Afghanistan: ‘Britain is backing the Taleban’

Haji Maulavi Mokhtar, of Lashkar Gah’s council of religious scholars, says the myth about Britain backing the Taleban, is embedded in the ‘popular consciousness’. Picture: Jeremy Kelly

By Jerome Starkey

DESPITE the grim toll of British soldiers’ bodies coming home in coffins, many Afghans believe British troops have been helping the Taleban.

“Of course we think they are supporting the Taleban,” said shopkeeper Saad Alikhi in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province. “When the international troops first came here, they cleaned up all the Taleban, all over Afghanistan, within a month. Now I find there’s a mine exploding in front of my shop.”

Security has plummeted across Helmand since UK troops arrived three years ago, and ordinary people have watched the Taleban grow stronger.

Many are struggling to understand why Britain, with all the buildings because there are mines everywhere,” said Colonel Abdul Ghafour, a former head of Helmand’s police. “Everywhere there are Taleban.”

Wild conspiracy theories are rife in Lashkar Gah’s bazaars, but the prevalence of the myth that Britain has been helping the insurgents is evidence of how far UK troops still have to go to convince local people they are there to help.

I travelled to Lashkar Gah, un-embedded, to find out what ordinary people thought about the spiralling violence. It was the first time a British journalist had visited Helmand without a military escort for almost a year. And the number of seemingly sane people who said they thought Britain was supporting the Taleban was astonishing.

Haji Maulavi Mokhtar, the head of Lashkar Gah’s council of religious scholars, admitted the myth was firmly embedded in the “popular consciousness”. He said: “Even among government officials, it has made them hopeless, they told me secretly.”

For three years, British troops have been over-stretched and under-resourced, battling to contain the Taleban in their spiritual and financial heartland.

Most of Britain’s fighting soldiers were stuck patrolling the ground outside their bases. When they did clear areas of the Taleban, they had to fight elsewhere and couldn’t stay.

Shopkeeper Abdul Karim told me: “In the past seven years, no-one has been punished for any crime. And the aid money which is coming into the country disappears. The taxes which the government collects just go into private pockets, not to the poor people you see here.

“If they do not punish corruption in the government bureaucracy and bring justice and punish criminals, I swear that in the next 50 years, they cannot bring security. Even in a hundred years.”

He had fond memories of Taleban rule. “The Taleban are the enemies of the international community, but they were good for the welfare of ordinary Afghans, for poor people like us,” he said. “In Taleban times, there was punishment for criminals. They didn’t mind executing people, or cutting off their hands, so from one lesson, a hundred others would learn.”

Police had closed the road in front of his shop because they had discovered two homemade bombs in yellow plastic jerry cans in a culvert nearby. They were wired to a mobile phone.

“We do not understand,” he said. “When the Americans were based here, when Sher Mohammed was the governor, the Taleban were not in Helmand.

Since that time, when the Americans withdrew, and new governors came, and the PRT ]provincial reconstruction team] was handed over to the British, the fighting got much worse.”

Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, who was governor of Helmand when the British troops first deployed in 2006, was removed at the insistence of Whitehall after he was linked to human rights abuses and implicated in the heroin trade

One former diplomat said the people in Helmand couldn’t believe the British were “making it worse by accident”. He said: “People there think the British are powerful, clever and cunning. They remember the legends of Great Gamesmen from the 19th century, and they assume if the Taleban are getting stronger, it must be part of the plan.”

However, the overwhelming impression is that people want justice and peace, and they don’t mind who brings it.

Freedom Rider: American War Criminals

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

The United States could fill scores of International Criminal Courts with homegrown war criminals, but prefers to honor them as “statesmen” and “the best and the brightest.” The recently deceased Robert McNamara even indicted himself for crimes against Japanese civilians – but only as a mental exercise enveloped in real-world impunity. McNamara has had lots of company in the past forty years since he last served an American president…. Obama expanded war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, continuing a process begun by Carter and Brzezinski thirty years ago.”

Freedom Rider: American War Criminals

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

“No matter how egregious their acts, or how big their lies, they are accepted as honored statesmen and women.”

Robert McNamara died last week at the age of 93. He served presidents Kennedy and Johnson as Secretary of Defense and bares responsibility for the escalation of the Vietnam War, which spread to the rest of Indochina and killed 3 million people.

McNamara was part of a very small, rarified group. They are the people who answer to presidents and prime ministers and princes. They are admired and lionized, even when they do great harm to humanity. Regardless of the awful consequences of their actions, they are called brilliant, the “best and the brightest.”

The McNamaras of the world are all criminals, mass killers. Yet because they kill on behalf of the state, they are punished only if they are unfortunate enough to be on the losing side. McNamara said so himself. His first brush with mass murder occurred during World War II when he served as an analyst under the tutelage of General Curtis LeMay. LeMay was responsible for the firebombing of Tokyo that incinerated 100,000 people. He and McNamara both acknowledged the horror of their act.

“LeMay said, ‘If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.’ And I think he’s right. He, and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?”

“The Vietnam War did for a time quench America’s appetite for invasions and bloody conquests.”

McNamara was not the first, nor the last man to kill millions on behalf of his government. He has had lots of company in the past forty years since he last served an American president. The Vietnam War did for a time quench America’s appetite for invasions and bloody conquests. In the 1970s and 1980s our government settled for propping up favored tyrants like Saddam Hussein and helped to instigate their wars of aggression. It also beat up on small, vulnerable countries like Panama and Grenada that were no match for the United States war machine.

It wasn’t until the early 1990s when the first president Bush took office and turned former friend Saddam Hussein into a foe that the old fashioned methods were once again in vogue. Iraq was victimized not once but twice and turned into a killing field for eager foreign policy and defense experts.McNamara had plenty of successors who quite happily served as Secretary of Defense or State or as National Security Advisers who took up the charge of killing enormous numbers of people on behalf of Uncle Sam.

Some, like Zbigniew Brzezinski, sent money and arms into places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. Brzezinski committed his worst acts during the Carter administration but he has been recycled and is now advising president Obama some thirty years after he destroyed and destabilized those two countries.

“Iraq was turned into a killing field for eager foreign policy and defense experts.”

