Major Cuts In US Forces–Major Hiring of Drone Operators and Cyber-Technicians

[Since this is one report which keeps getting disappeared from this site (all of the disappeared articles concern the US Special Forces, primarily) it will remain fixed to the front page.  You can read all about the growing network and its call for technicians in the series "Smashing Greater Central Asia" included below.]

Manufacturing Justification for the NATO Takeover of Central Asia–Smashing Greater Central Asia – (Part One)

Smashing Greater Central Asia—Part II

Smashing Greater Central Asia—Part III   

Smashing Greater Central Asia – Part IV

Report: Military realignment to emphasize drones and special forces

National JournalJanuary 26, 2012

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will outline on Thursday elements of the Pentagon’s $525 billion fiscal 2013 budget, including a plan to “expand its global network of drones and special-operations bases” even as it cuts back on conventional forces, The Wall Street Journal reports. The proposed budget will include the first of $487 billion in cuts over 10 years.

The plan calls for a 30 percent increase in the American drone fleet in coming years. It also seeks a 10 percent increase in special-operations forces over the next four years, from 63,750 this year to 70,000 in 2015, and the deployment of more special-operations teams at “lily pad” bases around the globe where “they can mentor local allies and launch missions,” according to The Journal.

Despite the emphasis on drones and special-operations forces, the Pentagon still plans to invest in more conventional equipment, including the F-35 stealth fighter as a “counterweight to rising power, including China,” though the department will announce this week that it “is going to slow procurement of the new plane.”

Afghan Northern Alliance Allies Betrayed by Obama

Meet with U.S. Congressmen in Berlin
January 9, 2012 

Washington - Today, Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX-01) along with Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46), Loretta Sanchez (CA-47) and Steve King (IA-05) held a press conference in Berlin, Germany, on their private meeting with Northern Alliance Leaders on Afghan Strategy. These leaders who fought with embedded Special Forces to initially defeat the Taliban represent over 60-percent of the Afghan people, yet are being entirely disregarded by the Obama and Karzai Administrations in negotiations. Instead, the Obama regime is choosing to now make concessions to the group that helped train for the 9-11 attacks and whose leader proclaimed on Afghan TV recently that the U.S. has been defeated and is now begging them for negotiations.

Rep. Gohmert and the individuals, listed below, released the following joint statement:

“We have supported the mission of the Coalition Forces in Afghanistan. It is our fervent desire that the Coalition Forces be successful. Yet, after the departure of the Coalition Forces, the enormous American, Coalition, and Afghan investment with their lives and treasure is currently in great peril of having been in vain. Our concern is that the present political system is dysfunctional because all the power is centralized in a way that no American would tolerate in the United States.  The current system has fatally concentrated decision-making to whoever is President of the country.  The Afghan President appoints the governors of each province and district, the mayor of every town, every provincial chief of police, one third of the entire Senate, and even every judge in Afghanistan.”

“This centralized power has led to massive corruption, disenfranchisement of a large segment of the Afghan people, obstacles to economic development, massive abuses of power, increasing political instability, poor governance, and a vast undermining of law and order.”

“We call for a national dialogue on a revised Constitution to correct the inherent flaws in the present power structure by decentralizing the political system, making it more compatible with the diverse political, social and cultural nature of Afghanistan. The Afghan people deserve and need a parliamentary form of democracy instead of a personality-centered Presidential system.’

“We firmly believe that any negotiation with the Taliban can only be acceptable, and therefore effective, if all parties to the conflict are involved in the process.  The present form of discussions with the Taliban is flawed, as it excludes anti-Taliban Afghans. It must be recalled that the Taliban extremists and their Al-Qaeda supporters were defeated by Afghans resisting extremism with minimal human embedded support from the United States and International community. The present negotiations with the Taliban fail to take into account the risks, sacrifices and legitimate interests of the Afghans who ended the brutal oppression of all Afghans.”

“In order to speed the withdrawal of international forces, the participants believe it is essential to strengthen regional and national institutions that are inclusive and represent the concerns of all the communities of Afghanistan.”

“The participants favor a change in the Electoral System from a Single Non Transferable Vote System to a nationally accepted variant of the Proportional Representation system with equal opportunities for independent candidates, the political parties, or tribal representatives. We also support the election of Governors and empowerment of provincial councils. Such elected Governors and provincial councils should also have authority for such things as creating budgets and generating revenue, overseeing police and healthcare, as well as establishing educational authority, if they so desire.”

Mr. Ahmed Zia Massoud, Chairman, National Front

General Abdul Rashid Dostum, Leader, National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan

Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq, Leader, People´s Unity Party of Afghanistan

Mr. Amrullah Saleh, Former Director, Afghan National Security Directorate

Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-California)

Representative Loretta Sanchez (D-California)

Represenative Louie Gohmert (R-Texas)

Representative Steve King (R-Iowa)

Congressman Louie Gohmert is the Vice Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security. Prior to being elected to serve in Congress, Louie was elected to three terms as District Judge in Smith County, Texas. He also served as Chief Justice of Texas’12th Court.

 

U.S. lawmakers’ meeting sets back Obama’s Afghan agenda

JONATHAN S. LANDAY

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan had planned to use his latest foray to the region to build Afghan government support for the nascent U.S. effort to kindle peace talks with the Taliban.

Instead, Ambassador Marc Grossman found himself last week putting out a fire ignited by a meeting between four U.S. Congress members and Afghan opposition leaders in Germany. At that meeting, the American lawmakers discussed constitutional reforms that would devolve power from Afghanistan’s central government to the provinces — triggering suspicions that the United States was secretly plotting to partition Afghanistan along ethnic lines.

The U.S. Embassy said there was no such plan, and immediately denounced the reports. But the damage had been done.

Karzai was “incredibly angry,” said a former Afghan official who maintains close contact with the presidential palace and who, like others interviewed by McClatchy, requested anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. Karzai’s ire was on display in a Jan. 21 speech to Parliament in which he denounced “foreigners” for using Afghanistan “to do their political experiments.”

The episode dealt a setback to the U.S. bid to launch peace talks, which began with the opening of a Taliban political office in Qatar earlier this month. It also reinforced just how difficult it will be for the Obama administration to broker a settlement that’s robust enough to allow U.S. and allied combat troops to complete their withdrawal from Afghanistan by 2014 as planned.

The Berlin meeting “played a very damaging role, convincing Karzai for a time that the (United States) had a secret plan to partition Afghanistan,” said a U.S. official. “As a result, Karzai did not want to support a Taliban office in Qatar.”

U.S. officials believe that Grossman mollified Karzai — who already was upset over his government’s exclusion from year-long secret U.S.-Taliban contacts — by persuading the Afghan leader that the Obama administration had nothing to do with the meeting in Berlin.

At a Jan. 21 news conference, Grossman affirmed that a peace deal could only be negotiated by Afghans, and that the Taliban must unequivocally state their opposition to international terrorism and support for the peace process before the Qatar office could open.

Yet Afghan suspicions persisted after Grossman left Kabul, forcing U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker three days later to issue another, more forceful public denial. Crocker called the partition rumors “lies that dishonor the sacrifice of more than 1,800 American service members who have died in the cause of a unified Afghanistan.”

The problem that Grossman encountered is deep differences between Karzai — who, like most of the Taliban, is from Afghanistan’s main Pashtun ethnic group — and leaders of the ethnic minorities who dominated the former Northern Alliance. That guerrilla force defeated the Taliban in 2001 with the aid of U.S. airpower, and now heads Karzai’s political opposition.

Karzai and other Afghans were outraged by a joint statement issued by the participants in the Jan. 8 Berlin meeting that denounced the centralization of power in Kabul as the cause of “massive corruption, disenfranchisement of a large segment of the Afghan people, obstacles to economic development, massive abuses of power, increasing political instability, poor governance and a vast undermining of law and order.”

The participants, who included Karzai’s former intelligence chief and a notorious Uzbek warlord, urged constitutional reforms to create a federal system that would disperse power to the provinces. Many Afghans, however, believe that proposal eventually would lead to the partition of Afghanistan between the minority-dominated north and the mostly Pashtun south.

Karzai, long distrustful of U.S. intentions, came to suspect Obama administration involvement in the Berlin meeting.

Karzai thought there was “an official hand behind it, maybe not Obama, but others and that people are backing different horses,” said the former Afghan official.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., who led the delegation of House members, denied that the group seeks partition. However, he argued in a phone interview that the United States had “foisted … one of the most centralized government structures that exist anywhere in the world” on “one of the most decentralized cultures.”

“We need to see if there is an alternative,” Rohrabacher said. “Instead what we are getting is an attempt to obfuscate the debate and to attack the motives of the people involved, but also to characterize the nature of the disagreement in a totally disingenuous way.”

The U.S. delegation also included Reps. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, Steve King, R-Iowa, and Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif.

Karzai and his aides may have had good reason to suspect the meeting, the second of its kind organized in Berlin since July 2010 by Rohrabacher, who has been deeply involved with Afghan policy since working as an aide to President Ronald Reagan.

Rohrabacher and Gohmert want the United States to rearm and re-forge the Northern Alliance into a village militia network to fight the Taliban-led insurgency. Such an organization, however, also could become a rival force to the Afghan National Army in northern areas dominated by the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara ethnic minorities.

Moreover, many former Northern Alliance leaders and commanders oppose a peace deal with the Taliban that would cede shares of power to the militant Islamic movement. The Northern Alliance fought the Taliban in a 1994-2001 civil war that was interrupted by the U.S. invasion.

