is -- you know, muffins for our soldiers' breakfast or anti-IED equipment -- gets to where we're headed, it goes through a lot of hands," she said. "And one of the major sources of funding for the Taliban is the protection money."
A preliminary inquiry by Tierney's investigators determined that the allegations warranted a full-scale inquiry, focused initially on eight trucking companies that share a $2.2 billion Defense Department contract to carry goods and material from main supply points inside Afghanistan -- primarily Bagram air base -- to more than 100 forward operating bases and other military facilities in the country. The eight companies have completed 40,000 missions since May, carrying food, water, fuel, equipment and ammunition, according to Tierney.
The congressman has written to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates requesting records on all the trucking contractors as well as their subcontractors and expenses for convoy security.
In addition, he has sought the records of the Armed Contractor Oversight Directorate, the unit within the military's Afghanistan command that is responsible for overseeing private security companies. Tierney sent letters Wednesday to the companies that share the trucking contracts, three of which have offices in the Washington area.
Tierney is seeking access to their records for the contracts, including those related to security and the companies' possible use of licensed or unlicensed private security providers. He has requested that the documents be provided by Jan. 15.
One of the companies, NCL Holdings, in McLean, was awarded a two-year trucking contract this year that could reach $360 million. The company's chairman and chief operating officer is Hamed Wardak, the Georgetown-educated son of Afghanistan's defense minister, Rahim Wardak. NCL Holdings also has a five-year contract to provide guard services.
The two other area companies are Anham of Vienna and the Sandi Group, based in todayimmediately returned.
Who's in charge in nuclear-armed U.S. ally Pakistan?
Who's in charge in nuclear-armed U.S. ally Pakistan?
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/80967.html
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan, a country that's critical to the U.S.-led war on terrorism, Friday appeared to be sliding toward a judicial coup, in which judges are moving to oust top officials in the civilian government, but without putting the military, or anyone else, in charge.
Courts summoned dozens of senior members of the ruling political party and were on the verge of issuing an arrest warrant for Interior Minister Rehman Malik as they followed up a landmark Supreme Court decision this week that nullified a legal amnesty that had shielded politicians from long-standing corruption charges.
The U.S. relies on Pakistan for transit of most supplies NATO forces in Afghanistan and has pressed the government to crack down on al Qaida and Afghan militants who have sanctuary in the lawless border region, but top U.S. officials are playing down the crisis as an internal matter for Pakistan.
Just who's running this nuclear-armed country of 165 million — the independent judiciary or another arm of the state — is unclear. The government, led by President Asif Ali Zardari, appeared paralyzed, and a creeping change in command seemed to be under way.
"It's complete (judicial) control now," said Asma Jahangir, the chair of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent watchdog. "The issue is whether the (democratic) system is going to pack up again (and go away)." She asked why the judiciary was "again" letting itself be used by "the establishment?"
Jahangir, a U.N. special human rights envoy, said the judiciary wouldn't have acted so boldly unless it felt confident of backing.
The army, which has dominated the country for most of its existence, is Pakistan's traditional power center, but it's strongly denied that it will interfere in politics again since democracy was restored last year. The U.S. has also said repeatedly that the Pakistani military is staying out of politics.
"It seems to me that Zardari's administration has lost its moral authority to govern. Power is slipping away," said Najam Sethi, an analyst and newspaper editor. "People are looking instead towards the chief justice . . . . The military is pretending to be out of it, but the military will have a very decisive say in everything."
The amnesty, which the U.S. and British governments had helped mediate, set the stage for the return to civilian rule by allowing Malik, Zardari and many others to return from exile to the country without fear of prosecution. Malik had been living in London after fleeing Pakistan in 1998. Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar, stopped from leaving the country Thursday night on an official trip to China, claimed that his name was wrongly put on the list of those who had been covered by the amnesty.
Pakistan's National Accountability Bureau, the official anti-corruption watchdog, went to the courts for the summonses and in Malik's case requested an arrest warrant to pursue corruption allegations going back over a decade, his lawyer said.
At the same time, courts issued summonses to dozens of senior members of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, including secretary-general Jahangir Badar, Salman Farooqi, Zardari's top aide, and Nusrat Bhutto, the elderly and infirm mother of the late former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, the Accountability Bureau said. Farooqi got pre-arrest bail.
Malik's lawyer, Khawaja Naveed, rushed to a court in the southern city of Karachi and prevented the issuing of the arrest warrant, which had been placed before a judge.
"The warrant has converted into a summons," Naveed told McClatchy.
After his lawyer gave assurances that the minister would turn up, the court summoned Malik to appear on Jan. 8.
Three cases against Malik were dropped under the amnesty. One of the allegations is the "embezzlement of funds on account of un-authorized release of imported Yellow Cab Cars", according to documents given to the Supreme Court. The sum involved is listed as $165,000.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/80967.html
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan, a country that's critical to the U.S.-led war on terrorism, Friday appeared to be sliding toward a judicial coup, in which judges are moving to oust top officials in the civilian government, but without putting the military, or anyone else, in charge.
Courts summoned dozens of senior members of the ruling political party and were on the verge of issuing an arrest warrant for Interior Minister Rehman Malik as they followed up a landmark Supreme Court decision this week that nullified a legal amnesty that had shielded politicians from long-standing corruption charges.
The U.S. relies on Pakistan for transit of most supplies NATO forces in Afghanistan and has pressed the government to crack down on al Qaida and Afghan militants who have sanctuary in the lawless border region, but top U.S. officials are playing down the crisis as an internal matter for Pakistan.
Just who's running this nuclear-armed country of 165 million — the independent judiciary or another arm of the state — is unclear. The government, led by President Asif Ali Zardari, appeared paralyzed, and a creeping change in command seemed to be under way.
"It's complete (judicial) control now," said Asma Jahangir, the chair of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent watchdog. "The issue is whether the (democratic) system is going to pack up again (and go away)." She asked why the judiciary was "again" letting itself be used by "the establishment?"
Jahangir, a U.N. special human rights envoy, said the judiciary wouldn't have acted so boldly unless it felt confident of backing.
The army, which has dominated the country for most of its existence, is Pakistan's traditional power center, but it's strongly denied that it will interfere in politics again since democracy was restored last year. The U.S. has also said repeatedly that the Pakistani military is staying out of politics.
"It seems to me that Zardari's administration has lost its moral authority to govern. Power is slipping away," said Najam Sethi, an analyst and newspaper editor. "People are looking instead towards the chief justice . . . . The military is pretending to be out of it, but the military will have a very decisive say in everything."
The amnesty, which the U.S. and British governments had helped mediate, set the stage for the return to civilian rule by allowing Malik, Zardari and many others to return from exile to the country without fear of prosecution. Malik had been living in London after fleeing Pakistan in 1998. Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar, stopped from leaving the country Thursday night on an official trip to China, claimed that his name was wrongly put on the list of those who had been covered by the amnesty.
Pakistan's National Accountability Bureau, the official anti-corruption watchdog, went to the courts for the summonses and in Malik's case requested an arrest warrant to pursue corruption allegations going back over a decade, his lawyer said.
At the same time, courts issued summonses to dozens of senior members of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, including secretary-general Jahangir Badar, Salman Farooqi, Zardari's top aide, and Nusrat Bhutto, the elderly and infirm mother of the late former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, the Accountability Bureau said. Farooqi got pre-arrest bail.
Malik's lawyer, Khawaja Naveed, rushed to a court in the southern city of Karachi and prevented the issuing of the arrest warrant, which had been placed before a judge.
"The warrant has converted into a summons," Naveed told McClatchy.
After his lawyer gave assurances that the minister would turn up, the court summoned Malik to appear on Jan. 8.
Three cases against Malik were dropped under the amnesty. One of the allegations is the "embezzlement of funds on account of un-authorized release of imported Yellow Cab Cars", according to documents given to the Supreme Court. The sum involved is listed as $165,000.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Up to 56,000 more contractors likely for Afghanistan, congressional agency says
Up to 56,000 more contractors likely for Afghanistan, congressional agency says
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...1504850_pf.html
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 16, 2009; A17
The surge of 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan could be accompanied by a surge of up to 56,000 contractors, vastly expanding the presence of personnel from the U.S. private sector in a war zone, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service.
CRS, which provides background information to members of Congress on a bipartisan basis, said it expects an additional 26,000 to 56,000 contractors to be sent to Afghanistan. That would bring the number of contractors in the country to anywhere from 130,000 to 160,000.
The tally "could increase further if the new [administration] strategy includes a more robust construction and nation building effort," according to the report, which was released Monday and first disclosed on the Web site Talking Points Memo.
The CRS study says contractors made up 69 percent of the Pentagon's personnel in Afghanistan last December, a proportion that "apparently represented the highest recorded percentage of contractors used by the Defense Department in any conflict in the history of the United States." As of September, contractor representation had dropped to 62 percent, as U.S. troop strength increased modestly.
As the Pentagon contracts out activities that previously were carried out by troops in wartime, it has been forced to struggle with new management challenges. "Prior to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, contracting was done on an ad-hoc basis and was not adequately incorporated into the doctrine -- or culture -- of the military," according to the CRS report. Today, according to Defense Department officials, "doctrine and strategy are being updated to incorporate the role of contractors in contingency operations."
The Pentagon's Joint Contracting Command in Afghanistan has increased the size of its acquisition workforce and is adding staff to monitor performance. To enhance oversight, Congress has appropriated $8 million for an electronic system that will track all contract-related information for Iraq and Afghanistan.
On Thursday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs ad-hoc subcommittee on contracting oversight, led by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), is scheduled to hold a hearing on the increase in the number and value of Afghanistan contracts. She plans to focus on ensuring that contracts are adequately managed and "whether contracting oversight lessons learned from Iraq are being applied in Afghanistan," according to her staff members.
Contracts, in the meantime, continue to be solicited and awarded. Over the past week, the military awarded a $44.8 million contract to a Florida firm to provide dogs and their handlers for operational use in areas of southern Afghanistan along the Pakistan border, where some of the most violent fighting is taking place.
The U.S. command in Afghanistan also published a notice that it would be seeking intelligence analyst services from a contractor that include "collecting, analyzing and providing recommendations necessary for the government to produce and disseminate intelligence products in several subject areas." The contract would be for one year, plus options for four additional years.
The Defense Logistics Agency disclosed that it is looking for a contractor that can provide distribution and warehousing services for U.S. and NATO forces in the Kandahar area, which is near the center of fighting. The contractor is to supply the workforce needed to receive, store, inventory and prepare shipment of up to 4,000 items using government-provided warehousing facilities and open storage areas.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...1504850_pf.html
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 16, 2009; A17
The surge of 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan could be accompanied by a surge of up to 56,000 contractors, vastly expanding the presence of personnel from the U.S. private sector in a war zone, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service.