It doesn’t seem to matter what these people do or how badly they mess up. They are always forgiven and are always likely to turn up at a later date, a la Donald Rumsfeld. Others like Colin Powell are between foreign policy gigs but are still allowed to advise presidents and pontificate to ordinary citizens. No matter how egregious their acts, or how big their lies, they are accepted as honored statesmen and women and given a pass on their heinous behavior. Colin Powell may, like his partners in crime, turn up again at a president’s right hand at some future date.

There will be plenty of McNamaras in our present and our future as long as we turn a blind eye and give the government permission to kill. Obama managed to get support from millions of people who actually opposed the occupation of Iraq.He clearly states he isn’t interested in ending the occupation any sooner than Bush administration agreements will allow him to. Obama expanded war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, continuing a process begun by Carter and Brzezinski thirty years ago. The cracks in his support are beginning to surface, but he is still admired far more than he is scorned.

McNamara never faced the hangman’s noose or a firing squad, but he once was very nearly killed by a man who decided to take justice into his own hands. In 1972 an artist saw McNamara on a ferry traveling to Martha’s Vineyard and tried to throw him overboard.

“Obama expanded war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, continuing a process begun by Carter and Brzezinski thirty years ago.”

There are a lot of people in the corridors of power who we are justified in wanting to punish. Every American president is on that list. The Kissingers and Brzezinskis and Powells and Rumsfelds and Cheneys and Rices (Condi and Susan) all inspire thoughts of violence in any person who realizes the enormity of their criminality.

They should all have mug shots on file and wear orange jump suits in their homes behind bars. Rather than trying to toss them into the sea, we should first call them what they are. The day we refuse to believe their lies, and support their evil acts, will be the day that their awful reign will end.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.Com.

Obama to Demand Binding Timetable for Israel-PA Talks

Readers Number : 51

16/07/2009 U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to announce a diplomatic plan soon for renewal of the so-called Middle East peace process. A central feature of the plan, which will be presented to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, will be a binding timetable for negotiations on the core issues involved in a final resolution of the conflict. It may also be precluded by an easing of pressure for a building freeze in the settlements on the part of the Unites States. A senior Western diplomat closely involved in current contacts involving the U.S., Israel, the PA and so-called moderate Arab states noted that the American administration is currently developing the diplomatic plan but is only interested in pursuing it after the settlement issue and the matter of pro-Israel gestures from the Arab states are resolved. The American plan will essentially restart negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians which have been deadlocked for over six months. The plan will not deal with all of the specific details of the negotiations and will not provide parameters for the resolution of core issues. Rather it will provide a framework for negotiations, how they will be conducted, follow-up mechanisms and especially the timetable for negotiations. The senior diplomat said Obama is interested in bringing talks to a conclusion “on time” as a way of obligating the parties to make progress. The diplomat also noted that the U.S. is now interested in reaching a compromise with Israel on the settlement issue as a prelude to presentation of the American plan, as the Americans have understood that Israel cannot agree to an absolute freeze in construction in the settlements. U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell is therefore attempting to find a formula by which Israel will go as far as it can to stop settlement building. The shift in the American position is also the product of the refusal on the part of the moderate Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, to make significant normalization gestures toward Israel. The compromise will also include an agreement on a joint database between Israel and the U.S. which will permit close tracking of settlement construction and verification that it is being kept to a minimum. The plan, according to the senior diplomat, would also include other Israeli confidence-building measures toward the Palestinians. The diplomatic source cautioned that the Arab world’s total lack of trust in Netanyahu remained a major problem.

One-Armed Hillary Pounds War Drum On Iran

Clinton Warns Iran: US Will Protect its Friends

Readers Number : 108

16/07/2009 US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton Wednesday gave Iran an ultimatum to accept the administration’s offer for engagement and join the international community or to “continue down a path of further isolation.” She urged Arab states to take immediate steps to improve their ties with Israel in order to bolster Mideast settlement hopes. “We remain ready to engage with Iran, but the time for action is now,” she said. “The opportunity will not remain open indefinitely.” In a wide-ranging policy address to the Council on Foreign Relations, Clinton pledged that the U.S. will “not hesitate to defend our friends, our interests, and above all, our people vigorously and when necessary with the world’s strongest military.” “Our willingness to talk is not a sign of weakness to be exploited,” she said. “This is not an option we seek nor is it a threat; it is a promise to all Americans.” Clinton said the U.S. administration was appalled by Iran’s post-election crackdown on protesters. She said the Iranian regime would face new penalties and increasing isolation over its nuclear program and “support for extremists” unless it took up the U.S. overture soon. Clinton did not set a deadline, but President Barack Obama said last week that the U.S. wants to see a positive response by the fall or it will press for additional bilateral and United Nations sanctions. Clinton set Iran’s leaders an unequivocal ultimatum: “… to join the international community as a responsible member or to continue down a path to further isolation.” “Neither the president nor I have any illusions that dialogue with the Islamic Republic will guarantee success of any kind, and the prospects have certainly shifted in the weeks since the election,” Clinton said. “But we also understand the importance of trying to engage Iran,” she said. Clinton defended the administration’s outreach to Iran and other past adversaries, such as Syria. Clinton also called on Arab states to live up to their stated support of a Saudi proposal for a comprehensive “Arab-Israeli peace” by supporting the weak Palestinian Authority and taking steps to improve relations with Israel. “Direct talks provide the best vehicle for presenting and explaining that choice,” Clinton said. “That is why we offered Iran’s leaders an unmistakable opportunity: Iran does not have a right to nuclear military capacity, and we’re determined to prevent that. But it does have a right to civil nuclear power if it reestablishes the confidence of the international community that it will use its programs exclusively for peaceful purposes.” “Iran can become a constructive actor in the region if it stops threatening its neighbors and supporting terrorism. It can assume a responsible position in the international community if it fulfills its obligations on human rights. The choice is clear. We remain ready to engage with Iran, but the time for action is now. The opportunity will not remain open indefinitely,” she said. As for Syria, Clinton said the US views it as a critical player in the Middle East, and added that Washington intends to restore an ambassador to Damascus. However, she said, Syria will be judged by its actions, not its rhetoric.