“Without consulting the government or most of the people of Afghanistan, they want to bring federalism, decentralism, to bring back warlordism, and to bring back different factions in different parts of the country,” said Mir Ahmad Joyenda, a former Afghan parliamentarian with the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit, an independent think tank in Kabul.

Joyenda, however, also said that Karzai and the United States should heed the former Northern Alliance leaders’ concerns about a peace deal.

“The Northern Alliance wanted to make a political maneuver” in Berlin, he said, to show that ‘We are strong enough to oppose things without any consultation with us.’”

(McClatchy special correspondents Jon Stephenson and Ali Safi contributed to this article from Kabul, Afghanistan.)

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/01/27/3395979/us-lawmakers-meeting-sets-back.html#storylink=cpy

 

NATO’s lost cause in Afghanistan

Opinion: NATO’s lost cause in Afghanistan

By OSAMA AL SHARIF

The specter of defeat, another Vietnam-like scenario, is looming large

NATO’s war in Afghanistan will go down in history as a big flop — one that the politicians had failed to end and the generals were unable to win. On the other hand, commentators and historians will ponder the fact that this backward tribal country was able to repulse the Soviets and an international coalition of no less than 50 Western countries led by the United States within a period of 30 years or so.

The US and its allies want to quit Afghanistan in 2014, but the specter of defeat, another Vietnam-like scenario, is looming large. More than 10 years after the US bombed and later occupied this mountainous country in West Asia in retaliation of Al-Qaeda attacks on Washington and New York, the purpose of war and the path to an honorable exit appears to have been lost.

An Afghanistan expert, journalist Michael Hastings, says in his new book, “The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan” that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was in charge of military operations between 2009 and 2010, rarely mentioned Al-Qaeda in his briefings to US congressmen. Even Gen. David Petraeus, who took over from McChrystal, would never talk about Al-Qaeda in his meetings with his top aides. Hastings points to the number that former National Security Adviser Gen. Jones put out which is that there are less than 100 Al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan.

After destroying Osama Ben Laden’s lair in the mountains of Afghanistan and forcing most of the Taleban leadership to flee in the early days of the invasion, the US focused its attention on solidifying the rule of its ally President Hamid Karzai and on counterinsurgency. But both tasks have proved untenable.

The Taleban insurgency remains a big challenge to NATO forces. In military terms modern warfare has failed to crush guerrilla warfare. The people, the terrain and culture were all against the invaders. The regime of Karzai was corrupt and unpopular. The tribal nature of Afghanistan and its culture frustrated efforts to win the hearts and minds of the Afghans. American drones and friendly fire have killed more civilians than combatants. The Taleban used the rugged terrain of the south and southwest intelligently. They infiltrated enemy ranks and were able to carry out stunning attacks inside Kabul.

Last week an Afghan soldier fired his machine gun killing four French troops in their base camp. He was avenging the dead Taleban whose bodies were desecrated by US Marines less than two weeks ago. There are 3,600 French soldiers in Afghanistan, part of a total of 130,000 foreign troops in that country. It was not the first incident of this kind nor will it be the last. France has suspended training of Afghan soldiers and is considering pulling out its troops before the 2014 deadline. In an election year, both in France and the United States, the image of coffins arriving home from the war front in Afghanistan will not please the public. Until the end of last year, the death toll of coalition soldiers stood at 2,765. Having failed to defeat the Taleban, who rely on support from their brethren in Pakistan’s border region, the US is now listening to Karzai’s advice to negotiate with the insurgents. Last week it was revealed that US negotiators have been secretly meeting with a representative of Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, head of the outlawed Hizb-i-Islami group, which has been battling US forces mostly in the east and north of the country.

It was a step in the direction of widening talks so that they include the Taleban as well. All previous attempts to bypass the Taleban were met by failure. Officially the US refuses to talk to Mullah Omar, the fugitive Taleban leader believed to be hiding in Pakistan. But talks with his lieutenants and senior Pashtun tribal heads are underway — at least through the Karzai government.

But what could these talks lead to? The Taleban want NATO forces out, while Washington would like to see an arrangement that will involve the Taleban in a future government. The gap is wide. Washington has lost the cooperation of a major ally which is Pakistan. Trust between the US and Pakistan has reached record lows since the Americans carried out a covert operation to kill Osama Ben Laden in Pakistani territory without informing their allies in Islamabad.

Two months ago US drones bombed two Pakistani border points killing more than 20 soldiers. Washington later apologized but not before Pakistan suspended all cooperation with the US.

According to Hastings trust is also lacking between Karzai and President Obama. Gen. McChrystal used to mock the Afghan president calling him the man with the funny hat. And Hastings reported that he had heard US officials say that Karzai was a manic depressive and that he was a drug addict.

At one point Washington wanted to rebuild Afghanistan and guide it toward democracy. But the rebuilding efforts have been marred by setbacks and corruption. At one point the US was forced to deal with opium growing warlords in an attempt to win favors and isolate the Taleban.

The Taleban are waging a war of attrition while sending signals that they are willing to talk peace with Karzai and the Americans. All they have to do is to wait since time is on their side. 2014 is a long way ahead for the Americans and their allies. In the end they will leave the country to its fate, just as they did in Iraq. For the people of Afghanistan the day when NATO soldiers leave will not spell the end of war but only a change in its course.

— Osama Al Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman.

Who Commissioned Us to Remake the World?…Seriously.

Who Commissioned Us to Remake the World?

• 
• Pat Buchanan

U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul, Obama’s man in Moscow, who just took up his post, has received a rude reception. And understandably so.

In 1992, McFaul was the representative in Russia of the National Democratic Institute, a U.S. government-funded agency whose mission is to promote democracy abroad.

The NDI has been tied to color-coded or Orange revolutions such as those that dethroned regimes in Serbia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Lebanon. The project miscarried in Belarus.

The NDI is one of several agencies, dating to the 1980s, that were set up to subvert communist regimes. With the end of the Cold War, however, these agencies were not decommissioned, but recommissioned to serve as something of an American Comintern.

Where the old Comintern of Lenin sought to instigate communist revolutions across the West and its empires, post-Cold War America decided to promote democratic revolutions to remake the world in the image of late 20th century America.

In 2002, McFaul wrote a book: “Russia’s Unfinished Revolution.”

Vladimir Putin’s men are not unreasonably asking if he was sent to Moscow to finish that revolution. Putin has already accused Hillary Clinton of flashing the signal for street demonstrations to begin — to protest Russia’s December’s elections.

Nor is it surprising the Putin’s people are suspicious of McFaul, who added to his problems by meeting with anti-Putin dissidents the day after he presented his credentials.

McFaul says this is part of his “dual-track engagement” with Russian society. Before leaving for Moscow, he told NPR’s “Morning Edition”: “We’re not going to get into the business of dictating (Russia’s) path (to democracy). … We’re just going to support what we like to call ‘universal values’ — not American values, not Western values, universal values.”

But what, exactly, are these “universal values”?

And who are we to impose them on other nations? Did Divine Providence assign us this mission? Who do we Americans think we are?

After all, we do not even agree ourselves on what is moral and immoral, good and evil. Indeed, our own deep disagreements on what is moral and what is not are at the root of the culture wars tearing this country apart.

In America, women have a constitutional right to an abortion. Scores of millions have availed themselves of that right since Roe v. Wade. Yet traditionalists of many faiths — Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Orthodox and Jewish — reject any such woman’s right and regard it as a moral abomination.

Do homosexuals have a right to cohabit, form civil unions and marry?

In a few American states, yes; in others, no. But try to impose those values on nations of the Muslim and Third Worlds, where homosexuality is a moral outrage and even a capital offense, and our ambassadors will find themselves in physical peril.

Does McFaul believe democracy is a universally superior system of government? Yet our own founding fathers detested one-man, one-vote democracy. Democracy does not even get a mention in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights or the Federalist Papers.

The author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, believed society should be ruled by a “natural aristocracy” of “virtue and talent.”

If the promotion of democracy is a mission of our diplomats, are we to subvert the monarchies of Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia?

When we see how democracy empowered the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis in Egypt, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, does it even make sense to insist that it be embraced by nations where the populations are pervasively anti-American?

What is the universally right stand on capital punishment — the Rick Perry position in Texas or the Andrew Cuomo position in New York?

In the United States, all religions — Santeria, Wicca, Islam, Christianity — are to be treated equally and all kept out of the public square and the pubic schools. In a Muslim world that contains a fifth of mankind, Islam is the one true faith. Rival faiths have few or no rights.

Are we going to push the Islamic world to treat all religions equally?

We celebrate religious, racial and ethnic diversity. The Chinese, who persecute Uighurs, Tibetans, Christians and Falun Gong, detest that diversity and fear it will tear their country apart.

We believe in freedom of speech and the press.

Yet, in France, if you deny the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians in 1915, you are guilty of a crime, while in Turkey if you affirm that the Turks committed genocide, you have committed a crime. Should U.S. diplomats battle for repeal of both laws? Or mind our own business?

If America wishes to lead the world, let us do it by example, as we once did, not by hectoring every nation on earth to adopt the American way, which as of now, does not seem to be working all that well for Americans.

McFaul should stick to his diplomatic duties.

Jefferson had it right, “We wish not to meddle with the internal affairs of any country.”

Self-Censorship, or Russian Censorship of the Article Below?