CRS, which provides background information to members of Congress on a bipartisan basis, said it expects an additional 26,000 to 56,000 contractors to be sent to Afghanistan. That would bring the number of contractors in the country to anywhere from 130,000 to 160,000.
The tally "could increase further if the new [administration] strategy includes a more robust construction and nation building effort," according to the report, which was released Monday and first disclosed on the Web site Talking Points Memo.
The CRS study says contractors made up 69 percent of the Pentagon's personnel in Afghanistan last December, a proportion that "apparently represented the highest recorded percentage of contractors used by the Defense Department in any conflict in the history of the United States." As of September, contractor representation had dropped to 62 percent, as U.S. troop strength increased modestly.
As the Pentagon contracts out activities that previously were carried out by troops in wartime, it has been forced to struggle with new management challenges. "Prior to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, contracting was done on an ad-hoc basis and was not adequately incorporated into the doctrine -- or culture -- of the military," according to the CRS report. Today, according to Defense Department officials, "doctrine and strategy are being updated to incorporate the role of contractors in contingency operations."
The Pentagon's Joint Contracting Command in Afghanistan has increased the size of its acquisition workforce and is adding staff to monitor performance. To enhance oversight, Congress has appropriated $8 million for an electronic system that will track all contract-related information for Iraq and Afghanistan.
On Thursday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs ad-hoc subcommittee on contracting oversight, led by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), is scheduled to hold a hearing on the increase in the number and value of Afghanistan contracts. She plans to focus on ensuring that contracts are adequately managed and "whether contracting oversight lessons learned from Iraq are being applied in Afghanistan," according to her staff members.
Contracts, in the meantime, continue to be solicited and awarded. Over the past week, the military awarded a $44.8 million contract to a Florida firm to provide dogs and their handlers for operational use in areas of southern Afghanistan along the Pakistan border, where some of the most violent fighting is taking place.
The U.S. command in Afghanistan also published a notice that it would be seeking intelligence analyst services from a contractor that include "collecting, analyzing and providing recommendations necessary for the government to produce and disseminate intelligence products in several subject areas." The contract would be for one year, plus options for four additional years.
The Defense Logistics Agency disclosed that it is looking for a contractor that can provide distribution and warehousing services for U.S. and NATO forces in the Kandahar area, which is near the center of fighting. The contractor is to supply the workforce needed to receive, store, inventory and prepare shipment of up to 4,000 items using government-provided warehousing facilities and open storage areas.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Outraged Brits want Blair prosecuted for war crimes
Outraged Brits want Blair prosecuted for war crimes
http://rawstory.com/2009/12/outrage...ted-war-crimes/
By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, December 13th, 2009 -- 8:08 pm
Tony Blair's admission that Britain would have backed the Iraq war even if he knew it did not have weapons of mass destruction sparked outrage Sunday and calls for his prosecution for war crimes.
The former British prime minister, who backed the US-led invasion in 2003, told the BBC he would "still have thought it right to remove" Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein because of the threat he posed to the region.
Lawyers representing the deposed Iraqi leadership said they would seek to prosecute Blair following his remarks, while one newspaper commentator said it was a "game-changing admission" for the ongoing official inquiry into the war.
Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix added: "The war was sold on the WMD, and now you feel, or hear that it was only a question of deployment of arguments, as he said, it sounds a bit like a fig leaf that was held up."
Blair is due to give evidence to the inquiry into the war, led by former civil servant John Chilcot, early next year, and the commentator in the Sunday Telegraph said the investigation's focus must now change.
"Mr Blair's game-changing admission gives them a licence to be tougher and more prosecutorial," he wrote, a call echoed by campaigners at Stop the War Coalition, who urged Chilcot's inquiry to recommend legal action against Blair.
Professor Philippe Sands, a leading international lawyer, said he believed Blair's comments had left him vulnerable to legal proceedings.
"The fact that the policy was fixed by Tony Blair irrespective of the facts on the ground, and irrespective of the legality, will now expose him more rather than less to legal difficulties," Sands told The Sunday Herald.
A lawyer for Saddam Hussein's jailed former deputy prime minister, Tareq Aziz, wrote to Britain's top legal adviser Saturday asking permission to prosecute Blair for war crimes.
In a statement Sunday, Giovanni di Stefano said the former prime minister's comments were an admission that "his aim was regime change. That is without question unlawful and subject to criminal proceedings".
In the absence of explicit UN approval, Blair justified the war on the basis of Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and long-range missiles and its non-compliance with UN weapons inspections, in defiance of numerous UN resolutions.
The alleged chemical and biological weapons were never found, but Blair said he would have gone to war even if he had known they were not there.
"I would still have thought it right to remove him (Saddam Hussein). Obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments, about the nature of the threat," he said.
He added: "It was the notion of him as a threat to the region, of which the development of WMD was obviously one, and because you'd had 12 years of United Nations to and fro on this subject, he used chemical weapons on his own people -- so this was obviously the thing that was uppermost in my mind."
Nick Clegg, leader of the center-left Liberal Democrats, accused Blair of "breathtaking cynicism", while David Cameron, the leader of the main opposition Conservatives, said he was "quite surprised" at the remarks.
While Saddam Hussein had violated many UN resolutions and was "a menace" to the region, Cameron -- whose party backed the invasion -- noted that Blair had put a "huge amount of weight on the WMD argument" to justify war.
A poll published three days before the invasion found widespread British support for military action as long as it was backed by the United Nations and there was proof Iraq had WMDs. Without these conditions, support plummeted to 26 percent.
Cameron also called for Blair to give his evidence to the Chilcot inquiry in public, amid reports that closed door hearings were planned.
An inquiry spokesman denied this, saying Blair would appear "very much in public".
http://rawstory.com/2009/12/outrage...ted-war-crimes/
By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, December 13th, 2009 -- 8:08 pm
Tony Blair's admission that Britain would have backed the Iraq war even if he knew it did not have weapons of mass destruction sparked outrage Sunday and calls for his prosecution for war crimes.
The former British prime minister, who backed the US-led invasion in 2003, told the BBC he would "still have thought it right to remove" Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein because of the threat he posed to the region.
Lawyers representing the deposed Iraqi leadership said they would seek to prosecute Blair following his remarks, while one newspaper commentator said it was a "game-changing admission" for the ongoing official inquiry into the war.
Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix added: "The war was sold on the WMD, and now you feel, or hear that it was only a question of deployment of arguments, as he said, it sounds a bit like a fig leaf that was held up."
Blair is due to give evidence to the inquiry into the war, led by former civil servant John Chilcot, early next year, and the commentator in the Sunday Telegraph said the investigation's focus must now change.
"Mr Blair's game-changing admission gives them a licence to be tougher and more prosecutorial," he wrote, a call echoed by campaigners at Stop the War Coalition, who urged Chilcot's inquiry to recommend legal action against Blair.
Professor Philippe Sands, a leading international lawyer, said he believed Blair's comments had left him vulnerable to legal proceedings.
"The fact that the policy was fixed by Tony Blair irrespective of the facts on the ground, and irrespective of the legality, will now expose him more rather than less to legal difficulties," Sands told The Sunday Herald.
A lawyer for Saddam Hussein's jailed former deputy prime minister, Tareq Aziz, wrote to Britain's top legal adviser Saturday asking permission to prosecute Blair for war crimes.
In a statement Sunday, Giovanni di Stefano said the former prime minister's comments were an admission that "his aim was regime change. That is without question unlawful and subject to criminal proceedings".
In the absence of explicit UN approval, Blair justified the war on the basis of Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and long-range missiles and its non-compliance with UN weapons inspections, in defiance of numerous UN resolutions.
The alleged chemical and biological weapons were never found, but Blair said he would have gone to war even if he had known they were not there.
"I would still have thought it right to remove him (Saddam Hussein). Obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments, about the nature of the threat," he said.
He added: "It was the notion of him as a threat to the region, of which the development of WMD was obviously one, and because you'd had 12 years of United Nations to and fro on this subject, he used chemical weapons on his own people -- so this was obviously the thing that was uppermost in my mind."
Nick Clegg, leader of the center-left Liberal Democrats, accused Blair of "breathtaking cynicism", while David Cameron, the leader of the main opposition Conservatives, said he was "quite surprised" at the remarks.
While Saddam Hussein had violated many UN resolutions and was "a menace" to the region, Cameron -- whose party backed the invasion -- noted that Blair had put a "huge amount of weight on the WMD argument" to justify war.
A poll published three days before the invasion found widespread British support for military action as long as it was backed by the United Nations and there was proof Iraq had WMDs. Without these conditions, support plummeted to 26 percent.
Cameron also called for Blair to give his evidence to the Chilcot inquiry in public, amid reports that closed door hearings were planned.
An inquiry spokesman denied this, saying Blair would appear "very much in public".
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Iraq inquiry: Tony Blair talked of undermining Saddam regime in 2001, MI6 boss says
Iraq inquiry: Tony Blair talked of undermining Saddam regime in 2001, MI6 boss says
Tony Blair had discussions on how to undermine Saddam Hussein's regime two years before the 2003 invasion, Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6, has told the Iraq inquiry.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-boss-says.html
Published: 11:21AM GMT 10 Dec 2009
The 2001 discussions focussed on "political" actions which could help undermine the Iraqi regime, according to Sir John, who was then the prime minister's private secretary for foreign affairs.
Iraq was one of a number of countries where Britain would have liked to see regime change, he added.
However, giving evidence to the official inquiry into the conflict, he insisted that there was no talk at that stage in Whitehall of military action in Iraq.
He said that the approach adopted was based on the methods which had led to the ousting of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia the previous year.
Among the proposals considered was support for opposition groups and indicting Saddam for war crimes during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
"I think there are a lot of countries around the world where we would like to see a change of regime. That doesn't mean one pursues active policies in that direction," he said.
"Although support for change - change of behaviour, modernisation of systems, more open accountable systems, independence of the judiciary, free media, freedom of association - these sorts of issue that we pursued in our policies around the world that are designed to bring about improvements in the governments of countries, including change of leaders.
"That is not vastly different from the approach that we were pursuing in Iraq in a very difficult situation because Saddam Hussein was one of the world's last remaining dictators."
Tony Blair had discussions on how to undermine Saddam Hussein's regime two years before the 2003 invasion, Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6, has told the Iraq inquiry.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-boss-says.html
Published: 11:21AM GMT 10 Dec 2009
The 2001 discussions focussed on "political" actions which could help undermine the Iraqi regime, according to Sir John, who was then the prime minister's private secretary for foreign affairs.
Iraq was one of a number of countries where Britain would have liked to see regime change, he added.
However, giving evidence to the official inquiry into the conflict, he insisted that there was no talk at that stage in Whitehall of military action in Iraq.
He said that the approach adopted was based on the methods which had led to the ousting of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia the previous year.
Among the proposals considered was support for opposition groups and indicting Saddam for war crimes during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
"I think there are a lot of countries around the world where we would like to see a change of regime. That doesn't mean one pursues active policies in that direction," he said.