More Israeli Warships Transit Suez Canal In Possible Preparations for Attack on Iran

“Israeli Warships in Suez Canal Prepare for Attack on Iran” Batoul Wehbe Readers Number : 257 16/07/2009 Israel’s recent deployment of warships across the Red Sea should be seen as serious preparation for an attack on Iran, an Israeli defense official told the Times of London on Thursday. It came before long-range exercises by the Israeli air force in America later this month and the test of a missile defense shield at a US missile range in the Pacific Ocean. “This is preparation that should be taken seriously. Israel is investing time in preparing itself for the complexity of an attack on Iran. These maneuvers are a message to Iran that Israel will follow up on its threats,” the official was quoted as saying. Earlier this week, two Israel Navy gunboats openly sailed through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea. The ships that passed through the Suez Canal on Tuesday were two Sa’ar 5 gunboats, the Hanit and the Eilat. This follows a similar incident in late June, when an Israeli Dolphin-class submarine passed through the canal, later returning the same way. It is believed that Israel’s missile-equipped submarines, and its fleet of advanced aircraft, could be used to strike at in excess of a dozen nuclear-related targets more than 800 miles from Israel. The move, apparently coordinated with Egypt, is seen as a warning message to Iran that Israeli naval vessels could reach waters off Iran in a matter of days without need to refuel through the red sea. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit confirmed that his Government explicitly allowed passage of Israeli vessels, and an Israeli admiral said that the drills were “run regularly with the full co-operation of the Egyptians.” An Israeli diplomat told the Times that Israel has been bolstering its ties with certain Arab nations just as wary of the “Iranian nuclear threat”. In particular, the diplomat cited a “shared mutual distrust of Iran” between Israel and Egypt. PALESTINIAN LAND, SETTLEMENT FREEZE; BUT IRAN STRIKE! Israel will also soon test an Arrow interceptor missile on a US missile range in the Pacific Ocean. The system is designed to “defend Israel from ballistic missile attacks by Iran and Syria”. Lieutenant-General Patrick O’Reilly, the director of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, said that Israel would test against a target with a range of more than 630 miles (1,000km) — too long for previous Arrow test sites in the eastern Mediterranean. The Israeli air force, meanwhile, will send F16C fighter jets to participate in exercises at Nellis Air Force base in Nevada this month. Israeli C130 Hercules transport aircraft will also compete in the Rodeo 2009 competition at McChord Air Force base in Washington. “It is not by chance that Israel is drilling long-range maneuvers in a public way. This is not a secret operation. This is something that has been published and which will showcase Israel’s abilities,” said an Israeli defense official. He added that in the past, Israel had run a number of covert long-range drills. A year ago, Israeli jets flew over Greece in one such drill, while in May, reports surfaced that Israeli air force aircraft were staging exercises over Gibraltar. An Israeli attack on a weapons convoy in Sudan bound for resistance fighters in the Gaza Strip earlier this year was also seen as a rehearsal for hitting moving convoys. The exercises come at a time when Western diplomats are offering support for an Israeli strike on Iran in return for Israeli concessions on the formation of a Palestinian state. If agreed it would make an Israeli strike on Iran realistic “within the year” Time quoted one British official. According to the paper, diplomats said that Israel had offered concessions on settlement policy, Palestinian land claims and issues with neighboring Arab states, to facilitate a possible strike on Iran. “Israel has chosen to place the Iranian threat over its settlements,” said a senior European diplomat.

Omar’s Immunity Reveals America’s True Intentions

[The following article asks the excellent question: "Why are the real Taliban leadership in Balochistan immune from American attacks?"  The author jumps to the wrong conclusion, that they are safe because Pakistan is protecting them.  As we have learned from the continuing Predator attacks elsewhere in the tribal region, the Pakistani Army can only do what America lets them do.  If the Taliban are immune from attack (other than verbal attacks for show), then it is because the United States wants them to be protected.  The US and India hope to make peace with the Balochs, so they cannot risk bombing-away their goodwill, so matter what the hacks at the NYTimes say.]

AFGHAN SLAUGHTER GOES ON WITH PAKISTAN ARMY BACKING

By Arthur Kent, skyreporter.com
July 12, 2009 – As frontline forces of the American-led coalition suffer record losses in Afghanistan, their political masters continue to duck responsibility for failing to put pressure on the leadership of the Afghan Taliban where it matters most, their safe havens in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, bordering the battlefields of Helmand and Kandahar.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has spoken of a “patriotic duty” to defend the U.K. from terrorism, despite the killing by Taliban forces of 15 British soldiers in ten days. But he and other Western leaders shrink from addressing the greatest perversity of the war, namely that the Afghan Taliban’s haunts in Baluchistan seem immune from assault, by either political or military means.

As more and more British, Canadian and U.S. soldiers lay down their lives, their enemy’s stronghold just across the Pakistani border is a comparative oasis of calm and security – at least for the Taliban leadership.

Further to the north and east, the C.I.A.’s drones rain Hellfire missiles on Pakistan’s home-grown Talib militants and their al Qaeda allies, who the Pakistan government has declared fair game in its own domestic war against terrorism.

It’s a different story for the Afghan Taliban leadership council – the Quetta shura led by Mullah Mohammed Omar, so named for its headquarters in and around Baluchistan’s capital city.

All available evidence shows that Omar’s council, the head of the Taliban snake, continues to enjoy sanctuary and support from elements of the Pakistan Army. In return, Omar is reportedly aiding Pakistan’s ruthless crackdown on Baluch nationalists.

The extent of this clandestine alliance is such that neither missiles nor political missives from the U.S.-led coalition have put so much as a dent in the Afghan Taliban’s war effort. To date, the coalition’s covert and conventional forces have been constrained by their political masters from mounting a single offensive action against Omar’s shura, or his fighters’ training camps, weapons dumps and transit points in Baluchistan.

Pakistan is determined, as has been the case since the early 1990’s, to maintain Mullah Omar’s guerrillas as a proxy force in Afghanistan, a tool to destabilize a potential regional competitor and ally of the dreaded arch-enemy, India.

The West’s disgraceful record in countering this tendency condemns coalition forces to a cruel attrition. For eight years, Gordon Brown and his predecessor, Tony Blair, together with other NATO leaders, stood by while the Bush administration pumped $2 billion per year into the Pakistan Army’s coffers.

This failed attempt to purchase Pakistan’s support against the Taliban was grossly counter-productive, as evidenced by the mounting intensity of the insurgencies in both countries.

Absurdly, Brown and his foreign minister have this weekend appealed to the British public to support the critically-flawed Afghan mission as a means to prevent further terrorist outrages in Britain, such as the July 7, 2005 attack on London’s tube and buses. That the 7/7 bombings had roots in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, goes unmentioned.