[Below you see a Euro press article that was scrubbed from the website the day it was posted, only to be re-reported after changing the title of the article from 'Russia won’t tolerate external interference' to Putin slams Washington over 'external interference']

Page not found

The requested page could not be found.

Putin: ‘Russia won’t tolerate external interference’

Article | January 27, 2012 – 9:11am

As the Russian presidential campaign gets under way, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took a another swing at the US, criticising Washington of seeking vassals rather than allies.

“The US wants to control everything, sometimes I get the impression that the US doesn’t need allies, it needs vassals,” Putin told reporters on 25 January in the Siberian town of Tomsk. “They take decisions unilaterally on key questions.”

Putin, who’s bidding for a new six-year term in the Kremlin in elections to be held on 4 March, said he would not tolerate external interference.

“The leadership in Moscow is much more uncertain about just what’s going to happen politically in terms of the process even if they are sure of the outcome,” James Collins, who was the US ambassador to Russia from 1997 to 2001, told New Europe, referring to the presidential election in March that Putin is heavily favoured to win.

Collins, who is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said late on 26 January by phone from Washington DC that the political season in Moscow is making Russian political leaders particularly sensitive, especially after the December parliamentary elections, the demonstrations and public manifestations of opposition to the current government.

“Until they get through that process I expect – just like in the United States – you’ll see political rhetoric and probably some statements that people will wish were not made, if you are on the other side. But frankly I think in the end of ends we’ll see the process through and then we’ll see what the new government and the new Putin administration later in this year decides it’s going to do with the United States,” Collins said.

Meanwhile, the new US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul rejected as “nonsense” accusations by a top lawmaker in Putin’s United Russia party, Andrei Isayev that he’s trying to encourage a revolution. In the early days of the administration of US President Barack Obama, McFaul made his mark as the architect of the so-called “reset” of relations with Russia. Now Obama sent him to Russia to continue this policy of seeking to improve ties.

But when McFaul met with opposition activists earlier in January, within days of taking up his appointment, he annoyed the Kremlin. Those contacts with the Russian opposition are part of official US policy to spread democratic values around the world, Kommersant newspaper quoted McFaul in an interview. “The point of the reset isn’t to prepare a revolution,” McFaul said. “That’s not what we are doing.”

McFaul also rejected Isayev’s contention that he’s an expert in Orange Revolutions, referring to popular upheavals in the former Soviet nations of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. “I’m an academic, a political scientist and a sociologist, not a professional revolutionary,” McFaul said.

One of his predecessors, Collins, dismissed complaints inside the Kremlin that the US is trying to stir up trouble, supporting protests that have eroded Putin’s popularity. “I personally think there is absolutely no justification for all this idea that America is interfering in their political process,” Collins told New Europe.

“The response to Mike McFaul’s first days and other things like these statements are frankly political rhetoric. Any ambassador and any American embassy over decades has met with all dimensions of Russian society and they have done it in political times and non-political times. The idea that somehow it’s not an ambassador’s job to be in touch and engaged with all elements of the political spectrum in the Russian Federation is simply saying he shouldn’t do his job,” Collins said.

“They certainly cannot be surprised that the ambassador to the Russian Federation has contacts with people other than government officials. They’ve been doing it for decades and they will continue to do it so I find all that around Mike McFaul’s arrival to be a bit surprising.”

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told reporters that McFaul should understand that he is working in Russia, not in the US. “I hope that he [McFaul] will do a good job but of course he needs to realise that he is working in the Russian Federation, not in the United States of America, and that our country has its specifics, just as any ambassador has his mandate,” he said.

Russia-US relations, let alone Medvedev-Obama relations, have not been affected, the Russian president said. “There’s not been a worsening in our interstate relations or in our personal relations [with Obama],” he said.

Collins said that despite the headline-grabbing political rhetoric the US and Russia want to see the relationship and the “reset” continue. He noted that he doesn’t expect US-Russian relations to backtrack once Putin replaces Medvedev, who spearheaded efforts to improve relations with the US.

“I have presumed all along that you did not have a policy over the last three and a half years from Mr Medvedev without Mr Putin being a part of it,” Collins said, adding that the efforts to improve US-Russian relations over the last three years represent the work of both the Russian and the American governments.

However, Collins would not make any predictions. “We have to wait to see once the Russian leadership is through this electoral process – and I do expect Mr Putin to be president however that is done in one or two rounds – what will the policy of the new government be,” he said.

“It’s rather hard to see how Russian interests would change radically in the coming year. There are certain things that we know are issues between Russia and the United States: missile defence being one. We have not moved that problem too much closer to resolution, but we are co-operating in Afghanistan. I think there is no reason that we won’t see that continue. I don’t think the basic interests have changed,” Collins said.

The two countries have also disagreed over the NATO military campaign that led to the overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi and US-led attempts to censure Syria at the United Nations for its crackdown on anti-government unrest, which Russia says is part of another attempt at regime change. Russian has also slammed US plans to impose sanctions against Iran, saying that they would disrupt talks on Tehran nuclear programme.

Collins said there isn’t any indication from the Obama administration that they are changing their approach to Russian policy in any significant way. “After all Mike McFaul is in many ways intimately involved in the development of that policy and has been for the last three and a half years. He’s close to the president [Obama]. The president sent him there because he represents his policy. I don’t really see there is reason to think there is movement away from Russia. There are all sorts of indications for instance in Washington that the administration hopes to see the Jackson-Vanick issue resolved fairly early this year and that’s part of the WTO (World Trade Organisation) accession.

“So I don’t see that they’re moving away from the areas of co-operation they have had. At the same time, I don’t think they have turned a blind eye to the areas where we had differences,” Collins concluded.

 

 

 

 

 

Delegation Claiming To Represent the Afghan Taliban Arrives In Qatar

[Until we hear from either Mullah Omar or from the last known Afghan spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, we must assume that this is "Plan B," the international joke that has been masquerading as the "Taliban reconciliation" process since the killing of Burhanuddin Rabbani, and before that, the arrest of original Taliban negotiator Mullah Baradar, by Pakistan.]

Delegation of Taliban diplomats reaches Qatar

DOHA: A team of senior Taliban diplomats has arrived in Qatar in preparation for the opening of a political office to host negotiations between America, the insurgents and the Afghan government, British newspaper said in a report.

According to the Telegraph newspaper, the envoys from the former regime have assembled in the past month and the first tentative talks could begin within weeks according to former Taliban officials now part of Hamid Karzai’s peace council.It includes Tayeb Agha, former secretary to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who has acted as go-between with American and German diplomats for more than a year.
He is joined by Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, a former deputy foreign minister, and Shahabuddin Delawar, a former envoy to Riyadh, according to Mohammed Qalamuddin.

Qalamuddin, once chief of the Taliban’s “vice and virtue” police, told The Daily Telegraph the envoys were all well-educated, fluent in English and considered moderate, but committed to the movement.

He suggested all had travelled with the knowledge of Nato and the United States, though added Taliban figures were also able to flout travel sanctions easily by using counterfeit passports.

Abdul Hakim Mujahid, deputy leader of the peace council and the Taliban’s envoy to the UN at the time of the September 11 attacks, said one of his secretaries from New York, Sohail Shaheen, was also in Qatar.

The delegation was completed by Hafiz Aziz Rahman, the Taliban’s third secretary in Abu Dhabi before 2001, who has lived in Qatar for several years.

“He played a very important role in this process,” said Mujahid. “They have all moved there,” he added.

Former Guatemalan Dictator Ríos Montt to face genocide charges for 1980s abuses

Ex-dictator Ríos Montt to face genocide charges for 1980s abuses

By AFP

Tens of thousands died during the former Guatemala strongman’s rule from 1982-1983.

AFP

Human rights organizations have long called for former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, 85, to be prosecuted for genocide. Several massacres occurred during his rule from 1982-1983.

GUATEMALA CITY – A Guatemalan judge ruled Thursday that there was sufficient evidence to try Efraín Ríos Montt on charges of genocide for abuses committed during the ex-general’s 1982-1983 military dictatorship.

Judge Patricia Flores said that the information presented by the prosecution showed that Ríos Montt, 85, should answer to charges of orchestrating the destruction of native Maya villages during the country’s civil war with leftist guerrillas.

Ríos Montt, known for his “scorched earth” campaign against Guatemala’s leftist rebels, will have to answer charges that his regime was responsible for the massacre of tens of thousands of people.

Flores set bail at $64,000 and ordered Ríos Montt to be placed under house arrest. She said the former general is not a flight risk.

Thursday’s hearing was to determine whether Ríos Montt should be formally charged with alleged atrocities that occurred during his regime, prosecutors said.

The hearing is the first since Ríos Montt lost the congressional immunity that for years had shielded him from prosecution for human rights crimes.

After the judge’s ruling, the atmosphere outside the courthouse took on a celebratory tone. Family members of massacre victims, human rights activists and other Guatemalans cheered and set off fireworks. Social media buzzed with posts about the historic ruling.

“‘Sa sa linch’ool laa’in,’ says a Q’eqchi supporter outside the #RiosMontt court hearing. ‘My heart is very, very happy,’” the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala tweeted.

Guatemala’s truth commission, which has been tasked with investigating the bloodletting, estimates that there have been some 200,000 casualties from the country’s 36-year civil war that ended in 1996. Some of the worst atrocities are said to have taken place during Ríos Montt’s rule.