"Although support for change - change of behaviour, modernisation of systems, more open accountable systems, independence of the judiciary, free media, freedom of association - these sorts of issue that we pursued in our policies around the world that are designed to bring about improvements in the governments of countries, including change of leaders.
"That is not vastly different from the approach that we were pursuing in Iraq in a very difficult situation because Saddam Hussein was one of the world's last remaining dictators."
Blackwater Guards Tied to Secret Raids by the C.I.A.
Blackwater Guards Tied to Secret Raids by the C.I.A.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/u...er.html?_r=3&hp
By JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI
Published: December 10, 2009
WASHINGTON — Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.’s most sensitive activities — clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials.
The raids against suspects occurred on an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater personnel playing central roles in what company insiders called “snatch and grab” operations, the former employees and current and former intelligence officers said.
Several former Blackwater guards said that their involvement in the operations became so routine that the lines supposedly dividing the Central Intelligence Agency, the military and Blackwater became blurred. Instead of simply providing security for C.I.A. officers, they say, Blackwater personnel at times became partners in missions to capture or kill militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, a practice that raises questions about the use of guns for hire on the battlefield.
Separately, former Blackwater employees said they helped provide security on some C.I.A. flights transporting detainees in the years after the 2001 terror attacks in the United States.
The secret missions illuminate a far deeper relationship between the spy agency and the private security company than government officials had acknowledged. Blackwater’s partnership with the C.I.A. has been enormously profitable for the North Carolina-based company, and became even closer after several top agency officials joined Blackwater.
“It became a very brotherly relationship,” said one former top C.I.A. officer. “There was a feeling that Blackwater eventually became an extension of the agency.”
George Little, a C.I.A. spokesman, would not comment on Blackwater’s ties to the agency. But he said the C.I.A. employs contractors to “enhance the skills of our own work force, just as American law permits.”
“Contractors give you flexibility in shaping and managing your talent mix — especially in the short term — but the accountability’s still yours,” he said.
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Blackwater, said Thursday that it was never under contract to participate in clandestine raids with the C.I.A. or with Special Operations personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else.
Blackwater’s role in the secret operations raises concerns about the extent to which private security companies, hired for defensive guard duty, have joined in offensive military and intelligence operations.
Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who is chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, said in an interview that “the use of contractors in intelligence and paramilitary operations is a scandal waiting to be examined.” While he declined to comment on specific operations, Mr. Holt said that the use of contractors in such operations “got way out of hand.” He added, “It’s been very troubling to a lot of people.”
Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, has come under intense criticism for what Iraqis have described as reckless conduct by its security guards, and the company lost its lucrative State Department contract to provide diplomatic security for the United States Embassy in Baghdad earlier this year after a 2007 shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.
Blackwater’s ties to the C.I.A. have emerged in recent months, beginning with disclosures in The New York Times that the agency had hired the company as part of a program to assassinate leaders of Al Qaeda and to assist in the C.I.A.’s Predator drone program in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, recently initiated an internal review examining all Blackwater contracts with the agency to ensure that the company was performing no missions that were “operational in nature,” according to one government official.
Five former Blackwater employees and four current and former American intelligence officials interviewed for this article would speak only on condition of anonymity because Blackwater’s activities for the agency were secret and former employees feared repercussions from the company. The Blackwater employees said they participated in the raids or had direct knowledge of them.
Along with the former officials, they provided few details about the targets of the raids in Iraq and Afghanistan, although they said that many of the Iraq raids were directed against members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. To corroborate the claims of the company’s involvement, a former Blackwater security guard provided photographs to The Times that he said he took during the raids. They showed detainees and armed men whom he and a former company official identified as Blackwater employees. The former intelligence officials said that Blackwater’s work with the C.I.A. in Iraq and Afghanistan had grown out of its early contracts with the spy agency to provide security for the C.I.A. stations in both countries.
In the spring of 2002, Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, offered to help the spy agency guard its makeshift Afghan station in the Ariana Hotel in Kabul. Not long after Mr. Prince signed the security contract with Alvin B. Krongard, then the C.I.A.’s third-ranking official, dozens of Blackwater personnel — many of them former members of units of the Navy Seals or Army Delta Force — were sent to provide perimeter security for the C.I.A. station.
But the company’s role soon changed as Blackwater operatives began accompanying C.I.A. case officers on missions, according to former employees and intelligence officials.
A similar progression happened in Iraq, where Blackwater was first hired for “static security” of the Baghdad station. In addition, Blackwater was charged with providing personal security for C.I.A. officers wherever they traveled in the two countries. That meant that Blackwater personnel accompanied the officers even on offensive operations sometimes begun in conjunction with Delta Force or Navy Seals teams.
A former senior C.I.A. official said that Blackwater’s role expanded in 2005 as the Iraqi insurgency intensified. Fearful of the death or capture of one of its officers, the agency banned officers from leaving the Green Zone in Baghdad without security escorts, the official said.
That gave Blackwater greater influence over C.I.A. clandestine operations, since company personnel helped decide the safest way to conduct the missions.
The former American intelligence officials said that Blackwater guards were supposed to only provide perimeter security during raids, leaving it up to C.I.A. officers and Special Operations military personnel to capture or kill suspected insurgents or other targets.
“They were supposed to be the outer layer of the onion, out on the perimeter,” said one former Blackwater official of the security guards. Instead, “they were the drivers and the gunslingers,” said one former intelligence official.
But in the chaos of the operations, the roles of Blackwater, C.I.A., and military personnel sometimes merged. Former C.I.A. officials said that Blackwater guards often appeared eager to get directly involved in the operations. Experts said that the C.I.A.’s use of contractors in clandestine operations falls into a legal gray area because of the vagueness of language laying out what tasks only government employees may perform.
P.W. Singer, an expert in contracting at the Brookings Institution, said that the types of jobs that have been outsourced in recent years make a mockery of regulations about “inherently governmental” functions.
“We keep finding functions that have been outsourced that common sense, let alone U.S. government policy, would argue should not have been handed over to a private company,” he said. “And yet we do it again, and again, and again.”
According to one former Blackwater manager, the company’s involvement with the C.I.A. raids was “widely known” by Blackwater executives. “It was virtually continuous, and hundreds of guys were involved, rotating in and out,” over a period of several years, the former Blackwater manager said.
One former Blackwater guard recalled a meeting in Baghdad in 2004 in which Erik Prince addressed a group of Blackwater guards working with the C.I.A. At the meeting in an air hangar used by Blackwater, the guard said, Mr. Prince encouraged the Blackwater personnel “to do whatever it takes” to help the C.I.A. with the intensifying insurgency, the former guard recalled.
But it is not clear whether top C.I.A. officials in Washington knew or approved of the involvement by Blackwater officials in raids or whether only lower-level officials in Baghdad were aware of what happened on the ground.
The new details of Blackwater’s involvement in Iraq come at a time when the House Intelligence Committee is investigating the company’s role in the C.I.A.’s assassination program, and a federal grand jury in North Carolina is investigating a wide range of allegations of illegal activity by Blackwater and its personnel, including gun running to Iraq.
Several former Blackwater personnel said that Blackwater guards involved in the C.I.A. raids used weapons, including sawed-off M-4 automatic weapons with silencers, that were not approved for use by private contractors. In separate interviews, former Blackwater security personnel also said they were handpicked by senior Blackwater officials on several occasions to participate in secret flights transporting detainees around war zones.
They said that during the flights, teams of about 10 Blackwater personnel provided security over the detainees.
“A group of individuals were selected who could manage detainees without the use of lethal force,” said one former Blackwater guard who participated in one of the flights.
Intelligence officials deny that the agency has ever used Blackwater to fly high-value detainees in and out of secret C.I.A. prisons that were shut down earlier this year. Mr. Corallo, the Blackwater spokesman, said that company personnel were never involved in C.I.A. “rendition flights,” which transferred terrorism suspects to other countries for interrogation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/u...er.html?_r=3&hp
By JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI
Published: December 10, 2009
WASHINGTON — Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.’s most sensitive activities — clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials.
The raids against suspects occurred on an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater personnel playing central roles in what company insiders called “snatch and grab” operations, the former employees and current and former intelligence officers said.
Several former Blackwater guards said that their involvement in the operations became so routine that the lines supposedly dividing the Central Intelligence Agency, the military and Blackwater became blurred. Instead of simply providing security for C.I.A. officers, they say, Blackwater personnel at times became partners in missions to capture or kill militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, a practice that raises questions about the use of guns for hire on the battlefield.
Separately, former Blackwater employees said they helped provide security on some C.I.A. flights transporting detainees in the years after the 2001 terror attacks in the United States.
The secret missions illuminate a far deeper relationship between the spy agency and the private security company than government officials had acknowledged. Blackwater’s partnership with the C.I.A. has been enormously profitable for the North Carolina-based company, and became even closer after several top agency officials joined Blackwater.
“It became a very brotherly relationship,” said one former top C.I.A. officer. “There was a feeling that Blackwater eventually became an extension of the agency.”
George Little, a C.I.A. spokesman, would not comment on Blackwater’s ties to the agency. But he said the C.I.A. employs contractors to “enhance the skills of our own work force, just as American law permits.”
“Contractors give you flexibility in shaping and managing your talent mix — especially in the short term — but the accountability’s still yours,” he said.
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Blackwater, said Thursday that it was never under contract to participate in clandestine raids with the C.I.A. or with Special Operations personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else.
Blackwater’s role in the secret operations raises concerns about the extent to which private security companies, hired for defensive guard duty, have joined in offensive military and intelligence operations.
Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who is chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, said in an interview that “the use of contractors in intelligence and paramilitary operations is a scandal waiting to be examined.” While he declined to comment on specific operations, Mr. Holt said that the use of contractors in such operations “got way out of hand.” He added, “It’s been very troubling to a lot of people.”
Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, has come under intense criticism for what Iraqis have described as reckless conduct by its security guards, and the company lost its lucrative State Department contract to provide diplomatic security for the United States Embassy in Baghdad earlier this year after a 2007 shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.
Blackwater’s ties to the C.I.A. have emerged in recent months, beginning with disclosures in The New York Times that the agency had hired the company as part of a program to assassinate leaders of Al Qaeda and to assist in the C.I.A.’s Predator drone program in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, recently initiated an internal review examining all Blackwater contracts with the agency to ensure that the company was performing no missions that were “operational in nature,” according to one government official.
Five former Blackwater employees and four current and former American intelligence officials interviewed for this article would speak only on condition of anonymity because Blackwater’s activities for the agency were secret and former employees feared repercussions from the company. The Blackwater employees said they participated in the raids or had direct knowledge of them.