Equally dubious is the notion, now being floated through Whitehall, that another 2,000 British troops should be dispatched to the fray in Helmand. Clearly, as was the case in the parliamentary expenses melodrama, London’s leading suits are hard pressed to do the math.

History records the tough numbers of the Great Game. The Soviet Army, as it was coming undone in Afghanistan twenty years ago, had 30,000 troops manning the posts, batteries and fire bases that formed Kabul province’s three concentric security rings.

With fewer than half that deployment, U.S.-led NATO forces are trying to penetrate and secure the entire Helmand river valley, an area at least ten times the size of the Red Army’s safety zone around the Afghan capital.

The West’s politicians and generals can protest all they wish about “real progress” in the Afghan campaign. In reality, it is delusion, deception and death that stalk the tortured landscape, foreshadowing defeat.

The Daily Mail asks: Did MI5 kill the UK Government weapons expert Dr David Kelly?

The UK’s Daily Mail, on 16 July 2009, asks Did MI5 kill the UK Government weapons expert Dr David Kelly?

Here are some of the points made in the Mail article:

1. The UK government produced a dossier claiming that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction which could be activated in 45 minutes.

Dr David Kelly told a journalist that the dossier had been ‘sexed up’.

2. On 17 July 2003, Dr Kelly was found dead half a mile from his family home in Oxfordshire in the UK.

An unopened letter from someone in the UK government lay on the desk in his study.

Reportedly, the letter was designed to silence him.

Reportedly, Kelly’s bosses had discovered that he was preparing to write a book about his work.

3. A new film, Anthrax War, asserts that Dr Kelly had spent hours writing a book.

The film, by New York-based Bob Coen, claims that Dr Kelly, head of biological defence at the military research establishment at Porton Down, was the brains behind much of the West’s germ warfare programmes.

Coen says Kelly had links to illegal human experiments on British servicemen at Porton Down, which led to an investigation by Wiltshire Police.

Police officers recommended charges against some scientists, but dropped this idea a few days after Kelly was found dead.

4. Computers in Kelly’s house linked him to UK and foreign spy agencies, including Mossad.

Since 1995, Kelly had worked as an advisor for Mossad, with the agreement of the UK government.

Kelly

5. Twelve other top micro-biologists linked with germ warfare research have died in the past decade.

Five of them were Russians who were investigating claims that the Israelis were working on viruses to target Arabs.

The plane taking them from Tel Aviv to Siberia was shot down on October 2001 by an ‘off-course’ Ukrainian missile.

Dr Kelly knew the victims.

Five weeks later, Dr Benito Que, an infectious diseas expert known to Dr Kelly, died suddenly in Miami.

He had been investigating how a virus like HIV could be genetically engineered into a biological weapon.

His family say he had been struck on the head.

Ten days later, Dr Don Wiley, a top microbiologists and friend of Dr Kelly, disappeared.

He had a contract to make a vaccine against the killer Ebola fever and other such germs.

A month later his body was found and there was evidence of severe head injuries. His death was ruled ‘accidental’.

6. At 3.30 pm, Dr Kelly went out for a walk.

At 2.30 pm, a senior policeman had sat down at his computer at Police headquarters in Oxfordshire.

He had begun to produce a file entitled Operation Mason, which was about the search for Dr Kelly.

Dr Kelly’s body was found at 8.30am by volunteer searchers.

At 8am, three officers from MI5′s Technical Assessment Unit were at his house.

President Clinton Apologizes for MK Ultra

more about "President Clinton Apologizes for MK U…", posted with vodpod

Inside the Mind of “Al-CIA-da”

The Only One Who Can Save Us Is Osama, NOT Obama

View at EasyCaptures.com

SCHEUER: The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States….only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them.

Nabucco Signing Just More US Hype

[Contrary to the disinformation you might have read at the source of much Internet disinformation, Asia Times Online, "Pipeline Deal is Sweet Music for Iran,", the much-hyped Nabucco signing ceremony in Ankara was just another ceremony, not anything to do with an actual contract signing.  Iran has no part in this new American pipeline for Europe. Obama is not pursuing a different path than that set by Bush and Cheney, in relation to Iran.  The obfuscation and threats disguised as "diplomacy" remain the same.  The only thing that has changed is that the planned confrontation with Iran must be preceded by an image rebuilding PR campaign to reduce the damage done to Israel by its Operation Cast Lead murderous assault on Palestine.]

Hungary signs Nabucco pipeline deal with other regional gas users

By MTI

Hungarian Prime Minster Gordon Bajnai on Monday signed an intergovernmental agreement with leaders from other countries involved in the planned construction of the Nabucco pipeline, which will bring natural gas from Central Asia to Europe, reducing the region’s energy dependence on Russia.

The 50-year intergovernmental agreement was signed by Hungary, Austria, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.

Hungary’s Nabucco envoy Mihaly Bayer told journalists in Ankara that the agreement harmonises Turkish and European regulations in the interest of ensuring a unified and competitive international legal environment for the pipeline.

The problem of Turkey’s demand for 15 percent of the pipeline’s throughput was solved, Bayer said. The members of the consortium will take a share of Nabucco Gas Pipeline International’s profits in proportion to the length of pipeline that passes through their country: as the pipeline is longest in Turkey, it will get the biggest shares, he said.

The leaders also signed a joint political declaration, an initiative of Hungary, on the pipeline, Bayer said. The signers said they would ratify the contract on the pipeline as soon as possible and make a contract with the Nabucco consortium within six months, he said.

The agreement establishes a Nabucco Commission that will assist and oversee the investment. The signers of the agreement will be represented on the commission, and representatives of the German government, the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European Commission and the International Nabucco Gas Company will have observer status.

With the signing of the agreement, the Nabucco consortium, or Nabucco Gas Pipeline International (called International Nabucco Gas Company in the text of the agreement), will take the lead role in the project, which will be built with private capital, without state subsidies. The consortium comprises Hungarian oil and gas company MOL, Austrian peer OMV, Romania’s Transgaz, Bulgaria’s Bulgargaz, Botas of Turkey and Germany’s RWE. The members of the consortium will be guaranteed 50 percent of the gas that flows through the pipeline, but no more than 15 billion cubic metres a year. Tenders will be called for the rest.

The 3,300-kilometre pipeline will have capacity of 31 billion cubic metres. It will start in Turkey, filled with gas from pipelines on the country’s borders with Georgia and Iran, and deliver it via Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to Baumgarten in Austria. The first deliveries through the Nabucco are expected to start in 2014 and maximum capacity is seen being reached in 2020.