The U.N.-backed group – the Historical Clarification Commission – found that the government was guilty of a deliberate campaign of genocide against the mostly poor, indigenous massacre victims, many of whom were caught in the crossfire as the government battled leftist rebels.

Sarkozy Pushing for 2013 NATO Withdrawal from Afghanistan

Afghanistan: French soldiers have left the country in late 2013

leparisien

The repatriation of French troops deployed in Afghanistan will be completed by the end of 2013, a year earlier than the term of the late 2014 until then held by NATO. | AFP / Eric Feferberg

The return of French troops deployed in Afghanistan fighting will be completed by the end of 2013,is one year earlier than the end of the end of 2014 so far adopted by NATO, said Friday Nicolas Sarkozy at the end of a talks with President Hamid Karzai.

Paris will transfer the security of Kapisa province in Afghanistan from March 2012, said the head of state. The new timetable for the withdrawal of some 3,600 French soldiers still present on Afghan soil provides that soldiers will return to France 1000 during the year 2012, against 600 in the previous project, said the head of state.  The training missions resumeNicolas Sarkozy said France would “ask NATO to reflect on a total support combat missions of NATO by the Afghan army in the year 2013. “The deadline so far by the coalition by the end of this transfer was the year 2014. The President also said that the missions of training the Afghan army led by the French army, which had been suspended after the death of four soldiers killed by an Afghan soldier a week ago, will resume “tomorrow” on Saturday. The head of state said that the French army would continue beyond 2013, these training missions with an effective “residual” compared to currently deployed. ”It will be at least the order of a few hundreds” of men, said Nicolas Sarkozy.

Obfuscation Surrounds German Spies In Peshawar Story

[The following is taken from Germany's premier news source, Der Spiegel, so we can assume that they have the known facts correct, namely, that the trio of spies consisted of one military man and a married couple.  The original reports from Pakistan's Dawn gave the names as "Curtain Wild, a colonel in German army who has spent time in Afghanistan and Kosovo, Lauren and Rhodwolf Smith."  I am going to take a wild guess and say that the names are Col. Curt Wild (or Wald) and Lauren and Rudolf Smith.  It is highly unlikely that there are any Germans named "Smith," so no one can really know who they are.

Here is today's anti-German Pakistani news item (SEE:  German arrested in Islamabad).] 

Berlin Demands Explanation for ‘Spy’ Detentions

By Hasnain Kazim in Islamabad

DPA

Police escort the three German citizens to Islamabad on Jan. 21.

There is tension between Berlin and Islamabad after Pakistan detained three alleged German intelligence agents near the Afghan border. The men were unable to prove their claims to be aid workers. The mysterious incident has real development organizations worried about their reputation and safety.

The case of three Germans who were arrested and interrogated by Pakistani police over the weekend has strained relations between the two countries. Berlin summoned Pakistan’s acting ambassador to Germany on Monday in protest of the approach taken by local Pakistani authorities, but not all of their questions were answered.

“In our view, the incident still needs further clarification,” a German Foreign Ministry source told SPIEGEL ONLINE. The Pakistani embassy confirmed that Berlin had made its “concern” known.The diplomatic protest note signals a new turn in the case. Before this, Berlin had neither background information nor confirmation that the Germans had been questioned. It’s a delicate issue, because Pakistan claims the three people work for Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND), the country’s foreign intelligence agency. The Foreign Ministry has not confirmed this, however, describing them instead as “diplomatically registered workers for the embassy in Islamabad.”

The trio, which has reportedly since been released, was arrested on Saturday in the western Pakistani city of Peshawar and brought to the capital Islamabad for questioning. According to Pakistani police, the two men and one woman gave conflicting reports about their identities. “First they said they worked for a development agency,” a Peshawar police officer said. “Then they said they worked for the German Embassy and were tasked with overseeing development projects in the region.” They were reportedly unable to prove their claims with documentation.

Pakistani authorities also found business cards in the trio’s possession that indicated they were from the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), the organization under which their vehicle was also registered. But Pakistani intelligence sources claim they were actually BND agents. “We have observed them for a long while and determined they were spying,” said a source familiar with the case.

Unanswered Questions

Though the BND has declined to comment, sources within German and regional Pakistani security circles have confirmed that the people in custody were German foreign agents. German sources, however, did not confirm that they had been disguised as development workers. Sources in Berlin suggested that someone in Pakistan wanted to discredit the GIZ.

Pakistani officials reportedly came across the three Germans after reviewing whether all foreigners in the city had registered with the authorities. The group in question had apparently not done so. One of the men was reportedly determined to be a colonel with years of foreign intelligence experience in Bosnia, among other places. The Pakistani police not only released the names of the detainees, but also allowed them to be photographed by the local press.

SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that the trio has since been handed over to the German Embassy in Islamabad, after which they were flown back to Germany on Sunday night.

For decades, the BND has run a one-man office in Peshawar, with other workers based at the embassy in Islamabad. BND employees are said to travel regularly to the region to support colleagues there. In addition to observing the state of the troubled nation, their efforts concentrate mainly on gaining information on extremists, particularly German jihadists. Officially, the agents operate as political consultants.

A number of questions arise after the arrests. Did the German Development Ministry and the GIZ know that Germany agents were passing themselves off as aid workers? Did the agents have Berlin’s blessing to do so?

The German Embassy in Islamabad declined to comment on the matter, but sources in diplomatic circles said that people at the embassy have been “very busy” since the weekend. Meanwhile the GIZ has said that the three Germans were not their employees. “Furthermore, we didn’t lend a vehicle to anyone,” a spokeswoman said.

A member of Development Minister Dirk Niebel’s staff made a similar statement: “We have no knowledge of the incident. As to the question of to what extent agents use the identities of development workers, you would have to ask the BND.”

‘Under General Suspicion’

A number of German development organizations are active in Pakistan, particularly after the flood catastrophe in the summer of 2010. But after the arrests, some workers worry they will be suspected of being spies instead. “That is definitely a life-threatening issue,” said one development worker who asked not to be named. “Certainly extremists don’t think twice when they believe someone is a Western spy. And we work in a lot of regions where there are extremists.”Just last week, a German development worker and an Italian were kidnapped in the central Pakistani city of Multan. The kidnappers demanded a ransom over the weekend, sources in Pakistan said. According to a police officer, the people behind the abduction are likely “regular criminals,” and not extremists.

But if there is an impression that many development workers might be spies, the result could be more kidnappings and murders, sources in the field say. “If rumors circulate that secret agents are operating under the cover of development aid and using our good reputation to gain the trust of their sources, then we will all fall under general suspicion,” said one worker at a Catholic aid organization in Islamabad. “The BND must immediately make it clear that something like this will never happen again. Otherwise we might as well discontinue our work immediately.”

With reporting by Matthias Gebauer, Yassin Musharbash and Veit Medick

These Men Were Alive When Taken from the Black Hole Called Adiala Jail

SC asks DGs ISI, MI to explain missing persons’ deaths

Thursday, January 26, 2012

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court Wednesday issued notices to the defence secretary, director generals of the ISI and MI, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa advocate general in a missing personsí petition.

The court accepted a plea to inquire about the deaths of four missing prisoners out of 11, who were allegedly picked up by intelligence agencies from outside Adiala Jail following their release in 2010.

The court sought a reply in this regard from the attorney general (AG) by January 30. A three-member bench, comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain and Justice Tariq Parvez, was hearing a petition filed by Ruhaifa, the mother of three of the prisoners.

The court issued notices to other respondents, including the defence secretary, ISI and MI director generals, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa advocate general. During the hearing, the chief justice expressed concern over the death of four missing prisoners and asked the AG that the matter be probed keeping in view its seriousness.

Tariq Asad, counsel for the applicant, submitted that he had a video of the prisoners who were killed using torture. He said the bodies of three missing prisoners were found in hospitals but the last one was recovered from a forest near Peshawar. The AG requested the court to give some time to gather details from the relevant authorities. The court adjourned the hearing till January 30.

In the petition Ruhaifa had stated that four of the 11 prisoners allegedly picked up by intelligence agencies, despite their release by the Lahore High Court, died in their custody. She said her three sons ñ Syed Abdus Saboor, Syed Abdul Basit and Syed Abdul Majid ñ along with eight other people were still in the “unlawful” custody of the agencies.

Muhammad Aamir died on August 15, Tashinullah on December 17 and Said Arab on December 18 last year. Their bodies were handed over to their families at the Lady Reading Hospital, Peshawar.

Ruhaifa’s lawyer requested the court to direct the respondents to submit a report about the deaths of the three prisoners, and the status of the remaining detainees. The petitioner also said the detention of the prisoners was in violation of Articles 4, 10, 10-A and 14 of the Constitution. “The respondents should also be asked to explain if all the prisoners are subject to the Army Act,” Ruhaifa said in the petition.

Agencies admit custody of 11 missing Adiala inmates

Sohail Khan
Friday, December 10, 2010

ISLAMABAD: The top intelligence agencies of the country admitted before the Supreme Court on Thursday that 11 missing inmates of the Adiala Jail were in their custody and were being tried under the Army Act.

Raja Muhammad Irshad, the counsel for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Military Intelligence (MI), told a three-member bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, that the inmates were high profile terrorists, who carried out terrorist attacks on Army personnel and defence installations. The bench heard the case of 11 missing prisoners of the Adiala Jail.Earlier, on November 24, heads of the spy agencies, including the Inter-Services Intelligence, Intelligence Bureau and Military Intelligence, submitted a reply through Attorney General Maulvi Anwarul Haq with the Registrar Office of the apex court, stating that 11 missing prisoners of the Adiala Jail were not in the custody of these agencies.