Along with the former officials, they provided few details about the targets of the raids in Iraq and Afghanistan, although they said that many of the Iraq raids were directed against members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. To corroborate the claims of the company’s involvement, a former Blackwater security guard provided photographs to The Times that he said he took during the raids. They showed detainees and armed men whom he and a former company official identified as Blackwater employees. The former intelligence officials said that Blackwater’s work with the C.I.A. in Iraq and Afghanistan had grown out of its early contracts with the spy agency to provide security for the C.I.A. stations in both countries.
In the spring of 2002, Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, offered to help the spy agency guard its makeshift Afghan station in the Ariana Hotel in Kabul. Not long after Mr. Prince signed the security contract with Alvin B. Krongard, then the C.I.A.’s third-ranking official, dozens of Blackwater personnel — many of them former members of units of the Navy Seals or Army Delta Force — were sent to provide perimeter security for the C.I.A. station.
But the company’s role soon changed as Blackwater operatives began accompanying C.I.A. case officers on missions, according to former employees and intelligence officials.
A similar progression happened in Iraq, where Blackwater was first hired for “static security” of the Baghdad station. In addition, Blackwater was charged with providing personal security for C.I.A. officers wherever they traveled in the two countries. That meant that Blackwater personnel accompanied the officers even on offensive operations sometimes begun in conjunction with Delta Force or Navy Seals teams.
A former senior C.I.A. official said that Blackwater’s role expanded in 2005 as the Iraqi insurgency intensified. Fearful of the death or capture of one of its officers, the agency banned officers from leaving the Green Zone in Baghdad without security escorts, the official said.
That gave Blackwater greater influence over C.I.A. clandestine operations, since company personnel helped decide the safest way to conduct the missions.
The former American intelligence officials said that Blackwater guards were supposed to only provide perimeter security during raids, leaving it up to C.I.A. officers and Special Operations military personnel to capture or kill suspected insurgents or other targets.
“They were supposed to be the outer layer of the onion, out on the perimeter,” said one former Blackwater official of the security guards. Instead, “they were the drivers and the gunslingers,” said one former intelligence official.
But in the chaos of the operations, the roles of Blackwater, C.I.A., and military personnel sometimes merged. Former C.I.A. officials said that Blackwater guards often appeared eager to get directly involved in the operations. Experts said that the C.I.A.’s use of contractors in clandestine operations falls into a legal gray area because of the vagueness of language laying out what tasks only government employees may perform.
P.W. Singer, an expert in contracting at the Brookings Institution, said that the types of jobs that have been outsourced in recent years make a mockery of regulations about “inherently governmental” functions.
“We keep finding functions that have been outsourced that common sense, let alone U.S. government policy, would argue should not have been handed over to a private company,” he said. “And yet we do it again, and again, and again.”
According to one former Blackwater manager, the company’s involvement with the C.I.A. raids was “widely known” by Blackwater executives. “It was virtually continuous, and hundreds of guys were involved, rotating in and out,” over a period of several years, the former Blackwater manager said.
One former Blackwater guard recalled a meeting in Baghdad in 2004 in which Erik Prince addressed a group of Blackwater guards working with the C.I.A. At the meeting in an air hangar used by Blackwater, the guard said, Mr. Prince encouraged the Blackwater personnel “to do whatever it takes” to help the C.I.A. with the intensifying insurgency, the former guard recalled.
But it is not clear whether top C.I.A. officials in Washington knew or approved of the involvement by Blackwater officials in raids or whether only lower-level officials in Baghdad were aware of what happened on the ground.
The new details of Blackwater’s involvement in Iraq come at a time when the House Intelligence Committee is investigating the company’s role in the C.I.A.’s assassination program, and a federal grand jury in North Carolina is investigating a wide range of allegations of illegal activity by Blackwater and its personnel, including gun running to Iraq.
Several former Blackwater personnel said that Blackwater guards involved in the C.I.A. raids used weapons, including sawed-off M-4 automatic weapons with silencers, that were not approved for use by private contractors. In separate interviews, former Blackwater security personnel also said they were handpicked by senior Blackwater officials on several occasions to participate in secret flights transporting detainees around war zones.
They said that during the flights, teams of about 10 Blackwater personnel provided security over the detainees.
“A group of individuals were selected who could manage detainees without the use of lethal force,” said one former Blackwater guard who participated in one of the flights.
Intelligence officials deny that the agency has ever used Blackwater to fly high-value detainees in and out of secret C.I.A. prisons that were shut down earlier this year. Mr. Corallo, the Blackwater spokesman, said that company personnel were never involved in C.I.A. “rendition flights,” which transferred terrorism suspects to other countries for interrogation.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Kucinich: Prolonging Afghan war a ‘threat to our national security’
Far from being a necessary part of the US's national security strategy, the Afghanistan war is actually a threat to it, says Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich.
In a statement released two days after President Barack Obama announced a 30,000-troop surge for the war effort and a July, 2011, beginning for troop withdrawal, Kucinich argued that extending the war would destabilize the United States at home.
“America is in the fight of its life and that fight is not in Afghanistan -- it's here," Kucinich declared. "We are deeply in debt. Our GDP is down. Our manufacturing is down. Our savings are down. The value of the dollar is down. Our trade deficit is up. Business failures are up. Bankruptcies are up.
“The war is a threat to our national security. We’ll spend over $100 billion next year to bomb a nation of poor people while we reenergize the Taliban, destabilize Pakistan, deplete our army and put more of our soldiers’ lives on the line. Meanwhile, back here in the USA, 15 million people are out of work. People are losing their jobs, their health care, their savings, their investments, and their retirement security. $13 trillion in bailouts for Wall Street, trillions for war; when are we going to start taking care of things here at home?”
Kucinich a seven-term House representative from western Cleveland, has long been a high-profile opponent of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
“The people of Afghanistan don’t want to be saved by us," Kucinich said on the House floor Wednesday. "They want to be saved from us. Our presence and our Predator drones kill countless innocents, creating more US enemies and destabilizing Pakistan."
In September, following a NATO airstrike that killed 95 people, including most of a small Afghan village, Kucinich declared that the war in Afghanistan is "quickly developing into a tragedy of monumental proportions. It is time for the US to end this war and bring our troops home.”
In a statement released two days after President Barack Obama announced a 30,000-troop surge for the war effort and a July, 2011, beginning for troop withdrawal, Kucinich argued that extending the war would destabilize the United States at home.
“America is in the fight of its life and that fight is not in Afghanistan -- it's here," Kucinich declared. "We are deeply in debt. Our GDP is down. Our manufacturing is down. Our savings are down. The value of the dollar is down. Our trade deficit is up. Business failures are up. Bankruptcies are up.
“The war is a threat to our national security. We’ll spend over $100 billion next year to bomb a nation of poor people while we reenergize the Taliban, destabilize Pakistan, deplete our army and put more of our soldiers’ lives on the line. Meanwhile, back here in the USA, 15 million people are out of work. People are losing their jobs, their health care, their savings, their investments, and their retirement security. $13 trillion in bailouts for Wall Street, trillions for war; when are we going to start taking care of things here at home?”
Kucinich a seven-term House representative from western Cleveland, has long been a high-profile opponent of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
“The people of Afghanistan don’t want to be saved by us," Kucinich said on the House floor Wednesday. "They want to be saved from us. Our presence and our Predator drones kill countless innocents, creating more US enemies and destabilizing Pakistan."
In September, following a NATO airstrike that killed 95 people, including most of a small Afghan village, Kucinich declared that the war in Afghanistan is "quickly developing into a tragedy of monumental proportions. It is time for the US to end this war and bring our troops home.”
Feds ‘Pinged’ Sprint GPS Data 8 Million Times Over a Year
Feds ‘Pinged’ Sprint GPS Data 8 Million Times Over a Year
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/gps-data/
By Kim Zetter December 1, 2009
Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with customer location data more than 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009, according to a company manager who disclosed the statistic at a non-public interception and wiretapping conference in October.
The manager also revealed the existence of a previously undisclosed web portal that Sprint provides law enforcement to conduct automated “pings” to track users. Through the website, authorized agents can type in a mobile phone number and obtain global positioning system (GPS) coordinates of the phone.
The revelations, uncovered by blogger and privacy activist Christopher Soghoian, have spawned questions about the number of Sprint customers who have been under surveillance, as well as the legal process agents followed to obtain such data.
But a Sprint Nextel spokesman said that Soghoian, who recorded the Sprint manager’s statements at the closed conference, misunderstood what the figure represents. The number of customers whose GPS data was provided to local, state and federal law enforcement agencies was much less than 8 million, as was the total number of individual requests for data.
The spokesman wouldn’t disclose how many of Sprint’s 48 million customers had their GPS data shared, or indicate the number of unique surveillance requests from law enforcement. But he said that a single surveillance order against a lone target could generate thousands of GPS “pings” to the cell phone, as the police track the subject’s movements over the course of days or weeks. That, Sprint claims, is the source of the 8 million figure: it’s the cumulative number of times Sprint cell phones covertly reported their location to law enforcement over the year.
The spokesman also said that law enforcement agents have to obtain a court order for the data, except in special emergency circumstances.
The information about the data requests and portal comes from Paul Taylor, manager of Sprint’s Electronic Surveillance Team. He made the revelations at the Intelligent Support Systems (ISS) conference, a surveillance industry gathering for law enforcement and intelligence agencies and the companies that provide them with the technologies and capabilities to conduct surveillance.
The conference is closed to press, but Soghoian, who is a graduate student at Indiana University, obtained entry and recorded a couple of panel sessions, which he posted on his blog (see below). In one of the recordings, Taylor is heard saying that the automated web system was rolled out a year ago and that in 13 months it had processed more than 8 million requests for GPS data from law enforcement.
“We turned it on the web interface for law enforcement about one year ago last month, and we just passed 8 million requests,” Taylor is heard saying. “So there is no way on earth my team could have handled 8 million requests from law enforcement, just for GPS alone. So the tool has just really caught on fire with law enforcement. They also love that it is extremely inexpensive to operate and easy.”
Soghoian concluded on his blog that the quote provided proof that “location requests easily outnumber wiretaps, and … likely outnumber all other forms of surveillance request too.”
He cites a telecom attorney named Al Gidari who claimed at a talk last year that each of the major wireless carriers received about 100 requests a week for customer-location data. At 100 requests a week for each of the top four wireless carriers, the total should be around 20,000 requests a year.
“I now have proof that he significantly underestimated the number of requests by several orders of magnitude,” Soghoian writes.
But Sprint spokesman John Taylor (who is not related to Paul Taylor) says Soghoian had “grossly misrepresented” the 8 million figure, which doesn’t refer to unique requests or to individual customers, but to the total number of “pings” made on every number for the duration of a law enforcement request.
“The figure represents the number of individual pings for specific location information, made to the Sprint network as part of a series of law enforcement investigations and public safety assistance requests during the past year,” said spokesman Taylor. “It’s critical to note that a single case or investigation may generate thousands of individual pings to the network as the law enforcement or public safety agency attempts to track or locate an individual.”