The project, to cost 7.9 billion euros at 2008 prices, is to be financed by the EIB and EBRD as well as American and Chinese banks. The EIB would put up one-quarter of the project’s costs and the EBRD 1 billion euros.

The pipeline is expected to reduce Europe’s energy dependence on Russia, from where it gets much of its gas, especially as the region’s demand is expected to rise 30 percent to an annual 600 billion cubic metres in the next 20 years. Russian gas deliveries to Europe have been interrupted in the past because of rows between Russia and Ukraine.

Uncertainty still surrounds suppliers for the pipeline, but Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan will probably supply it, and Egypt, Qatar, Iraq and Iran are possible suppliers.

Hungary has been especially active in bringing about the signing of the intergovernmental agreement on the Nabucco pipeline. The country has hosted two international meetings on the pipeline, of which the second, held in January, was at summit level.

As the result of lobbying by Hungary, the EU made the Nabucco a top priority for trans-European energy networks in 2007. In May of this year, the European Parliament voted to provide 200 million euros in funding for preparations for the project on the condition the implementation stage started by the end of 2010.

European Gas Pipeline System

Sweet Wonderful Methane

A Methane molecule, CH4

Source: USGS

Global Gas Reserves

Global Gas Reserves

Fears of Swat Valley spillover in Tajikistan

[This is the latest manifestation of the US "Brer Rabbit" foreign policy, the fear that the militant "Islamists" based in Pakistan's Northwest are being flushed into Tajikistan and the rest of Central Asia. “Please don’t chase those bad guys into the Caucasus oil fields!” This is precisely the objective of US policy towards Pakistan, to flush the “Frankenstein monster” created by the CIA and ISI into the former Soviet satellite countries, in order to justify sending US/NATO troops in pursuit.  Anywhere in the world where the Western media mouthpieces of the Empire cry-out “Islamists” or “al Qaida,” you will find the CIA using Muslim militants to further US geostrategic objectives.

Fears of Swat Valley spillover in Tajikistan

A Tajik man standing on the river bank in the village of Garm, some 250km from Dushanbe, July 12, 2009. — AFP

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Afghan Taliban says they are holding missing US soldier

VIDEO FEATURE

Displaced & Distraught

TAVILDARA, Tajikistan: A secretive military operation has raised fears that militants fleeing Pakistan and Afghanistan may be slipping into Tajikistan, threatening a fragile peace in the ex-Soviet state.

Since May, Tajik security forces have set up a tight security cordon and engaged in gunbattles with armed groups in an area close to the Afghan border.

Officials call it a counter-narcotics operation, but diplomats and residents at the foot of the soaring Pamir Mountains fear the government has been battling insurgents, possibly fighters linked to the Taliban.

‘We know that something has happened, that most probably it involves the people who have been mentioned, and that it is probably a spillover from the Swat Valley operations,’ a senior western diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Fighting between Taliban militants and the Pakistan army in Pakistan’s Swat Valley had already raised concerns that militants with ethnic ties to ex-Soviet Central Asia could seek refuge inside Tajikistan.

US President Barack Obama has sent thousands more US troops to Afghanistan in a bid to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda. And that is not necessarily good news for Tajikistan, which went through a civil war after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union as militant groups like the Islamist Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) flourished.

Groups like the IMU — designated a terrorist organisation by Washington — were pushed into Afghanistan after a 1997 peace deal ended the civil war. But in recent weeks, signs have appeared suggesting that the militants are back.

The nearby town of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan, after years of relative stability following the 2001 US-led invasion, has seen a surge of violence believed to be Taliban fuelled.

And the Tajik government said on Saturday that it detained five ethnic Chechen Russians who were selling drugs to fund militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan — a rare admission of the presence of foreign fighters.

A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity during a recent visit to Central Asia, told AFP that Washington was closely monitoring the outflow of militants since the beginning of the Swat operations.

‘I think we are seeing, looking globally, that al-Qaeda is relocating its forces into the rest of the world,’ he said.

Tajikistan, the poorest of the ex-Soviet republics, shares a long and mostly unguarded border with Afghanistan, making its rugged mountains a logical gateway into Central Asia and beyond.

‘We don’t need anyone to help us fight’

During a recent visit to the Rasht Valley, long a stronghold of Tajikistan’s Islamist opposition, government checkpoints maintained a chokehold over long stretches of punishing mountain roads leading into the area.

In the regional capital, Garm, local Islamist fighters loyal to Tajik warlord Mirzokhoja Akhmadov waited outside a hotel, staring ominously from their Russian-made four wheel drive van.

Before bundling into the vehicle for the drive to Akhmadov’s compound, one of his lieutenants pointed toward the mountains that ended in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan.

‘There is a pass here that they can easily pass through,’ said the lieutenant, who asked not to be named because he did not have the permission of his commander.

‘It may already be happening,’ he added.

Dressed in traditional robes and with a flowing white beard, his commander, Akhmadov, confirmed there had been several months of heavy fighting.

But he denied that fighters were coming from Afghanistan, saying that the government was battling local militants angered by pitiful conditions and state repression.

‘We don’t need anyone to come in from outside to help us fight,’ said Akhmadov, a feared commander from the 1990s civil war.

Many fear that Tajikistan’s militants could be bolstered by the global financial crisis, if Tajik labourers return frustrated and penniless from mothballed construction sites in Russia and Kazakhstan.

Officials from Tajikistan’s western-funded Drug Control Agency (DCA) said operations in the Rasht Valley were part of an annual anti-drug operation called Poppy-2009.

Tajikistan is a main route for drugs smuggled out of Afghanistan, the world’s largest heroin producer.

‘This is a routine annual anti-drug operation, and is not connected with anything else in any way,’ DCA director General Rustam Nazarov told AFP.

However locals say the government has refused to explain the operations, leading many to forge conclusions based on their own experiences.

In mid-May, a neighbour turned up at the ramshackle home of a village elder in a remote mountain hamlet not far from the garrison town of Tavildara.

The elder, who asked not to be identified for fear of government reprisal, said the neighbour had ferried foreigners — possibly Chechens — in his taxi from the capital Dushanbe to an isolated village nearby.

‘All they had with them were suitcases filled with bread and sweets,’ he related from their conversation.