Raja Muhammad Irshad further stated that some persons disguised as secret agencies personnel took custody of these 11 persons who were detained at the Adiala Jail after their release from the jail, and took them to the operational areas to further carry out terrorist attacks.

Later, the counsel submitted before the court that the law enforcing agencies, including secret agencies, had launched an operation and arrested more than 20 people, along these 11 persons, and they were interrogated as they had deep links with terrorists in different areas of the country and damaged the property of the country, attacking the Army personnel and defence installations.

The counsel further submitted that these 11 persons were in the custody of secret agencies and law enforcing agencies and were being interrogated in accordance with the law under the Army Act. He contended were no more missing persons but were in custody of local and secret agencies. To a court query, the counsel said they were safe and alive and being court-martialed under the Army Act.

“I am making a clear statement before the court on behalf of these secret agencies and dispel the impression that the Pakistan Army or any of its functionaries, like the ISI, are not amenable to this court,” the counsel submitted, adding that Pakistan Army and ISI and other organisations were subject to the Constitution and hold this court in high esteem.

The counsel further contended that there were certain elements who had vested interests and were creating misunderstandings by giving an impression that the Pakistan Army and the ISI were above the law and had no respect for the court.

He explained that this impression may not be considered at all as they had full respect and were bound to follow orders and judgments of this court. The court directed the learned counsel to submit his written statement in this regard on Friday (today) and adjourned the hearing.

Earlier on December 7, officials of secret agencies had met Attorney General Maulvi Anwarul Haq in his office at the Supreme Court and told him that there was a major breakthrough in the case of missing prisoners. Just after the meeting, the attorney general had filed an application in the Supreme Court, seeking early hearing of the missing prisoners’ case, already fixed for hearing on December 13, stating that a major development had occurred in the case, thus it needed to be heard on urgent basis.

On November 25, the court had questioned the law, which regulated functioning of the secret agencies, besides inquiring under what law these agencies were claiming immunity to be not made respondents in the constitutional petitions.

Referring to a reply submitted by the heads of secret agencies in the Supreme Court through the attorney general that missing inmates of Adiala Jail were not in their custody; agencies could not be made respondents in the constitutional petitions and pleas of missing prisoners’ legal heirs making the agencies as respondents were not maintainable; the court had expressed severe anguish, asking the attorney general to tell under which law, the spy agencies were working and claiming immunity not to be impleaded respondents in any case.

The attorney general, however, had withdrawn the reply that secret agencies had immunity and could not be made respondents in any case, after the court had expressed severe dismay over the reply.

The chief justice had noted that no one was above the law, and the court wanted solution to the matter instead of opening Pandora’s box. On November 12, the court had issued notices to the heads of secret agencies—ISI, MI and IB—seeking their comments over disappearance of Adiala Jail’s inmates.

The chief justice had noted that the court should not be forced to go to the maximum extent as evidence was there about the whereabouts of the missing prisoners. The chief justice had noted that it was stated in the Special Branch’s daily situation report (DSR) presented before the court earlier that these prisoners were picked up by the secret agencies from Adiala Jail.

The prisoners, who went missing from the Adiala Jail after the Lahore High Court (LHC) had ordered their release, include Dr Niaz Ahmed, Mazharul Haq, Shafiqur Rehman, Muhammad Aamir, Abdul Majid, Abdul Basit, Abdul Saboor, Shafique Ahmed, Said Arab, Gul Roze and Tehseenullah.

These prisoners were acquitted by the anti-terrorism court in April this year in four different cases, including rocket firing on the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex, Kamra, rocket firing on the plane of former President Pervez Musharraf, suicide attack on the bus of personnel of an intelligence agency in Rawalpindi and the suicide attack on the main entrance of the military headquarters.

Even after acquittal, these prisoners were detained in the jail by the Punjab Home Department. Later, the LHC set aside their detention orders directing their immediate release and after their alleged disappearance/abduction by the secret agencies, the LHC ordered registration of criminal case against Adiala Jail superintendent Saeedullah and Deputy Superintendent Khalid Bashir. The Adiala Jail authorities had maintained before the LHC that they properly had released the men after getting their written signatures and fulfilling all requirements.

APP adds: A counsel for country’s sensitive agency on Thursday apprised the Supreme Court that eleven missing prisoners of Adyala Jail had been arrested along with a number of terrorists from their hideouts in Army operational areas.

Raja Muhammad Irshad, counsel for Federation, Pakistan Army, Inter-Services Intelligence, Intelligence Bureau, Military Intelligence, told a three-member bench consisting of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Ghulam Rabbani and Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday that after Court’s direction a massive operation was launched and more than 20 terrorists including these eleven people had been arrested in the operational areas.

He said they were in safe and secure hands and would be charged under Army Act. He assured the court that their trial would be held in General Field Court Martial in accordance with law.

Recording his statement on behalf of respondents, he said that the impression should be dispelled that Pakistan Army and its other institutions were above law and the Court. He said negative impression was given by certain elements who had been playing in the hands of those people who were out to secure their vested interests.

He said, “I want to record a statement to dispel the impression that Pakistan Army or any of its organ is above law and defy Court’s orders. They submit themselves before the Constitution and hold the apex court in the highest regard.”

“They appreciate what the Court is doing for the constitutional governance of the country,” he added. He said these institutions were bound to follow order and judgement of this Court.

Giving details of the incident, he said these prisoners soon after their release from the jail voluntarily given themselves in the custody of people who disguised themselves as secret agencies personnel.

From there, they were taken to operational areas as they had close links with a well-knit terrorists organization and were prepared to cause further damage by launching attacks on Army and sensitive installations.

Irshad said that these people were masterminds of terrorists attacks of Hamza Camp, GHQ, Kamra, Juma prayer attack and even involved in an attack on three-star general in Rawalpindi.

Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry told Ilyas Aziz Siddiqui, counsel for petitioners, that they were no more missing ones. To counsel’s objection, the Chief Justice told him that he could contact concerned authorities as the counsel had assured the Court that they would be treated according to law.

To Raja Irshad’s remark, the chief justice observed that they had much respect for Army and its organs as they were defending the country, countrymen and frontiers. Justice Ghulam Rabbani said that they knew it very well that forces had laid down their lives for the protection of country.

The chief justice told Raja Irshad to submit his statement before the Court on Friday in written form after which the order would be passed accordingly. The prisoners who went missing from the Adiala Jail after the Lahore High Court (LHC) had ordered their release included: Dr Niaz Ahmed, Mazhar-ul-Haq, Shafiqur Rehman, Muhammad Aamir, Abdul Majid, Abdul Basit, Abdul Saboor, Shafique Ahmed, Said Arab, Gul Roze and Tehseenullah.

The prisoners were acquitted by an Anti-Terrorism Court in April this year in four different cases, including rocket firing on the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex, Kamra, rocket firing on the plane of former president, suicide attack on the bus of personnel of an intelligence agency in Rawalpindi and the suicide attack on the main entrance of the Military Headquarters.

NATO Chief: Basic Components Of European Missile Defense To Be Ready By May

(RTTNews) – NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said that the initial components of the European missile defense system is expected to be in place by the time of the Chicago Summit in May.

He said this on Thursday, while launching NATO’s first ever ‘Annual Report,’ which gives a brief overview of the Alliance’s principal achievements and challenges in 2011.

The missile defense system to defend European Allies’ populations, territory and forces against the growing threat of ballistic missile proliferation is “smart defense” at its best and it embodies transatlantic solidarity, the NATO chief said in his foreword to the annual report.

He said the Alliance had already made considerable progress, as along with a prominent and phased U.S. contribution, a number of Allies have made significant announcements, including Turkey, Poland, Romania, Spain, the Netherlands and France. These different national contributions will be gradually brought together under a common NATO command and control system. Key elements of it have already been tested successfully, Rasmussen added.

The Chicago Summit will be “an opportunity to renew our commitment to the vital transatlantic bond between us and to redouble our efforts to share the burden of security more effectively,” according to him. He said important decisions will be taken at the summit “to keep NATO committed, capable and connected.”

The assessment of Alliance activities in the annual report 2011 focuses on NATO operations, emerging security challenges, modernization of NATO – its structures and capabilities – as well as NATO’s growing partnerships. These areas are examined against the backdrop of the financial crisis.

In 2011, NATO operations continued across three continents. In Afghanistan, greater stability and the beginning of transition characterized 2011. Although Afghanistan constitutes the Alliance’s most significant operational commitment to date, 2011 was marked by the Alliance’s Operation Unified Protector in Libya, which mobilized NATO forces for seven months to protect civilians from attack. Progress in Kosovo was marred by peaks of violence in the north, whereas counter-piracy efforts off the Horn of Africa and in the Gulf of Aden helped to reduce the pirate attack success rate in 2011. And NATO’s training mission in Iraq was terminated on December 31 after eight years of operation.

The report highlights the key measures taken by NATO to tackle cyber attacks, to respond to the growing number of countries acquiring ballistic missiles and to counter terrorism. These are among the emerging security challenges that directly threaten the security of NATO’s almost 900 million citizens.