There are four circumstances under which law enforcement agents can use the Sprint website and obtain GPS data: 1) under the authority of a court order; 2) to track the location of a customer who has made a 911 call; 3) in an emergency situation, such as tracking someone lost in the wilderness or trying to locate an abducted child or hostage; 4) with a customer’s consent.
In the case of court orders, Taylor said agents are required to provide Sprint with the order, after which the company provisions the law enforcement account to allow an agency to track the targeted phone number. Court orders cover a 60-day period, and agents can do automated pings to obtain real-time GPS data every three minutes throughout that 60-day period. Taylor says this accounts for the 8 million figure.
“If you can access the info every three minutes over 60 days, that adds up pretty quickly,” he told Threat Level.
He added that the GPS data includes only latitude and longitude and the date and time of the ping.
The automated system was set up so that law enforcement agents wouldn’t have to contact Sprint’s electronic surveillance team each time they wanted to ping a phone number throughout the 60 days of a court order. Agents still have to obtain a subpoena to get historic call detail records, such as phone numbers called, the date, time and duration of calls and the cell site and sector from which the calls were made.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/gps-data/
By Kim Zetter December 1, 2009
Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with customer location data more than 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009, according to a company manager who disclosed the statistic at a non-public interception and wiretapping conference in October.
The manager also revealed the existence of a previously undisclosed web portal that Sprint provides law enforcement to conduct automated “pings” to track users. Through the website, authorized agents can type in a mobile phone number and obtain global positioning system (GPS) coordinates of the phone.
The revelations, uncovered by blogger and privacy activist Christopher Soghoian, have spawned questions about the number of Sprint customers who have been under surveillance, as well as the legal process agents followed to obtain such data.
But a Sprint Nextel spokesman said that Soghoian, who recorded the Sprint manager’s statements at the closed conference, misunderstood what the figure represents. The number of customers whose GPS data was provided to local, state and federal law enforcement agencies was much less than 8 million, as was the total number of individual requests for data.
The spokesman wouldn’t disclose how many of Sprint’s 48 million customers had their GPS data shared, or indicate the number of unique surveillance requests from law enforcement. But he said that a single surveillance order against a lone target could generate thousands of GPS “pings” to the cell phone, as the police track the subject’s movements over the course of days or weeks. That, Sprint claims, is the source of the 8 million figure: it’s the cumulative number of times Sprint cell phones covertly reported their location to law enforcement over the year.
The spokesman also said that law enforcement agents have to obtain a court order for the data, except in special emergency circumstances.
The information about the data requests and portal comes from Paul Taylor, manager of Sprint’s Electronic Surveillance Team. He made the revelations at the Intelligent Support Systems (ISS) conference, a surveillance industry gathering for law enforcement and intelligence agencies and the companies that provide them with the technologies and capabilities to conduct surveillance.
The conference is closed to press, but Soghoian, who is a graduate student at Indiana University, obtained entry and recorded a couple of panel sessions, which he posted on his blog (see below). In one of the recordings, Taylor is heard saying that the automated web system was rolled out a year ago and that in 13 months it had processed more than 8 million requests for GPS data from law enforcement.
“We turned it on the web interface for law enforcement about one year ago last month, and we just passed 8 million requests,” Taylor is heard saying. “So there is no way on earth my team could have handled 8 million requests from law enforcement, just for GPS alone. So the tool has just really caught on fire with law enforcement. They also love that it is extremely inexpensive to operate and easy.”
Soghoian concluded on his blog that the quote provided proof that “location requests easily outnumber wiretaps, and … likely outnumber all other forms of surveillance request too.”
He cites a telecom attorney named Al Gidari who claimed at a talk last year that each of the major wireless carriers received about 100 requests a week for customer-location data. At 100 requests a week for each of the top four wireless carriers, the total should be around 20,000 requests a year.
“I now have proof that he significantly underestimated the number of requests by several orders of magnitude,” Soghoian writes.
But Sprint spokesman John Taylor (who is not related to Paul Taylor) says Soghoian had “grossly misrepresented” the 8 million figure, which doesn’t refer to unique requests or to individual customers, but to the total number of “pings” made on every number for the duration of a law enforcement request.
“The figure represents the number of individual pings for specific location information, made to the Sprint network as part of a series of law enforcement investigations and public safety assistance requests during the past year,” said spokesman Taylor. “It’s critical to note that a single case or investigation may generate thousands of individual pings to the network as the law enforcement or public safety agency attempts to track or locate an individual.”
There are four circumstances under which law enforcement agents can use the Sprint website and obtain GPS data: 1) under the authority of a court order; 2) to track the location of a customer who has made a 911 call; 3) in an emergency situation, such as tracking someone lost in the wilderness or trying to locate an abducted child or hostage; 4) with a customer’s consent.
In the case of court orders, Taylor said agents are required to provide Sprint with the order, after which the company provisions the law enforcement account to allow an agency to track the targeted phone number. Court orders cover a 60-day period, and agents can do automated pings to obtain real-time GPS data every three minutes throughout that 60-day period. Taylor says this accounts for the 8 million figure.
“If you can access the info every three minutes over 60 days, that adds up pretty quickly,” he told Threat Level.
He added that the GPS data includes only latitude and longitude and the date and time of the ping.
The automated system was set up so that law enforcement agents wouldn’t have to contact Sprint’s electronic surveillance team each time they wanted to ping a phone number throughout the 60 days of a court order. Agents still have to obtain a subpoena to get historic call detail records, such as phone numbers called, the date, time and duration of calls and the cell site and sector from which the calls were made.
Searching in Vain for the Obama Magic
Searching in Vain for the Obama Magic
http://www.spiegel.de/international...,664753,00.html
By Gabor Steingart
Never before has a speech by President Barack Obama felt as false as his Tuesday address announcing America's new strategy for Afghanistan. It seemed like a campaign speech combined with Bush rhetoric -- and left both dreamers and realists feeling distraught.
One can hardly blame the West Point leadership. The academy commanders did their best to ensure that Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama's speech would be well-received.
Just minutes before the president took the stage inside Eisenhower Hall, the gathered cadets were asked to respond "enthusiastically" to the speech. But it didn't help: The soldiers' reception was cool.
One didn't have to be a cadet on Tuesday to feel a bit of nausea upon hearing Obama's speech. It was the least truthful address that he has ever held. He spoke of responsibility, but almost every sentence smelled of party tactics. He demanded sacrifice, but he was unable to say what it was for exactly.
An additional 30,000 US soldiers are to march into Afghanistan -- and then they will march right back out again. America is going to war -- and from there it will continue ahead to peace. It was the speech of a Nobel War Prize laureate.
Just in Time for the Campaign
For each troop movement, Obama had a number to match. US strength in Afghanistan will be tripled relative to the Bush years, a fact that is sure to impress hawks in America. But just 18 months later, just in time for Obama's re-election campaign, the horror of war is to end and the draw down will begin. The doves of peace will be let free.
The speech continued in that vein. It was as though Obama had taken one of his old campaign speeches and merged it with a text from the library of ex-President George W. Bush. Extremists kill in the name of Islam, he said, before adding that it is one of the "world's great religions." He promised that responsibility for the country's security would soon be transferred to the government of President Hamid Karzai -- a government which he said was "corrupt." The Taliban is dangerous and growing stronger. But "America will have to show our strength in the way that we end wars," he added.
It was a dizzying combination of surge and withdrawal, of marching to and fro. The fast pace was reminiscent of plays about the French revolution: Troops enter from the right to loud cannon fire and then they exit to the left. And at the end, the dead are left on stage.
Obama's Magic No Longer Works
But in this case, the public was more disturbed than entertained. Indeed, one could see the phenomenon in a number of places in recent weeks: Obama's magic no longer works. The allure of his words has grown weaker.
It is not he himself who has changed, but rather the benchmark used to evaluate him. For a president, the unit of measurement is real life. A leader is seen by citizens through the prism of their lives -- their job, their household budget, where they live and suffer. And, in the case of the war on terror, where they sometimes die.
Political dreams and yearnings for the future belong elsewhere. That was where the political charmer Obama was able to successfully capture the imaginations of millions of voters. It is a place where campaigners -- particularly those with a talent for oration -- are fond of taking refuge. It is also where Obama set up his campaign headquarters, in an enormous tent called "Hope."
In his speech on America's new Afghanistan strategy, Obama tried to speak to both places. It was two speeches in one. That is why it felt so false. Both dreamers and realists were left feeling distraught.
The American president doesn't need any opponents at the moment. He's already got himself.
http://www.spiegel.de/international...,664753,00.html
By Gabor Steingart
Never before has a speech by President Barack Obama felt as false as his Tuesday address announcing America's new strategy for Afghanistan. It seemed like a campaign speech combined with Bush rhetoric -- and left both dreamers and realists feeling distraught.
One can hardly blame the West Point leadership. The academy commanders did their best to ensure that Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama's speech would be well-received.
Just minutes before the president took the stage inside Eisenhower Hall, the gathered cadets were asked to respond "enthusiastically" to the speech. But it didn't help: The soldiers' reception was cool.
One didn't have to be a cadet on Tuesday to feel a bit of nausea upon hearing Obama's speech. It was the least truthful address that he has ever held. He spoke of responsibility, but almost every sentence smelled of party tactics. He demanded sacrifice, but he was unable to say what it was for exactly.
An additional 30,000 US soldiers are to march into Afghanistan -- and then they will march right back out again. America is going to war -- and from there it will continue ahead to peace. It was the speech of a Nobel War Prize laureate.
Just in Time for the Campaign
For each troop movement, Obama had a number to match. US strength in Afghanistan will be tripled relative to the Bush years, a fact that is sure to impress hawks in America. But just 18 months later, just in time for Obama's re-election campaign, the horror of war is to end and the draw down will begin. The doves of peace will be let free.
The speech continued in that vein. It was as though Obama had taken one of his old campaign speeches and merged it with a text from the library of ex-President George W. Bush. Extremists kill in the name of Islam, he said, before adding that it is one of the "world's great religions." He promised that responsibility for the country's security would soon be transferred to the government of President Hamid Karzai -- a government which he said was "corrupt." The Taliban is dangerous and growing stronger. But "America will have to show our strength in the way that we end wars," he added.
It was a dizzying combination of surge and withdrawal, of marching to and fro. The fast pace was reminiscent of plays about the French revolution: Troops enter from the right to loud cannon fire and then they exit to the left. And at the end, the dead are left on stage.
Obama's Magic No Longer Works
But in this case, the public was more disturbed than entertained. Indeed, one could see the phenomenon in a number of places in recent weeks: Obama's magic no longer works. The allure of his words has grown weaker.
It is not he himself who has changed, but rather the benchmark used to evaluate him. For a president, the unit of measurement is real life. A leader is seen by citizens through the prism of their lives -- their job, their household budget, where they live and suffer. And, in the case of the war on terror, where they sometimes die.