‘And they tried to pay with euros and Russian rubles. They didn’t have any local money at all. What can we do with rubles and euros? People here don’t even know what the exchange rate is.’ — AFP

Estemirova: brave campaigner against abuse in Chechnya

[SEE: Top Russian activist murdered in Caucasus]

Estemirova: brave campaigner against abuse in Chechnya

Chechen journalist and activist Natalia Estemirova poses at the Front Line Club in London in this October 4, 2007 file photo. — Reuters

World

Russian forces kill four Chechen rebels

MOSCOW: Natalya Estemirova was an award-winning campaigner who tirelessly investigated human rights abuses in Chechnya despite the obvious dangers of probing the murky world of government-backed militias.

On Monday Estemirova had highlighted the death in suspicious circumstances of Madina Yunusova, a young Chechen woman whose husband was suspected by the authorities of being a militant.

This was the everyday action of a woman who was not frightened to stick her neck out time and time again, investigating the kidnappings, disappearances, and murders that have blighted Chechnya’s recent past.

Two days on she was abducted in the Chechen capital Grozny and hours later her corpse was found with gunshot wounds to the head and chest in the neighbouring Caucasus republic of Ingushetia.

Estemirova, murdered at the age of 50, worked for the Russian human rights group Memorial. She received the families of victims at her office in Grozny and helped them cope — whether with the police bureaucracy or with a judiciary that seemed deaf to their pleas for help.

On July 9 she made public another affair that got big play on the Internet and was picked up by several NGOs specialising on the Caucasus: the summary execution of a suspected militant in front of his village.

‘Officials and foreign journalists had come by to see her because she knew the situation in Chechnya like no other. She was helping the people,’ said Tatiana Lokshina, deputy Moscow director at Human Rights Watch.

Russia ended its decade-long military crackdown in Chechnya in April, but Estemirova continued probing the wave of kidnappings there, convinced that the henchmen of Chechnya’s pro-Russian strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov were responsible.

In a July 2 interview with the kavkaz-uzel.ru website which specialises on the Caucasus region she denounced a new method of repression being used against suspected militants — the withholding of pensions and family allowances to their loved ones.

Asked in an April 19 interview for Echo of Moscow radio about the role local Chechen leaders played in the ugly happenings in Chechnya, she pointed her finger at the highest corridors of power in Moscow.

‘The main thing is who is in the Kremlin. With regard to human rights, Moscow remains the example for Chechen leaders,’ she said.

Born in Russia’s southern Saratov region of mixed Russian-Chechen parentage, Estemirova graduated in history from Grozny University.

A teacher at a school in Grozny until her late 30s, she became a politically engaged journalist at about the time the second Chechen War started in 1999, when she began documenting civilian casualties.

She began working for Memorial the following year and won a string of foreign awards for her work.

Along with Memorial chairman Sergei Kovalyov, she was awarded the Robert Schuman Medal by the European Parliament in 2005 — a distinction whose previous recipients include the late Pope John Paul II and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In October 2007, Estemirova was awarded the inaugural Anna Politkovskaya award. It was a particularly poignant distinction as the murdered Russian journalist was a close friend and colleague with whom she had worked on several cases in Chechnya. — AFP

Top Russian activist murdered in Caucasus

Posted: 16 July 2009 0215 hrs

MOSCOW: A renowned rights activist in Russia’s turbulent North Caucasus region was found murdered on Wednesday, hours after being abducted in Chechnya, horrifying fellow campaigners and the Kremlin.

Prize-winning activist Natalya Estemirova, 50, worked for the leading Russian rights group Memorial, which has exposed a string of abuses in the conflict-torn region.

Her body, “with firearms wounds to the head and chest,” was found close to a highway in the region of Ingushetia that neighbours Chechnya, said the investigative committee of Russian prosecutors.

Her murder was the latest in a series of killings of rights defenders and investigative journalists in Russia that have shocked the world, most notably the 2006 killing of reporter Anna Politkovskaya.

“I have no doubt that this murder is linked to the professional activities of Natalya,” Tatyana Lokshina of Human Rights Watch told AFP. “It’s a horrific tragedy. The situation in Chechnya is out of control.”

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev “expressed indignation at this murder” and ordered a top-level investigation, Kremlin spokeswoman Natalya Timakova said, quoted by Russian news agencies.

The swift Kremlin reaction contrasted with sluggish responses to previous killings of activists.

Amnesty International said the murder was “a consequence of the impunity that has been allowed to persist by the Russian and Chechen authorities.”

The Memorial rights group said Estemirova was bundled into a vehicle near her house in Grozny earlier Wednesday, shouting that she was being kidnapped.

An unknown woman had followed her from her building to the place where she was kidnapped, said the group.

Estemirova was one of the main Caucasus-based activists for Memorial, which is acclaimed worldwide for its work exposing rights abuses in the region.

In 2007 the Nobel Women’s Initiative, a group established by female Nobel Peace Prize laureates, awarded her the Anna Politkovskaya prize – named after the murdered journalist.

The Swedish parliament honoured her with the “Right to Existence Prize” and she received the Robert Schuman Medal from the European parliament.

The Chechen authorities had expressed dissatisfaction with her work more than once, said Memorial, although it gave no indication of who might be behind her abduction and murder.

Alexander Cherkassov, a Caucasus expert from Memorial, told AFP that Estemirova most recently upset local officials by accusing security forces of the arbitrary killing of an alleged rebel on July 7.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, whose country holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, denounced the murder.

“We condemn that brutal act and call for the authorities to try to establish who is responsible and take the action that is called for,” said Bildt.

The 47-nation Council of Europe called it “a horrible and cowardly crime”.

Paris-based press rights groups Reporters Without Borders (RSF) expressed “shock and grief”.

“We salute the exemplary courage and commitment of this human rights activist and former journalist, we share the grief of her friends and family and we join them in honouring her memory,” said the RSF statement.

Russia earlier this year ended a 10-year “counter-terrorism” operation in Chechnya, a mainly Muslim region riven by two separatist wars since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

It is now led by pro-Kremlin strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, whose regime has been criticised for human rights abuses.

Kadyrov condemned the “inhuman” murder of Estemirova and pledged to personally oversee the investigation, the RIA Novosti news agency reported late Wednesday.

But Chechnya and other parts of the Russian Caucasus remain the site of a deadly insurgency by Islamist militants against the pro-Kremlin local authorities, who in turn have been accused of abuses in fighting the rebels.