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A Bullying Blowhard Called “Newt”

Bullying blowhard Newt lacks restraint to be real conservative

• John Kass
• 
• Bio | E-mail

Newt Gingrich’s third wife, Callista, tugs the Republican presidential candidate’s ears before a speaking engagement in Florence, S.C., last week. The former U.S. House speaker doesn’t take kindly to questions about his morality. (JASON REED, Reuters Photo / January 17, 2012)

John Kass

The giddy Republican faithful in South Carolina barked “Newt! Newt! Newt!” as if they were at “The Jerry Springer Show” rather than a presidential debate, and he performed for them, huffing and puffing himself up like some gigantic, angry amphibian.And when the bullfrog was finally full of his own gas, he turned and joyously thumped that squeamish TV reporter who had dared ask the obvious question:

Is Newt Gingrich — Republican presidential candidate and decider of who has the proper moral authority to lead America — in favor of open marriage, as was alleged in an interview by former Mrs. Newt No. 2?

Gingrich said that was a disgusting question, and the crowd cheered, giving voice to conservative desperation. The reporter asked the right question, but blinked and gulped anyway, clear signals that he didn’t want any more. This inflamed the bully in Newt, and he bore down on his victim as a frog to a fly, the tongue a deadly bludgeon on national television.

The stage is where Newt lives, whether on the floor of Congress or some cable news set or the stump, and theGOP debate in South Carolina last week was the perfect habitat for the man, a platform for rhetoric and performance and anger, a place where he could show us how quick and dangerous he can be.

It was Newt’s moment to show a desperate Republican conservative faithful that he could whomp a reporter, and by extension whomp the “liberal media,” and by extension whomp its man President Barack Obama, who’d been swept into office largely on the babbling insistence of Beltway journalists that the corrupt Chicago Democratic machine could produce a reformer.

So Newt whomped and the crowd cheered, and there were ovations and whooping cries of “Newt! Newt! Newt!” and he showed some teeth in what was supposed to be a smile.

That’s when I saw something oily moving around back there in his eyes and I began worrying that if this bullfrog becomes president, America may be doomed.

A few days before, he’d played a variation on the Angry Newt theme, when a voter asked whether he would bloody Obama’s nose in a debate and Newt paused, and filled himself up again, and said, “I don’t want to bloody his nose, I want to knock him out.”

Knock him out?

Who’s the tough guy?

That’s when I realized that his mission isn’t to lead the country as much as to satisfy his own rage. Newt doesn’t want to merely win, he wants to destroy and remake the world. So he’s not a conservative. He’s a revolutionary. And the sound of his own voice is both sun and moon to him.

The common wisdom is that Newt did well for himself by thumping on the reporter, and indeed it may help him politically in the short run. He certainly knows how to take advantage of vulnerability, and while his theatrical and pious outrage may have helped his prospects, the proper question is whether it helps America as much as it helps Newt.

Those who don’t know me will certainly condemn me as a liberal for saying this, but the crowd’s reaction, the “Newt! Newt! Newt!” and the fist pumping are clear indications of the desperation conservatives feel these days.

I understand. They see what’s coming, they fear the left-listing direction of government and the dreariness of an Eastern European-style socialist state, with the people bowing like frightened peasants when those with political power approach. Those of us in Illinois have lived in such a place for years now. It is a place where public office is handed down from parent to child as if it’s the natural order of things.

Being a conservative is about restraint, but Newt is not about restraint. Newt is about Newt and what Newt wants when he wants it. The man who professes loathing of big government is pleased when big government brings juicy benefits. He might brush off questions about that $1.8 million from lobbying or whatever he says he did with Freddie Mac, but he took the money.

Newt wants reporters to ask tough questions of Democrats. That’s fair. But he becomes almost violently angry if anyone dares ask him about what his appetites tell us about his own character, since Mrs. Newt No. 1 led to Mrs. Newt No. 2, who led to Mrs. Newt No. 3. Somewhere in between, he puffed himself up to hypocritically rip on the eternally despicable President Bill Clinton, declaring Clinton did not have the “moral authority” to lead.

“Grandiosity has never been a problem with Newt Gingrich. He — he handles it very, very well,” said candidate and former Sen. Rick Santorum. “… Four years into his speakership, he was thrown out by the conservatives. … I served with him. I was there. I knew what the problems were going on in the House of Representatives when Newt Gingrich was leading this — leading there. It was an idea a minute, no discipline, no ability to be able to pull things together.”

But what Newt offers isn’t discipline and restraint.

Instead, he offers emotion. He offers anger. He offers Newt.

jskass@tribune.com

For the US To Get On the Right Side of Human History

For a US revolution

Bill Quigley

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.”— Dr Martin Luther King, Jr 1967

One. Human rights must be taken absolutely seriously. Every single person is entitled to dignity and human rights. No application needed. No exclusions at all. This is our highest priority.

Two. We must radically reinvent contemporary democracy. Current systems are deeply corrupt and not responsive to the needs of the people. Representatives chosen by money and influence govern by money and influence. This is unacceptable. Direct democracy by the people is now technologically possible and should be the rule. Communities must be protected whenever they advocate for self-determination, self-development and human rights. Dissent is essential to democracy; we pledge to help it flourish.

Three. Corporations are not people and are not entitled to human rights. Amend the US Constitution so it is clear corporations do not have constitutional or human rights. We the people must cut them down to size and so democracy can regulate their size, scope and actions.

Four. Leave the rest of the world alone. Cut the US military spending by 75 percent and bring all troops outside the US home now. Defense of the US is a human right. Global offense and global police force by the US military are not. Eliminate all nuclear and chemical and biological weapons. Stop allowing scare tactics to build up the national security forces at home. Stop the myth that the US is somehow special or exceptional and is entitled to act differently than all other nations. The US must re-join the global family of nations as a respectful partner. The USA is one of many nations in the world. We must start acting like it.

Five. Property rights, privilege, and money-making are not as important as human rights. When current property and privilege arrangements are not just they must yield to the demands of human rights. Money-making can only be allowed when human rights are respected. Exploitation is unacceptable. There are national and global poverty lines. We must establish national and global excess lines so that people and businesses with extra houses, cars, luxuries, and incomes share much more to help everyone else be able to exercise their basic human rights to shelter, food, education and healthcare. If that disrupts current property, privilege and money-making, so be it.

Six. Defend our earth. Stop pollution, stop pipelines, stop new interstates, and stop destroying the land, sea, and air by extracting resources from them. Rebuild what we have destroyed. If corporations will not stop voluntarily, people must stop them. The very existence of life is at stake.

Seven. Dramatically expand public spaces and reverse the privatisation of public services. Quality public education, health and safety for all must be provided by transparent accountable public systems. Starving the state is a recipe for destroying social and economic human rights for everyone but the rich.

Eight. Pull the criminal legal prison system up and out by its roots and start over. Cease the criminalisation of drugs, immigrants, poor people and people of colour. We are all entitled to be safe but the current system makes us less so and ruins millions of lives. Start over.

Nine. The US was created based on two original crimes that must be confessed and made right. Reparations are owed to Native Americans because their land was stolen and they were uprooted and slaughtered. Reparations are owed to African Americans because they were kidnapped, enslaved and abused. The US has profited widely from these injustices and must make amends.

Ten. Everyone who wants to work should have the right to work and earn a living wage. Any workers who want to organise and advocate for change in solidarity with others must be absolutely protected from recriminations from their employer and from their government.

Finally, if those in government and those in power do not help the people do what is right, people seeking change must together exercise our human rights and bring about these changes directly. Dr King and millions of others lived and worked for a radical revolution of values. We will as well. We respect the human rights and human dignity of others and work for a world where love and wisdom and solidarity and respect prevail. We expect those for whom the current unjust system works just fine will object and oppose and accuse people seeking dramatic change of being divisive and worse. That is to be expected because that is what happens to all groups which work for serious social change. Despite that, people will continue to go forward with determination and purpose to bring about a radical revolution of values in the USA.

Courtesy: www.counterpunch.org

“The brazen, in-your-face hypocrisy of it all makes you sick”

War by other means

Aijaz Zaka Syed

Here’s a brief history lesson. At the height of World War II, when Hitler’s Germany was swallowing one mighty European nation after another without so much as a hiccup, Britain got so desperate for the US help that it resorted to all sorts of tricks to get the Atlantic cousins involved.That old warhorse Churchill is said to have actually dispatched William Stephenson, Britain’s master spy and the man who inspired Ian Fleming’s James Bond, to the US to try everything from bribing and blackmailing the US senators to creating false flag situations to force the US into the war against Germany. An unwilling America under a reluctant Roosevelt eventually joined the Great War after Germany invaded the Soviet Union.As this psychological, diplomatic and economic war on Iran heats up, history appears to repeat itself all over again. Israel and its friends in the US establishment appear more desperate than the British had ever been to get Uncle Sam into the breathlessly awaited war with Iran. Desperate nations are as dangerous as desperate, suicidal men.

From the Mossad men posing as CIA agents to recruit saboteurs to assassinating top Iranian nuclear scientists that could be blamed on the ‘Great Satan’, Israel has already taken this campaign against the Islamic republic to dangerous levels. Right now tensions between Iran and the West are so thick that even a minor skirmish or misunderstanding could spark a full blown conflagration. The assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, Deputy Director of Natanz nuclear plant, this month is the fourth such killing of top Iranian nuclear scientists over the past year and half.

This is not just an act of terror, as Tehran chose to describe it, but a declaration of war. It would have provoked a third world war if the US and the now deceased Soviet Union had attempted something similar against each other’s scientists. No other country for that matter would tolerate such attacks on its citizens and national interests.