Political dreams and yearnings for the future belong elsewhere. That was where the political charmer Obama was able to successfully capture the imaginations of millions of voters. It is a place where campaigners -- particularly those with a talent for oration -- are fond of taking refuge. It is also where Obama set up his campaign headquarters, in an enormous tent called "Hope."
In his speech on America's new Afghanistan strategy, Obama tried to speak to both places. It was two speeches in one. That is why it felt so false. Both dreamers and realists were left feeling distraught.
The American president doesn't need any opponents at the moment. He's already got himself.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Yahoo: Our spying policy would ’shock’ customers
A little-noticed letter from Yahoo! to the US Marshals Service offers troubling insight into the surveillance policies of one of the Internet's largest email providers.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request seeking details of Yahoo's! policies allowing the Justice Department to request wiretaps of its users and the amount they charge US taxpayers per wiretap -- the search engine leviathan declared in a 12-page letter that they couldn't provide information on their approach because their pricing scheme would "shock" customers. The news was first reported by Kim Zetter at Wired.
"It is reasonable to assume from these comments that the [pricing] information, if disclosed, would be used to "shame" Yahoo! and other companies -- and to "shock" their customers," a lawyer for the company writes. "Therefore, release of Yahoo!'s information is reasonably likely to lead to impairment of its reputation for protection of user privacy and security, which is a competitive disadvantage for technology companies."
Yahoo! also argues that because their price sheet for wiretaps was "voluntarily submitted" to the US Marshals Service, it is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act law.
Verizon, meanwhile, says (letter PDF) they can't provide details on how much they charge for wiretaps because it would be "confusing."
“Customers may see a listing of records, information or assistance that is available only to law enforcement,” Verizon writes, “but call in to Verizon and seek those same services. Such calls would stretch limited resources, especially those that are reserved only for law enforcement emergencies.”
Consumers might “become unnecessarily afraid that their lines have been tapped or call Verizon to ask if their lines are tapped (a question we cannot answer),” the telecom giant adds.
Verizon also revealed it "receives tens of thousands of requests for customer records, or other customer information from law enforcement."
The Freedom of Information request was filed by muckraker Christopher Soghoian.
"Assuming a conservative estimate of 20,000 requests per year, Verizon alone receives more requests from law enforcement per year than can be explained by any published surveillance statistics," Soghoian responds. "That doesn't mean the published stats are necessarily incorrect -- merely that most types of surveillance are not reported.
"In the summer of 2009, I decided to try and follow the money trail in order to determine how often Internet firms were disclosing their customers’ private information to the government," he adds later. "I theorized that if I could obtain the price lists of each ISP, detailing the price for each kind of service, and invoices paid by the various parts of the Federal government, then I might be able to reverse engineer some approximate statistics. In order to obtain these documents, I filed Freedom of Information Act requests with every part of the Department of Justice that I could think of."
Cox Communications, meanwhile, says they charge "$2,500 to fulfill a pen register/trap-and-trace order for 60 days, and $2,000 for each additional 60-day-interval," Zetter notes. "It charges $3,500 for the first 30 days of a wiretap, and $2,500 for each additional 30 days. Thirty days worth of a customer’s call detail records costs $40."
"Comcast’s pricing list," she adds, "which was already leaked to the internet in 2007, indicated that it charges at least $1,000 for the first month of a wiretap, and $750 per month thereafter."
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request seeking details of Yahoo's! policies allowing the Justice Department to request wiretaps of its users and the amount they charge US taxpayers per wiretap -- the search engine leviathan declared in a 12-page letter that they couldn't provide information on their approach because their pricing scheme would "shock" customers. The news was first reported by Kim Zetter at Wired.
"It is reasonable to assume from these comments that the [pricing] information, if disclosed, would be used to "shame" Yahoo! and other companies -- and to "shock" their customers," a lawyer for the company writes. "Therefore, release of Yahoo!'s information is reasonably likely to lead to impairment of its reputation for protection of user privacy and security, which is a competitive disadvantage for technology companies."
Yahoo! also argues that because their price sheet for wiretaps was "voluntarily submitted" to the US Marshals Service, it is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act law.
Verizon, meanwhile, says (letter PDF) they can't provide details on how much they charge for wiretaps because it would be "confusing."
“Customers may see a listing of records, information or assistance that is available only to law enforcement,” Verizon writes, “but call in to Verizon and seek those same services. Such calls would stretch limited resources, especially those that are reserved only for law enforcement emergencies.”
Consumers might “become unnecessarily afraid that their lines have been tapped or call Verizon to ask if their lines are tapped (a question we cannot answer),” the telecom giant adds.
Verizon also revealed it "receives tens of thousands of requests for customer records, or other customer information from law enforcement."
The Freedom of Information request was filed by muckraker Christopher Soghoian.
"Assuming a conservative estimate of 20,000 requests per year, Verizon alone receives more requests from law enforcement per year than can be explained by any published surveillance statistics," Soghoian responds. "That doesn't mean the published stats are necessarily incorrect -- merely that most types of surveillance are not reported.
"In the summer of 2009, I decided to try and follow the money trail in order to determine how often Internet firms were disclosing their customers’ private information to the government," he adds later. "I theorized that if I could obtain the price lists of each ISP, detailing the price for each kind of service, and invoices paid by the various parts of the Federal government, then I might be able to reverse engineer some approximate statistics. In order to obtain these documents, I filed Freedom of Information Act requests with every part of the Department of Justice that I could think of."
Cox Communications, meanwhile, says they charge "$2,500 to fulfill a pen register/trap-and-trace order for 60 days, and $2,000 for each additional 60-day-interval," Zetter notes. "It charges $3,500 for the first 30 days of a wiretap, and $2,500 for each additional 30 days. Thirty days worth of a customer’s call detail records costs $40."
"Comcast’s pricing list," she adds, "which was already leaked to the internet in 2007, indicated that it charges at least $1,000 for the first month of a wiretap, and $750 per month thereafter."
EFF sues to discover how US collects intel over Facebook, MySpace
The Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against several government agencies hoping to force the revelation of how the U.S. utilizes social networks like Facebook and MySpace to collect intelligence.
"Millions of people use social networking sites like Facebook every day, disclosing lots of information about their private lives," said James Tucker, a student working with EFF, in a media advisory. "As Congress debates new privacy laws covering sites like Facebook, lawmakers and voters alike need to know how the government is already using this data and what is at stake."
However, when EFF went looking for that information by filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, they ran into a stone wall of silence.
The suit was filed in cooperation with the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic at Berkeley. It demands immediate publication of government policies dealing with social networks during an investigation.
"Internet users deserve to know what information is collected, under what circumstances, and who has access to it," said Shane Witnov, a law student working on the case, according to the EFF's release. "These agencies need to abide by the law and release their records on social networking surveillance."
The EFF's full complaint, which encompasses the Central Intelligence Agency, Departments of Justice, Defense and Homeland Security, the Treasury and Director of National Intelligence, can be read here [PDF link].
"Millions of people use social networking sites like Facebook every day, disclosing lots of information about their private lives," said James Tucker, a student working with EFF, in a media advisory. "As Congress debates new privacy laws covering sites like Facebook, lawmakers and voters alike need to know how the government is already using this data and what is at stake."
However, when EFF went looking for that information by filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, they ran into a stone wall of silence.
The suit was filed in cooperation with the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic at Berkeley. It demands immediate publication of government policies dealing with social networks during an investigation.
"Internet users deserve to know what information is collected, under what circumstances, and who has access to it," said Shane Witnov, a law student working on the case, according to the EFF's release. "These agencies need to abide by the law and release their records on social networking surveillance."
The EFF's full complaint, which encompasses the Central Intelligence Agency, Departments of Justice, Defense and Homeland Security, the Treasury and Director of National Intelligence, can be read here [PDF link].
Blair warned Bush against Iraq push after 9/11: advisor
Blair warned Bush against Iraq push after 9/11: advisor
http://www.google.com/hostednews/af...ZzlVRbxWKVORV4A
(AFP) – 18 hours ago
LONDON — George W. Bush first mentioned a link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda to Tony Blair days after 9/11, but the premier advised against pursuing the Iraqi dictator, an aide said Monday.
The then US president spoke to Blair in a telephone conversation on September 14, 2001 and mentioned the possible Iraq link, said David Manning, who was Blair's foreign policy adviser at the time.
In the conversation Bush "said that he thought there might be evidence that there was some connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda," Manning told Britain's Iraq war inquiry, which started last week.
"The prime minister's response to this was that the evidence would have to be very compelling indeed to justify taking any action against Iraq," he added.
The inquiry, Britain's third related to the conflict, is looking at its role in Iraq between 2001 and 2009, when its operations ended, and is to report its findings by the end of 2010.
In its first week the probe heard that Britain's ambassador to the United Nations at the time, Jeremy Greenstock, believed the invasion to be "of questionable legitimacy".
http://www.google.com/hostednews/af...ZzlVRbxWKVORV4A
(AFP) – 18 hours ago
LONDON — George W. Bush first mentioned a link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda to Tony Blair days after 9/11, but the premier advised against pursuing the Iraqi dictator, an aide said Monday.
The then US president spoke to Blair in a telephone conversation on September 14, 2001 and mentioned the possible Iraq link, said David Manning, who was Blair's foreign policy adviser at the time.
In the conversation Bush "said that he thought there might be evidence that there was some connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda," Manning told Britain's Iraq war inquiry, which started last week.
"The prime minister's response to this was that the evidence would have to be very compelling indeed to justify taking any action against Iraq," he added.
The inquiry, Britain's third related to the conflict, is looking at its role in Iraq between 2001 and 2009, when its operations ended, and is to report its findings by the end of 2010.
In its first week the probe heard that Britain's ambassador to the United Nations at the time, Jeremy Greenstock, believed the invasion to be "of questionable legitimacy".
Rep. Hinchey: Bush ‘intentionally let Bin Laden get away’
Rep. Hinchey: Bush ‘intentionally let Bin Laden get away’
http://rawstory.com/2009/11/rep-hin...bin-laden-away/
By Stephen C. Webster
Monday, November 30th, 2009 -- 8:30 pm
The Bush administration permitted the world's most notorious terrorist mastermind to escape because it needed additional justification to invade Iraq, according to a Democratic lawmaker from New York.
Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) leveled the allegation during an interview with MSNBC host David Shuster on Monday afternoon.
"Look what happened with regard to our invasion into Afghanistan, how we apparently intentionally let bin Laden get away," he said. "How we intentionally did not follow the Taliban and al-Qaeda as they were escaping. That was done by the previous administration because they knew very well that if they would capture al-Qaeda, there would be no justification for an invasion in Iraq."
"They deliberately let Osama bin Laden get away?" asked an incredulous Shuster. "They deliberately let the head of al-Qaeda get away right after he, right after the 9/11 attacks? You really believe that?"