Security forces are being killed in clashes with militants on a near-daily basis, and last week 10 Chechen police officers were killed in an ambush in Ingushetia.

“This horrific crime (the murder of Estemirova) has taken place when we are being told that the war is over, that order and law is reigning in Kadyrov’s Chechnya,” said rights activist Lev Ponomarev.

Earlier this month, Memorial and Human Rights Watch issued a hard-hitting report accusing Chechen security forces of punishing families of alleged militants by burning down their homes. – AFP/de

UNIFIL: South Lebanon Explosions ‘Serious Violation’ of Resolution 1701

[Mossad plays its next card.]

UNIFIL: South Lebanon Explosions ‘Serious Violation’ of Resolution 1701

The U.N. peacekeeping force in south Lebanon on Wednesday said that a series of blasts in south Lebanon was probably caused by stockpiled ammunition and marked a “serious violation” of a U.N. Security Council resolution.

The ammunition was likely stored in an abandoned house, UNIFIL spokeswoman Yasmine Bouziane told AFP.

No one was hurt in the explosions on Tuesday in the village of Khirbet Selm, 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the border with Israel.

“Preliminary info available… indicates that the sequence of explosions is likely to have been triggered by the deflagration of the ammunition present in the building,” said Bouziane.

“UNIFIL considers this incident a serious violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, notably the provision that there should be no presence of unauthorized assets or weapons in the area of operations between the Litani River and the Blue Line,” she added, referring to demarcations in south Lebanon.

“UNIFIL has informed U.N. headquarters of the incident and is keeping the parties informed.”

Bouziane said the area had on Wednesday been “deemed secure and safe for specialized units.”

An army spokesman said on Tuesday that the weapons cache dated from the Second Lebanon War in July and August, 2006.

“There was no one but Hizbullah in this area,” he told AFP on condition of anonymity.(AFP)

Calls for ‘New World Order’ at NAM Summit

[Everybody's screaming for a new world order.  Maybe it's not!] Calls for ‘New World Order’ at NAM Summit More than 50 heads of state from the developing world met Wednesday in Egypt to tackle the fallout from the global economic meltdown, with calls for a “new world order” to prevent a repeat of the crisis.Cuban President Raul Castro said in a speech at the opening session of the Non-Aligned Movement summit that the financial crisis had hit developing nations the hardest. “Every country in the world must seek just solutions to the global economic crisis,” Castro told the 118-member body at the gathering in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. “We call for a new monetary and economic world order… we must restructure the world financial system to take into consideration the needs of developing countries.” Global power dynamics also need to be addressed, Libyan leader Moammar al-Gadhafi said, demanding a restructuring of the U.N. Security Council which he branded a form of terrorism “monopolized by a few countries that are permanent members.” India said members should play a bigger role on the world stage. “Decision-making processes, whether in the United Nations or the international financial institutions continue to be based on charters written more than 60 years ago, though the world has changed greatly since then,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said. “Developing countries must be fully represented in the decision-making levels of international institutions,” Singh said. But the developing world’s military ambitions looked set to steal the summit limelight, with nuclear-armed South Asian foes India and Pakistan to hold talks on Thursday aimed at re-launching stalled peace talks. New Delhi and Islamabad’s fraught relations deteriorated after terror attacks in the Indian commercial capital Mumbai in November last year which killed 166 people. The attacks were blamed by India on the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Pakistan has acknowledged they were partially planned on its soil. Indian foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon met his Pakistani counterpart Salim Bashir on Tuesday ahead of the meeting between Singh and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. Singh has voiced hope that Pakistan will promise action against those behind the attacks when he meets Gilani for only the second high-level contact between the two sides since the Mumbai bombings. Pakistan has said that it would “probably” put the five accused of involvement in the attacks on trial next week. The attacks left in tatters a fragile peace process launched in 2004 to resolve all outstanding issues of conflict, including a territorial dispute over the divided Himalayan territory of Kashmir. India, along with host Egypt, is one of the founding members of the NAM, the largest grouping of countries outside of the United Nations, aimed at giving a voice to the developing world. Founded in 1955, NAM’s 118 member states represent around 56 percent of the global population. NAM states consider themselves not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. Set up during the Cold War, the movement sought to distance itself from both the Western and Soviet blocs, but today its raison d’etre is questioned after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing shift in power politics.(AFP)

Unreality Check: Amnesiac Controversy Ignores CIA’s Real Death Squads

Chris Floyd

July 15, 2009

The unreality that has long pervaded American politics, policy-making and media reportage is by now almost totally impenetrable. Both action and analysis in the most powerful nation in history now take place in a fantasy world, a simulacrum, a state of permanent amnesia in which facts — established, confirmed, published — vanish almost in the very moment of their appearance. Anyone who tries to reason their way through this feverish hallucination is bound to fail — or succumb to the madness themselves.

This hallucinatory quality of American public life has been on vivid display in recent days, with stories in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Newsweek and elsewhere about a secret CIA program to develop death squads to exterminate “top al Qaeda leaders” in Israeli-style “targeted assassinations.” We are told that Dick Cheney was responsible for drawing up these plans — and for illegally keeping them secret from Congressional oversight. We are also assured that these plans, promulgated by a presidential directive in 2001, “hadn’t become fully operational” by the time that new CIA Director Leon Panetta terminated them after taking up his post earlier this year. The plans were developed, we’re told, but never implemented. Still, the very fact of their existence is considered by some commentators as a grave scandal, one made even worse by Cheney’s cover-up.

All of this is very curious. For the established, confirmed, published fact of the matter is that a CIA assassination program run by the White House on direct orders from the president was put into operation in late 2001. It was operative for many years (and might still be operative; we of course do not know what program Panetta actually terminated — or if he really has terminated any program). Nor was this assassination program aimed solely at “top al Qaeda leaders”: it targeted any number of “suspected” terrorists, whose guilt — and sentence of death — was arbitrary decided by the president, or by the agents in the field to whom Bush issued a literal license to kill. The first known victim of this CIA death squad was an American citizen, killed by a CIA-fired drone missile in Yemen. By Bush’s own public admission — in a nationally televised appearance before both houses of Congress in 2003 — many “suspected terrorists” (his own description) had been killed by American agents.