Fortunately or unfortunately, a much sanctioned and politically and economically besieged Iran is perhaps in no position to respond to these flagrant provocations. Israel and the West may not have declared it formally but the war on Iran has already begun – on several fronts. Its economy, already vulnerable thanks to the decades of crippling curbs, has further been brutalised by the latest UN-US sanctions targeting its Central Bank and the crucial oil trade.

The European Union, one of Tehran’s biggest trading partners and oil importers, has followed suit by banning Iran’s oil exports and freezing its financial assets. Goes without saying these actions are going to really hurt Iran considering some 80 percent of its foreign revenue comes from oil exports. With its economy on the brink and sanctions turning the riyal into worthless paper, inflation has hit the roof biting ordinary people.

On the political and diplomatic front too, Iran finds itself at the receiving end as it helplessly awaits the approaching D-day. Just as a much sanctioned Iraq did in the run up to the 2003 Invasion. Not a single day passes without the Israeli, American and European politicians and security experts pitching for urgent ‘action’ against Iran. Meanwhile, Washington and Tel Aviv are playing out the good cop-bad cop routine. The Americans raise the spectre of a unilateral Israeli attack even as the Zionists raise the bang-Iran rhetoric to a feverish pitch keeping the whole world dancing on the razor’s edge.

What is most disturbing though is not the perfidy of Israel or the hypocrisy of its protectors but the deafening silence of the international community. The less said of the United Nations the better. It increasingly reminds me of what Matthew Arnold said about Shelley – “an ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.”

The world body created to protect peace and resolve conflicts hasn’t just failed in its raison d’être – its purpose of existence – it has become a willing tool in the hands of the world powers. The UN has increasingly been acting as handmaiden of the empire, with its institutions like the IAEA offering the fig leaf of legitimacy and at times even aiding in its quest for global hegemony. But then what’s new? It’s a familiar and much repeated history.

What is most disturbing though is the shameful capitulation of the rest of the world in the face of this continuing tyranny and obfuscation. Abdicating its collective responsibility, the world community stands and stares once again as the coalition of the ever willing cooks up yet another unjust war against another oil-rich Muslim nation.

The brazen, in-your-face hypocrisy of it all makes you sick. A regime that sits on a neat pile of nukes and has a long history of aggression and countries that all boast of mountains of the deadliest of weapons ever invented are all ganging up on a nation that has played by the book and claims to seek nuclear power for peaceful purposes. There has been nothing so far to suggest otherwise. After all, the IAEA has been digging for more than a decade.

More important, according to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, it’s not illegal for a member state to undertake nuclear enrichment, or even to maintain the so-called nuclear option, just as Japan, Brazil and Argentina have done all these years. You cross redline only when you take the enrichment to weapons grade level or divert it to a weapons programme. Which is yet to be established in Iran’s case. (Given this perpetual witch-hunt by the West and Israel and considering what happened to Iraq, would you be really surprised if the ayatollahs indeed began flirting with the nuke power?)

That said, Iran’s leaders aren’t exactly doing their people any service by forever obsessing over nuclear power at the expense of everything else. There is more to Iran, a civilisation with a 3000-year old history, than this endless brinkmanship.

The majority of Iran’s population today is young and was born after the 1979 Revolution. They have spent all their lives in isolation from the rest of the world thanks to decades of sanctions. They deserve better considering Iran is the second largest producer of oil after Saudi Arabia. The aspirations and hopes of young Iranians are little different from those of the young Arabs demanding their place in the sun.

Much of this is a result of years of vilification and vindictive policies by the West. But what is Iran itself doing to end its pariah status? How about building bridges with its Arab neighbours and addressing their apprehensions that are as much a result of Western propaganda as they are of its own rhetoric? Right now, Tehran needs all the friends and allies it could get.

Meanwhile the world community, including the Arab and Muslim states, must do everything to prevent this coming war. The Middle East cannot afford another Armageddon. The consequences of this misadventure in the volatile region could be unimaginably catastrophic for the Middle East and the world.

The writer is a commentator on Middle East and South Asian affairs.

Email: aijaz.syed@hotmail.com

Obama Tried To Bite-Off the Wrong Head

[

GOP Governor Jan Brewer In Public Meltdown With Obama

national confidential

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer thrust her finger in President Obama’s face during a public tantrum by the anti-immigration lawmaker.

tarmac as Air Force One arrived in Phoenix, Brewer exchanged words with the President about the inaccuracy of her portrayal of a previous meeting with the commander-in-chief in her book Scorpions for Breakfast.

The White House took the high road in describing the President’s encounter with Brewer. An administration official explained: “The President said he’d be glad to meet with her again, but did note that after their last meeting, a cordial discussion in the Oval Office, the governor inaccurately described the meeting in her book. The President looks forward to continuing taking steps to help Arizona’s economy grow.”

Arizona has been criticized by the U.S. Justice Department and others for its “papers please” immigration law that some describe as discriminatory towards latinos.

President Obama is in Arizona as part of his post-State Of The Union trip to an Intel plant.

Meeting Obama on the

Previous Post

[Try reporting anything that casts doubt on the official story about Obama's Russian Reset and see what happens to your website and your computer.]

Top official: U.S. wants to cooperate with Russia in Central Asia

26 January 2012, 11:09 (GMT+04:00)

The U.S. does not seek long-term military presence in Central Asia, and not try to push out Russia from there, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert O. Blake said on Wednesday, ITAR-TASS reported.

“We seek to be very open towards our goals in Central Asia,” he said, speaking at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at the Johns Hopkins University. “We do not seek long-term military presence, and not try to push out Russia from there. On the contrary. We are looking for boosting cooperation with the Russians in the region,” he added.

Interaction on Afghanistan is of particular importance for the U.S. Supplies are delivered to the U.S. contingent in Afghanistan through Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other Central Asian republics via the so-called Northern Distribution Network. Transit Center operates at the Manas Airport in Bishkek to assist the international anti-terrorist coalition.

Blake made it clear that without assistance of Russia, which enjoys great influence in the region, these efforts would be difficult. “The Russians are in such a position that they could block what we do if they want,” he said, adding that both countries “have many common interests” in Central Asia.

Blake confirmed that the U.S. intends to provide military assistance to Uzbekistan, with whom relations have significantly improved after Obama administration came to power.

“So far, no military assistance we have provided,” he said. The U.S. wants to avoid the current restrictions on military assistance to Uzbekistan, introduced by the U.S. in due time in the wake of dissatisfaction with the situation of human rights in the country. Blake said in any case the question is about “limited non-lethal military assistance” to support anti-terrorist operations in Afghanistan.

Major Cyber-Attack Again, Folks

I am writing this from my daughter’s computer, since my computer cannot seem to access the Internet.  All of this happened since I dared to post the Hindu press article about US Special Forces killing Gaddafi.  As you can see from NoSunglasses front page that scrambling continues there.  I lucked-out just now, in logging-on here.  I must be doing something right, to receive so much unwanted attention.  According to StatCounter, I have been having quite a few unfriendly visitors.

What Is Really Going On In Syria: Insider Update

By Boris DOLGOV (Russia)

The current situation in Syria remains one of the most important components of the Middle Eastern and international policies. Using Syria’s domestic crisis and pursuing their own goals NATO, Israel, Turkey and the monarchies of the Persian Gulf are trying to undermine the Syrian regime.

Since the beginning of the crisis in Syria I have made two trips to that country as a member of international delegations in August 2011 and in January 2012. If we watch the dynamics of situation’s development over that period on the one hand we can state intensification of terrorist groups in Syria and on the other hand we see a broader people’s support of President Bashar Assad and a clear demarcation of political forces’ positions.

Two car bombers blew themselves up outside the heavily guarded compounds of Syria’s intelligence agencies, killing at least 44 people and wounding dozens more in a brazen attack in December 23, 2011.

In the last two months Syria has seen a number of terrorist attacks. The terrorist attacked Syrian servicemen and military facilities, law enforcement agencies institutions, blasts on oil pipelines, railroads, murders and taking of hostage among peaceful citizens (In the city of Homs insurgents killed five well known scientists), arson of schools and killing of teachers (since March 2011, 900 schools have been set on fire and 30 teachers have been killed).

Terrorist attacks in Damascus became one of the bloodiest. Two of them were carried out on December 23, 2011 when cars loaded with explosives went off in front of the buildings of state security service killing 44 and injured about 150 people. On January 6, 2012 on a busy street a suicide bomber attack killed 26 and wounded 60. There were officers of the law enforcement agencies among the victims but most of the victims were occasional by-passers.

In January 2012, Damascus has a more severe look in comparison with summer of 2011. Security officers check passports on the way to the airport, asking people what country they are from. Entrances of many state institutions are protected with concrete blocks. There are check points with sand bags near the police stations which are protected by soldiers in bullet proof vests. Lifting gates which close entrances to some of the streets are also by guarded by soldiers and young people with machine guns – these are volunteers from pro-governmental youth movements. But everyday life has not drastically changed. There are no servicemen, armed vehicles or document checks in the city. Damascus is still a busy city, with no vacant seats in internet cafes and on weekends streets are crowded with family couples and young people.