"Yes, I do," Hinchey replied. "There's no question about that. The leader of the military operation in the United States called back our military, called them back from going after the head of al-Qaeda because there was a sense that they didn't want to capture him."
"...To suggest that they deliberately let Osama bin Laden get away so they could invade Iraq, that will strike a lot of people as crazy," Shuster countered.
"I don't think it will strike a lot of people as crazy," Hinchey said. "I think it will strike a lot of people as very accurate and all you have to do is look at the facts of that set of circumstances and you can see that's exactly what happened. When we went in there, when our military went in there, we could have captured them. We could have captured most of the Taliban and we could have captured the al-Qaeda. But we didn't, and we didn't because of the need felt by the previous administration and the previous head of the military -- that need to attack Iraq, which is completely unjustified."
Hinchy apparently based his allegations on a recently released Senate report that found then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rejected calls for reinforcements in December 2001, when the military allegedly had bin Laden trapped in Afghanistan.
"The vast array of American military power, from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the marine corps and the army, was kept on the sidelines," the report says.
"Instead, the US command chose to rely on airstrikes and untrained Afghan militias to attack Bin Laden and on Pakistan's loosely organized Frontier Corps to seal his escape routes."
Entitled "Tora Bora revisited: how we failed to get Bin Laden and why it matters today," the report -- commissioned by Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- says Bin Laden expected to die and had even written a will.
"But the Al-Qaeda leader would live to fight another day. Fewer than 100 American commandos were on the scene with their Afghan allies and calls for reinforcements to launch an assault were rejected.
"Requests were also turned down for US troops to block the mountain paths leading to sanctuary a few miles away in Pakistan.
"The decision not to deploy American forces to go after Bin Laden or block his escape was made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, General Tommy Franks," the report says.
"On or around December 16, two days after writing his will, Bin Laden and an entourage of bodyguards walked unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan's unregulated tribal area. Most analysts say he is still there today."
This video was broadcast by MSNBC on Monday, Nov. 30, 2009, as snipped by Talking Points Memo.
http://rawstory.com/2009/11/rep-hin...bin-laden-away/
By Stephen C. Webster
Monday, November 30th, 2009 -- 8:30 pm
The Bush administration permitted the world's most notorious terrorist mastermind to escape because it needed additional justification to invade Iraq, according to a Democratic lawmaker from New York.
Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) leveled the allegation during an interview with MSNBC host David Shuster on Monday afternoon.
"Look what happened with regard to our invasion into Afghanistan, how we apparently intentionally let bin Laden get away," he said. "How we intentionally did not follow the Taliban and al-Qaeda as they were escaping. That was done by the previous administration because they knew very well that if they would capture al-Qaeda, there would be no justification for an invasion in Iraq."
"They deliberately let Osama bin Laden get away?" asked an incredulous Shuster. "They deliberately let the head of al-Qaeda get away right after he, right after the 9/11 attacks? You really believe that?"
"Yes, I do," Hinchey replied. "There's no question about that. The leader of the military operation in the United States called back our military, called them back from going after the head of al-Qaeda because there was a sense that they didn't want to capture him."
"...To suggest that they deliberately let Osama bin Laden get away so they could invade Iraq, that will strike a lot of people as crazy," Shuster countered.
"I don't think it will strike a lot of people as crazy," Hinchey said. "I think it will strike a lot of people as very accurate and all you have to do is look at the facts of that set of circumstances and you can see that's exactly what happened. When we went in there, when our military went in there, we could have captured them. We could have captured most of the Taliban and we could have captured the al-Qaeda. But we didn't, and we didn't because of the need felt by the previous administration and the previous head of the military -- that need to attack Iraq, which is completely unjustified."
Hinchy apparently based his allegations on a recently released Senate report that found then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rejected calls for reinforcements in December 2001, when the military allegedly had bin Laden trapped in Afghanistan.
"The vast array of American military power, from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the marine corps and the army, was kept on the sidelines," the report says.
"Instead, the US command chose to rely on airstrikes and untrained Afghan militias to attack Bin Laden and on Pakistan's loosely organized Frontier Corps to seal his escape routes."
Entitled "Tora Bora revisited: how we failed to get Bin Laden and why it matters today," the report -- commissioned by Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- says Bin Laden expected to die and had even written a will.
"But the Al-Qaeda leader would live to fight another day. Fewer than 100 American commandos were on the scene with their Afghan allies and calls for reinforcements to launch an assault were rejected.
"Requests were also turned down for US troops to block the mountain paths leading to sanctuary a few miles away in Pakistan.
"The decision not to deploy American forces to go after Bin Laden or block his escape was made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, General Tommy Franks," the report says.
"On or around December 16, two days after writing his will, Bin Laden and an entourage of bodyguards walked unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan's unregulated tribal area. Most analysts say he is still there today."
This video was broadcast by MSNBC on Monday, Nov. 30, 2009, as snipped by Talking Points Memo.
Like It Was All Part Of The Plan
Like It Was All Part Of The Plan
Jon Gold
12/1/2009
Have you been paying attention to the Iraq Inquiry currently taking place in Britain? A lot of interesting information has come out that confirms what we all knew.
According to Sir William Patey, in February 2001, "the UK knew that some in the new US administration wanted to topple Saddam." This coincides with former Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill who said, "from the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," and that "it was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this."
Like Donald Rumsfeld, and Michael Ledeen, Condoleezza Rice started planning for the Iraq War within hours of the 9/11 attacks. Sir Christopher Meyer, "a former British ambassador to the United States says then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice talked to him about Iraq and Saddam Hussein hours after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001." Also, "George Bush tried to make a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida in a conversation with Tony Blair three days after the 9/11 attacks, according to Blair's foreign policy adviser of the time."
They came into office wanting to go to war with Iraq. The very first thing on the agenda was figuring out a way to go to war with Iraq. Within hours of the 9/11 attacks, the very first thing members of the Bush Administration did was start planning for war with Iraq.
Like it was all part of the plan.
Jon Gold
12/1/2009
Have you been paying attention to the Iraq Inquiry currently taking place in Britain? A lot of interesting information has come out that confirms what we all knew.
According to Sir William Patey, in February 2001, "the UK knew that some in the new US administration wanted to topple Saddam." This coincides with former Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill who said, "from the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," and that "it was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this."
Like Donald Rumsfeld, and Michael Ledeen, Condoleezza Rice started planning for the Iraq War within hours of the 9/11 attacks. Sir Christopher Meyer, "a former British ambassador to the United States says then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice talked to him about Iraq and Saddam Hussein hours after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001." Also, "George Bush tried to make a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida in a conversation with Tony Blair three days after the 9/11 attacks, according to Blair's foreign policy adviser of the time."
They came into office wanting to go to war with Iraq. The very first thing on the agenda was figuring out a way to go to war with Iraq. Within hours of the 9/11 attacks, the very first thing members of the Bush Administration did was start planning for war with Iraq.
Like it was all part of the plan.
President Obama invokes memory of 9/11 as he outlines vision for Afghan war
President Obama invokes memory of 9/11 as he outlines vision for Afghan war
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ne...offset=0&page=1
President Obama invoked the threat of nuclear terrorism and the memory of the 9/11 attacks in an address to the American nation last night that began a important new offensive in Afghanistan with 30,000 extra troops.
Confronting head-on the criticism that he has dithered over the Afghan war, Mr Obama said that he owed the American people an exhaustive review of his options.
He said that the situation he inherited in Afghanistan was not sustainable, that parallels with Vietnam were not applicable and that the threat to US security posed by the Taleban and al-Qaeda remained all too real.
“I do not make this decision lightly,” he told an audience at West Point Military Academy, 50 miles north of New York. “I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicentre of the violent extremism practised by al-Qaeda.”
After 92 days of slow and at times agonised debate over how to prosecute the war in Afghanistan, Mr Obama is suddenly a man in a hurry: he wants 30,000 US troops to hit the ground within the next six months, an enormous logistical and financial challenge. The troops would start withdrawing by 2011. The extra US troops would be supported by at least 5,000 more soldiers from other Nato members, he said.
Mr Obama said that his surge was intended to secure Afghanistan and hand it back to its own security forces within three years.
“The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 — the fastest pace possible — so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centres,” he added.
It was critical “to train competent Afghan security forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight” and to create the conditions for an eventual American exit strategy.
The pace of the deployment of the long-awaited surge and the start of an American withdrawal has been accelerated because of Mr Obama’s insistence on a provisional timetable for withdrawal.
“Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011,” Mr Obama said.
“We will continue to advise and assist Afghanistan’s security forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul. But it will be clear to the Afghan Government – and, more importantly, to the Afghan people – that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country.”
White House officials said that he had ordered the military to hit the Taleban hard and fast. He wants to show quick gains in the battle for the hearts and minds of the civilian population. Unstated, but as important to the White House, is the battle to shore up crumbling support for the war at home.
Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, will travel to Brussels tomorrow to ask America’s Nato allies to provide extra troops for the surge.
The combined US and Nato forces would amount to nearly the 40,000 new troops requested three months ago by General Stanley McChrystal, Mr Obama’s ground commander. The new deployments, in addition to the 22,000 troops Mr Obama ordered to Afghanistan early this year, will bring the total number of US troops there to more than 100,000 — more than half of whom will have been sent by Mr Obama.
The scale of the challenge is staggering. It costs $1 million a year to station a single soldier in Afghanistan. New bases will have to be built, and huge numbers of extra tanks, armoured vehicles and weapons will need to be airlifted into the war zone.
General McChrystal’s strategy is a classic counter-insurgency plan: he wants to secure the ten largest cities, protecting civilians from Taleban attack. If he succeeds in building trust and security the hope is that ordinary Afghans will begin to provide good intelligence on the whereabouts and identities of the Taleban leadership and al-Qaeda operatives. Armed with such intelligence, specialist units — like the hunt-and-kill squads General McChrystal led in Iraq — will seek out and eliminate the enemy.
General McChrystal also plans to pull forces out of the rural outposts, effectively ceding sparsely populated areas to the Taleban. He believes if he can control and protect the heavily populated areas and the connecting roads, the country can be stabilised.
The first deployment of 9,000 US Marines begins next month. They will head to Helmand province in the south, a Taleban stronghold.
Next in will be 1,000 military trainers. Mr Obama wants the Afghan Army increased to 134,000 by next autumn, three years ahead of schedule, with 10,000 of them stationed in Helmand. He also wants the Afghan police force greatly increased in size.
The Pentagon is also expected to send the 101st Airborne Division and 10th Mountain Division as combat troops, mostly for southern Afghanistan. In all, 4,000 military trainers are expected to arrive in the country.