None of this was secret. All of the above facts were reported in reputable, mainstream newspapers and journals — the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the New Yorker, etc. — beginning in October 2001. And these stories themselves were based on statements by Administration officials, who in many instances were eager to brag about “taking the gloves off” and other macho locutions. Or as one CIA operative in Afghanistan told the Boston Globe in 2002: “We are doing things I never believed we would do — and I mean killing people.”

For more than half a decade, it has been an open, easily established, easily confirmable fact that the White House used the CIA as a death squad to kill people that it “suspected” of being terrorists. (The use of such death squads was not limited to the CIA, of course. For example, in January 2003, the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command was given the power “to kill and capture al Qaeda operatives and other terrorists,” as the Washington Times reported. Stanley McChrystal, the man appointed by Barack Obama to command the war in Afghanistan, was the commander of these Special Ops forces in Iraq for several years.)

And yet here we are, in July 2009, wringing our hands over the alleged existence of “unrealized” plans to perhaps set up some kind of CIA death squad on the orders of Dick Cheney! And even this hallucination is riddled with unreality of its own: witness the emphasis on Cheney’s involvement when even the new stories make clear that Cheney was acting on the authority of a presidential directive. George W. Bush is being written out of the picture; evidently he is to remain untainted even by the current spate of fantasy stories, which not only ignore the proven, acknowledged existence of actual, active CIA death squads but also Bush’s central role in actually signing the directives that made the killings possible. Even if one buys the notion that Bush was a dimbulb who simply signed whatever the wily Cheney shoved under his nose, that does not absolve Bush of the moral and legal responsibility for these state-sanctioned murders.

But as I say, it looks as if even some of the most forthright Bush critics are not only writing Bush out of the equation with their focus on Cheney, they are also writing the death squads themselves out of existence, by taking the new set of stories at face value and pretending — or forgetting? — what these same newspapers reported just a few years ago.

And so the “controversy” over a non-actuated program whose non-actuality was covered up by Cheney rolls on, obscuring the blood-soaked reality of the real programme whose deadly effects were openly reported — and, again, championed on the broadest possible public stage by the president himself.

It is, by any measure, a very strange, mind-bending state of affairs. Yet this is the way our world works now; and almost every earnest disquisition on politics and policy that we read — from left, right or center — is based on just this sort of hallucination.

***
Below is an excerpt of a column I wrote in 2005, summarizing some of the known facts about the death squads at the time:

On September 17, 2001, George W. Bush signed an executive order authorizing the use of “lethal measures” against anyone in the world whom he or his minions designated an “enemy combatant.” This order remains in force today. No judicial evidence, no hearing, no charges are required for these killings; no law, no border, no oversight restrains them. Bush has also given agents in the field carte blanche to designate “enemies” on their own initiative and kill them as they see fit.

The existence of this universal death squad – and the total obliteration of human liberty it represents – has not provoked so much as a crumb, an atom, a quantum particle of controversy in the American Establishment, although it’s no secret. The executive order was first bruited in the Washington Post in October 2001. I first wrote of it in my Moscow Times column in November 2001. The New York Times added further details in December 2002. That same month, Bush officials made clear that the dread edict also applied to American citizens, as the Associated Press reported.

The first officially confirmed use of this power was the killing of an American citizen in Yemen by a CIA drone missile on November 3, 2002. A similar strike occurred in Pakistan this month, when a CIA missile destroyed a house and purportedly killed Abu Hamza Rabia, a suspected al Qaeda figure. But the only bodies found at the site were those of two children, the houseowner’s son and nephew, Reuters reports. The grieving father denied any connection to terrorism. An earlier CIA strike on another house missed Rabia but killed his wife and children, Pakistani officials reported.

But most of the assassinations are carried out in secret, quietly, professionally, like a contract killing for the mob. As a Pentagon document unearthed by the New Yorker in December 2002 put it, the death squads must be “small and agile,” and “able to operate clandestinely, using a full range of official and non-official cover arrangements to…enter countries surreptitiously.”

The dangers of this policy are obvious, as a UN report on “extrajudicial killings” noted in December 2004: ” Empowering governments to identify and kill ‘known terrorists’ places no verifiable obligation upon them to demonstrate in any way that those against whom lethal force is used are indeed terrorists…  While it is portrayed as a limited ‘exception’ to international norms, it actually creates the potential for an endless expansion of the relevant category to include any enemies of the State, social misfits, political opponents, or others.”

It’s hard to believe that any genuine democracy would accept a claim by its leader that he could have anyone killed simply by labeling them an “enemy.” It’s hard to believe that any adult with even the slightest knowledge of history or human nature could countenance such unlimited, arbitrary power, knowing the evil it is bound to produce. Yet this is what the great and good in America have done. Like the boyars of old, they not only countenance but celebrate their enslavement to the ruler.

This was vividly demonstrated in one of the revolting scenes in recent American history: Bush’s State of the Union address in January 2003, delivered to Congress and televised nationwide during the final frenzy of war-drum beating before the assault on Iraq. Trumpeting his successes in the Terror War, Bush claimed that “more than 3,000 suspected terrorists” had been arrested worldwide – “and many others have met a different fate.” His face then took on the characteristic leer, the strange, sickly half-smile it acquires whenever he speaks of killing people: “Let’s put it this way. They are no longer a problem.”

In other words, the suspects – and even Bush acknowledged they were only suspects – had been murdered. Lynched. Killed by agents operating unsupervised in that shadow world where intelligence, terrorism, politics, finance and organized crime meld together in one amorphous, impenetrable mass. Killed on the word of a dubious informer, perhaps: a tortured captive willing to say anything to end his torment, a business rival, a personal foe, a bureaucrat looking to impress his superiors, a paid snitch in need of cash, a zealous crank pursuing ethnic, tribal or religious hatreds – or any other purveyor of the garbage data that is coin of the realm in the shadow world.

Bush proudly held up this hideous system as an example of what he called “the meaning of American justice.” And the assembled legislators…applauded. Oh, how they applauded! They roared with glee at the leering little man’s bloodthirsty, B-movie machismo. They shared his sneering contempt for law – our only shield, however imperfect, against the blind, brute, ignorant, ape-like force of raw power. Not a single voice among them was raised in protest against this tyrannical machtpolitik: not that night, not the next day, not ever.

You can also find more on the US-UK death squad operation in Iraq, and its lineage, in “Ulster on the Eurphrates: The Anglo-American Dirty War in Iraq.”