After terrorist attacks in Damascus demonstrations with slogans supporting Bashar Assad and condemning terrorists were held everyday. Similar demonstrations were organized in other large cities such as Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Daraa, Deir az Zor. These demonstrations were covered by the Syrian TV. During our stay in Syria we could move around the city freely and speak with people as we liked but we did not see any single anti-governmental rally. Most of the rallies’ participants were young people.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad waves at supporters during a public appearance in Damascus on January 11, 2012 in which he vowed to defeat a “conspiracy” against Syria.

The most massive rally which gathered tens thousands of people was held on January 1 in the center of Damascus. At that rally Bashar Assad addressed to the nation starting his speech with the words: “Brothers and sisters!” He was speaking about a thousands year long history, the need to fight terrorism and the support terrorists receive from abroad. Assad’s speech was received with real enthusiasm and there were no signs that this reaction had been staged.

The whole square (tens thousands of people) shouted a popular slogan “Allah, Syria, Bashar!” (“Allah, Syria va Bashar bas!”). On January 8, in the memory of victims of terrorist attacks in Damascus a commemoration ceremony was held in St. Cross Cathedral in Damascus. The Mufti of Syria Ahmad Badr Al-Din Hassoun, the metropolitan of the Syrian Orthodox Church and the prior of the Catholic monastery spoke at the ceremony. In their speeches they condemned “the killers and those who put weapons in their hands and sent them to Syria”. The tragedy of the mufti of Syria, whose son was killed by the members of the Islamist terrorist group after the mufti had refused to act on the side of the foreign opposition, which goal was to overthrow Bashar Assad, is a telling example in itself.

After the adoption of a new law on political parties an active process of their creation has been underway in Syria. Although formally the constitution envisaged a multiparty system and seven parties were represented in the parliament, in compliance with clause 8 the leading role belonged to the ruling Baath party. Currently there is a wide discussion in Syria about this clause. An official with the Syrian Foreign Ministry told us that in the new constitution (on which the national referendum would be held in February), this clause would be abolished if most of the public and political forces spoke for it.

In his address to the nation Bashar Assad said that the new constitution would be approved in March 2012. The parliamentary elections are to be held in May-June 2012. Along with the law on political parties new laws on general elections, local administration and mass media were adopted. In compliance with the new law in December 2011 elections to the local governments were held. But because of the threat of terrorist attacks the turnout was only 42%, which was confirmed by the Baath officials. Nevertheless, the local administrations were elected and began to work. Under the recently adopted law new mass media are being formed in addition to the current 20 TV channels, 15 radio stations and 30 newspapers.

At present there are three main trends in the Syrian patriotic opposition – democratic, liberal and left, which is mainly a communist one. The Syrian Social Nationalist Party is the most influential party among the democratic forces. It is also the oldest party which was established in 1932. As Iliah Saman, a member of the political bureau of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party said, the party’s program is more conservative in comparison with the Baath’s program. Nevertheless there are no differences of principle between the two parties. According to him, the policy of the US, France and England is the main destabilizing factor in Syria. He said that those countries were acting in the interests of Israel and had the goal to divide Syria into five state formations on the basis of religious and ethnical differences.

The liberal trend of the opposition is represented by the recently registered secular democratic social movement led by Nabil Feysal, one of the Syrian intellectuals, a writer and a translator. He is an outright opponent of the Islamic fundamentalism, supporter of the liberal democracy. His goal is to turn Syria into “Middle Eastern Denmark”.

The National Committee for the Unity of Syrian Communists is the most influential component of the left (communist) trend of the opposition within the country. Recently it has changed its name for the Popular Will Party which is headed by Qadri Jamil, a prominent Syrian economist and the professor at the Damascus University. He is the only representative of the opposition who entered the committee on the design of the new constitution. Jamil believes that the national dialogue and creation of the government of the national unity (which would include representatives of the patriotic opposition) is the only way out of the crisis. At the same time he thinks that it is necessary to remove all the politicians who are not interested in conduction of reforms from the government, to clean up the opposition from destructive factors and to suppress its radical members who tend to use violence.

The coordination committees are also significant political force which has contacts with the Popular Will Party. These committees on the one hand organize demonstrations demanding concrete reforms and better living conditions on the other hand act as self-defense units which armed people protect their districts from attacks of terrorist groups in particular from a so called Liberal Syrian Army. It should be noted that although in the beginning of protests in Syria, part of the population, including intellectuals shared the opposition discontent with the regime and supported demands on democratization now, after intensification of terrorist groups, they tend to support the regime and the reforms proposed by the government.

French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier

A telling example of terrorist crimes was the shelling of a quarter in Homs on January 11 which killed eight local residents. Giles Jacquier, a reporter with France-2 TV, became one more victim of the attack. We spoke with Jacquier shortly before his tragic death and he was convinced that people’s protests were suppressed by the authoritarian regime in Syria. He was looking for the opposition everywhere trying to make a report. On failing to find it in Damascus he moved with a group of Dutch and Swiss colleagues to Homs. But in Homs he also met people who were supporting Bashar Assad and demanding to protect them from terrorists. A group of local residents and Giles Jacquier who happened to be near came under a grenade thrower fire, which was a common thing in that district. Commenting the tragic death of the French reporter Mother Agnes Mariam, who is the prior of the St James Catholic Cathedral in Damascus, said that there is no protesting opposition in Syria but only bandits who are killing people.

Many people we contacted in Syria including independent foreign reporters told us about the information war against Syria. According to them, Qatari channel Al Jazeera, for example, in order to broadcast a report on mass anti-governmental rallies in Syria made a fake footage with the help of computer editing using dozens of atmosphere players and decoration of Syrian streets, a kind of “Hollywood village”.

As for the Syrian opposition abroad, its political part is represented by the Syrian National council with the headquarters in Istanbul. It is headed by Burhan Ghalioun, a Syrian-French political scientist at the Sorbonne University in Paris. It is quite a heterogeneous formation which comprises groups with different goals. They represent the Muslim Brotherhood and other Sunnite organizations, Kurdish separatists, Liberal-Democratic dissidents who usually reside in Europe and in the US.

The armed opposition which conducted terrorist attacks in Syria is represented by a number of groups from a military wing of the Muslim Brotherhood to the Libyan radical Islamists and Al Qaeda. According to the information we receive from our Syrian colleagues there are training camps for insurgents in Lebanon and Turkey. The officers of security services of NATO, Turkey and some Arab states are in charge for the training and armament of the insurgents, while the monarchies of the Persian Gulf provide the financing.

The future development of the situation in Syria depends in many ways on the ability of the ruling regime to consolidate public forces and conduct the announced reforms. Other priorities are the liquidation of terrorist groups and stabilization of the domestic situation. In its turn this issue is directly linked to the development of the global policies and will depend on the activities of the leading countries of NATO, Turkey, the Arab League (which sent its monitors to Syria) Russia and China.

As for Russia, it firmly declares that repetition of the “Libyan scenario” in Syria is inadmissible.

Amb. Crocker Wants Journalists To Ignore the Potential Division of Afghanistan

 

[I guess Amb. Crock thinks that former Ambassador  Robert D. Blackwill is also a liar?  His spilling the beans in his article Plan B in Afghanistan must have been an unwelcome surprise to the secret planners.  Our govt. has yet to tell us or anyone else the truth about what they have planned in their ideas of "persistent"/perpetual war.  The Pentagon has often admitted that we will be in Afghanistan for decades, if not forever.  Any attempt to get us out of there by 2014 can only end in Afghanistan's permanent division and vicious civil war.  By arming the Northern Alliance forces from the beginning as US proxies against the Taliban, the Bush-beleaguers created conditions for never-ending war, permanent division and civil war.  Pointing-out these obvious facts in no way dishonors America's dead.  They are dead because they were sent to wage war for Empire under impossible conditions.  The dishonor comes with their participation in this entire dishonest affair.  That cannot be erased.]

Envoy: Rumors of plan to divide Afghanistan ‘dishonor’ sacrifice of 1,800 US troops

 

By msnbc.com staff

The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan on Tuesday condemned rumors that the United States is planning to divide the war-torn country, saying the suggestions were “lies that dishonor the sacrifice of more than 1,800 American service members who have died in the cause of a unified Afghanistan.”

Ambassador Ryan Crocker said in a statement that a “free and independent media plays a vital role in any democracy” and that Afghanistan’s media and the Afghan government spokespersons were ”important elements in our close bilateral relationship.”

But he then went on to say that, “rumors that the United States has a plan to divide Afghanistan or change its form of government are, frankly speaking, lies that dishonor the sacrifice of more than 1,800 American service members who have died in the cause of a unified Afghanistan, governed by its Constitution.”

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And he added that the idea “that the United States is seeking a secret deal with the Taliban at the expense of the Afghan government and people” was “another false and absurd rumor.”

‘Democratic and unified’
Crocker stressed that the United States was “committed to supporting the efforts of the central government, to build a strong, secure, democratic, and unified Afghanistan.”

“We have no other aim or goal,” he added, pointing out that American taxpayers had provided billions of dollars over the past decade to support “the government and people of Afghanistan.”

Crocker appeared to be addressing reports in the Afghan media, although The New York Times also reported Thursday last week that Afghan officials were worried about the possibility the Taliban might make a “secret deal” with the United States.

“Afghanistan and the United States both support a peace process for Afghanistan. But only Afghans can decide the future of Afghanistan,” he added, according to the statement. “For a peace process to succeed, Afghans must talk to Afghans.”

He noted that Afghan President Hamid Karzai had spoken in support of the idea of the Taliban opening an office in Qatar, seen as key for peace talks to go ahead.