President Karzai of Afghanistan has been told in the clearest terms that the plan is also heavily contingent on his performance. He must drop corrupt ministers and governors and institute real reforms within a Government that is at present viewed as a deeply unreliable partner. Mr Karzai has also been told that Mr Obama is holding the option to delay or halt troop deployments if his Government does not meet specific benchmarks, or targets, both on the political and military fronts.
Gordon Brown, who was briefed by Mr Obama on Monday, said the plan was “to create the space for an effective political strategy to work, weakening the Taleban by strengthening Afghanistan itself”. He added that the strategy called for “transfer of lead security responsibility to the Afghans — district by district, province by province — with the first districts and provinces potentially being handed over during the next year”.
Mr Obama said: “Because this is an international effort, I have asked that our commitment be joined by contributions from our allies.”
“Our friends have fought and bled and died alongside us in Afghanistan. Now, we must come together to end this war successfully. For what’s at stake is not simply a test of Nato’s credibility. What’s at stake is the security of our Allies, and the common security of the world.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ne...offset=0&page=1
President Obama invoked the threat of nuclear terrorism and the memory of the 9/11 attacks in an address to the American nation last night that began a important new offensive in Afghanistan with 30,000 extra troops.
Confronting head-on the criticism that he has dithered over the Afghan war, Mr Obama said that he owed the American people an exhaustive review of his options.
He said that the situation he inherited in Afghanistan was not sustainable, that parallels with Vietnam were not applicable and that the threat to US security posed by the Taleban and al-Qaeda remained all too real.
“I do not make this decision lightly,” he told an audience at West Point Military Academy, 50 miles north of New York. “I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicentre of the violent extremism practised by al-Qaeda.”
After 92 days of slow and at times agonised debate over how to prosecute the war in Afghanistan, Mr Obama is suddenly a man in a hurry: he wants 30,000 US troops to hit the ground within the next six months, an enormous logistical and financial challenge. The troops would start withdrawing by 2011. The extra US troops would be supported by at least 5,000 more soldiers from other Nato members, he said.
Mr Obama said that his surge was intended to secure Afghanistan and hand it back to its own security forces within three years.
“The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 — the fastest pace possible — so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centres,” he added.
It was critical “to train competent Afghan security forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight” and to create the conditions for an eventual American exit strategy.
The pace of the deployment of the long-awaited surge and the start of an American withdrawal has been accelerated because of Mr Obama’s insistence on a provisional timetable for withdrawal.
“Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011,” Mr Obama said.
“We will continue to advise and assist Afghanistan’s security forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul. But it will be clear to the Afghan Government – and, more importantly, to the Afghan people – that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country.”
White House officials said that he had ordered the military to hit the Taleban hard and fast. He wants to show quick gains in the battle for the hearts and minds of the civilian population. Unstated, but as important to the White House, is the battle to shore up crumbling support for the war at home.
Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, will travel to Brussels tomorrow to ask America’s Nato allies to provide extra troops for the surge.
The combined US and Nato forces would amount to nearly the 40,000 new troops requested three months ago by General Stanley McChrystal, Mr Obama’s ground commander. The new deployments, in addition to the 22,000 troops Mr Obama ordered to Afghanistan early this year, will bring the total number of US troops there to more than 100,000 — more than half of whom will have been sent by Mr Obama.
The scale of the challenge is staggering. It costs $1 million a year to station a single soldier in Afghanistan. New bases will have to be built, and huge numbers of extra tanks, armoured vehicles and weapons will need to be airlifted into the war zone.
General McChrystal’s strategy is a classic counter-insurgency plan: he wants to secure the ten largest cities, protecting civilians from Taleban attack. If he succeeds in building trust and security the hope is that ordinary Afghans will begin to provide good intelligence on the whereabouts and identities of the Taleban leadership and al-Qaeda operatives. Armed with such intelligence, specialist units — like the hunt-and-kill squads General McChrystal led in Iraq — will seek out and eliminate the enemy.
General McChrystal also plans to pull forces out of the rural outposts, effectively ceding sparsely populated areas to the Taleban. He believes if he can control and protect the heavily populated areas and the connecting roads, the country can be stabilised.
The first deployment of 9,000 US Marines begins next month. They will head to Helmand province in the south, a Taleban stronghold.
Next in will be 1,000 military trainers. Mr Obama wants the Afghan Army increased to 134,000 by next autumn, three years ahead of schedule, with 10,000 of them stationed in Helmand. He also wants the Afghan police force greatly increased in size.
The Pentagon is also expected to send the 101st Airborne Division and 10th Mountain Division as combat troops, mostly for southern Afghanistan. In all, 4,000 military trainers are expected to arrive in the country.
President Karzai of Afghanistan has been told in the clearest terms that the plan is also heavily contingent on his performance. He must drop corrupt ministers and governors and institute real reforms within a Government that is at present viewed as a deeply unreliable partner. Mr Karzai has also been told that Mr Obama is holding the option to delay or halt troop deployments if his Government does not meet specific benchmarks, or targets, both on the political and military fronts.
Gordon Brown, who was briefed by Mr Obama on Monday, said the plan was “to create the space for an effective political strategy to work, weakening the Taleban by strengthening Afghanistan itself”. He added that the strategy called for “transfer of lead security responsibility to the Afghans — district by district, province by province — with the first districts and provinces potentially being handed over during the next year”.
Mr Obama said: “Because this is an international effort, I have asked that our commitment be joined by contributions from our allies.”
“Our friends have fought and bled and died alongside us in Afghanistan. Now, we must come together to end this war successfully. For what’s at stake is not simply a test of Nato’s credibility. What’s at stake is the security of our Allies, and the common security of the world.”
ACLU: Obama’s reversal on Patriot Act reform ‘a major travesty’
ACLU: Obama’s reversal on Patriot Act reform ‘a major travesty’
http://rawstory.com/2009/11/obamas-...arlier-stances/
By Sahil Kapur
Monday, November 30th, 2009 -- 1:33 pm
Key components in the USA Patriot Act are set to expire at the end of the year, but President Barack Obama is seeking to extend them, reversing his stark opposition in the past to the same provisions.
"The president's reversal on Patriot Act reform is a major travesty," said Michelle Richardson, Legislative Counsel for the leading civil rights group ACLU, in an interview with Raw Story. "There have been many, many abuses of power in the last four years."
These three main aspects in question allow the government to acquire private information about civilians through warrantless wiretapping of phone calls and emails, as well as seizure of records from credit reporting companies, banks, internet service providers and libraries. Another component includes the loosening of conditions under which an individual can be accused of providing "material support" to terrorists.
In 2005, then-Senator Obama pledged to filibuster a Bush-sponsored bill that included several of these exact components, calling it "just plain wrong" in a Senate speech.
"Government has decided to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or private document -- through library books they've read and phone calls they've made," he declared, adding: "We don't have to settle for a Patriot Act that sacrifices our liberties or our safety -- we can have one that secures both."
ABC News reports that "Four years ago, then Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who taught constitutional law, voted down the same provisions along with all Senate Democrats who insisted on changes to the bill that better protected libraries, limited clandestine search warrants, roving wiretaps, and FBI gag orders."
"This was the most opportune time for the surveillance authorities to reverse course," Richardson told Raw Story. "If these programs continue, more abuses of power are absolutely inevitable -- there's no way around it. The level of secrecy granted by Congress is very troubling."
Obama has championed the continuation of all three provisions until at least 2013, a wish that has been granted by the Senate Judiciary Committee and two-thirds fulfilled by the House counterpart. (The House version slaps greater oversight and restrictions on acquiring personal records of non-US citizens.) While he has always been resolutely opposed to former President George W. Bush's vision of the Act, he has defended certain parts of it, and voted in 2006 to re-authorize an altered version.
"Overall, the Obama administration has made marginal improvements but is largely a continuation of the Bush administration with respect to civil liberties," Richardson told Raw Story, referring to the president's rising acquiescence to his predecessor's approach.
The Patriot Act, initially pushed through Congress quickly after 9/11 by the Bush administration as an alleged necessity to combat future attacks, has long been fiercely criticized by the ACLU and other civil libertarians as a gross violation of privacy rights under the Constitution.
Salon's Glenn Greenwald, a former civil rights litigator, recently wrote: "Democrats spent so many years screaming bloody murder over Bush's use of indefinite detention, military commissions, state secrets, renditions, and extreme secrecy -- policies Obama has largely and/or completely adopted as his own."
http://rawstory.com/2009/11/obamas-...arlier-stances/
By Sahil Kapur
Monday, November 30th, 2009 -- 1:33 pm
Key components in the USA Patriot Act are set to expire at the end of the year, but President Barack Obama is seeking to extend them, reversing his stark opposition in the past to the same provisions.
"The president's reversal on Patriot Act reform is a major travesty," said Michelle Richardson, Legislative Counsel for the leading civil rights group ACLU, in an interview with Raw Story. "There have been many, many abuses of power in the last four years."
These three main aspects in question allow the government to acquire private information about civilians through warrantless wiretapping of phone calls and emails, as well as seizure of records from credit reporting companies, banks, internet service providers and libraries. Another component includes the loosening of conditions under which an individual can be accused of providing "material support" to terrorists.
In 2005, then-Senator Obama pledged to filibuster a Bush-sponsored bill that included several of these exact components, calling it "just plain wrong" in a Senate speech.
"Government has decided to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or private document -- through library books they've read and phone calls they've made," he declared, adding: "We don't have to settle for a Patriot Act that sacrifices our liberties or our safety -- we can have one that secures both."
ABC News reports that "Four years ago, then Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who taught constitutional law, voted down the same provisions along with all Senate Democrats who insisted on changes to the bill that better protected libraries, limited clandestine search warrants, roving wiretaps, and FBI gag orders."
"This was the most opportune time for the surveillance authorities to reverse course," Richardson told Raw Story. "If these programs continue, more abuses of power are absolutely inevitable -- there's no way around it. The level of secrecy granted by Congress is very troubling."
Obama has championed the continuation of all three provisions until at least 2013, a wish that has been granted by the Senate Judiciary Committee and two-thirds fulfilled by the House counterpart. (The House version slaps greater oversight and restrictions on acquiring personal records of non-US citizens.) While he has always been resolutely opposed to former President George W. Bush's vision of the Act, he has defended certain parts of it, and voted in 2006 to re-authorize an altered version.
"Overall, the Obama administration has made marginal improvements but is largely a continuation of the Bush administration with respect to civil liberties," Richardson told Raw Story, referring to the president's rising acquiescence to his predecessor's approach.
The Patriot Act, initially pushed through Congress quickly after 9/11 by the Bush administration as an alleged necessity to combat future attacks, has long been fiercely criticized by the ACLU and other civil libertarians as a gross violation of privacy rights under the Constitution.
Salon's Glenn Greenwald, a former civil rights litigator, recently wrote: "Democrats spent so many years screaming bloody murder over Bush's use of indefinite detention, military commissions, state secrets, renditions, and extreme secrecy -- policies Obama has largely and/or completely adopted as his own."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
