Federal judge: Terror law violates 1st Amendment
I believe that this new law mentioned in this article is the National Defense Authorization Act which was signed into law in December, allowing for the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism.Federal judge: Terror law violates 1st Amendment
Associated Press
By LARRY NEUMEISTER
NEW YORK (AP) — A judge on Wednesday struck down a portion of a law giving the government wide powers to regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists, saying it left journalists, scholars and political activists facing the prospect of indefinite detention for exercising First Amendment rights.
U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan said in a written ruling that a single page of the law has a "chilling impact on First Amendment rights." She cited testimony by journalists that they feared their association with certain individuals overseas could result in their arrest because a provision of the law subjects to indefinite detention anyone who "substantially" or "directly" provides "support" to forces such as al-Qaida or the Taliban. She said the wording was too vague and encouraged Congress to change it.
"An individual could run the risk of substantially supporting or directly supporting an associated force without even being aware that he or she was doing so," the judge said.
She said the law also gave the government authority to move against individuals who engage in political speech with views that "may be extreme and unpopular as measured against views of an average individual.
"That, however, is precisely what the First Amendment protects," Forrest wrote.
She called the fears of journalists in particular real and reasonable, citing testimony at a March hearing by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Christopher Hedges, who has interviewed al-Qaida members, conversed with members of the Taliban during speaking engagements overseas and reported on 17 groups named on a list prepared by the State Department of known terrorist organizations. He testified that the law has led him to consider altering speeches where members of al-Qaida or the Taliban might be present.
Hedges called Forrest's ruling "a tremendous step forward for the restoration of due process and the rule of law."
He said: "Ever since the law has come out, and because the law is so amorphous, the problem is you're not sure what you can say, what you can do and what context you can have."
Hedges was among seven individuals and one organization that challenged the law with a January lawsuit. The National Defense Authorization Act was signed into law in December, allowing for the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism. Wednesday's ruling does not affect another part of the law that enables the United States to indefinitely detain members of terrorist organizations, and the judge said the government has other legal authority it can use to detain those who support terrorists.
A message left Wednesday with a spokeswoman for government lawyers was not immediately returned.
Bruce Afran, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, called the ruling a "great victory for free speech."
"She's held that the government cannot subject people to indefinite imprisonment for engaging in speech, journalism or advocacy, regardless of how unpopular those ideas might be to some people," he said.
Attorney Carl Mayer, speaking for plaintiffs at oral arguments earlier this year, had noted that even President Barack Obama expressed reservations about certain aspects of the bill when he signed it into law.
After the ruling, Mayer called on the Obama administration to drop its decision to enforce the law. He also called on Congress to change it "to make it the law of the land that U.S. citizens are entitled to trial by jury. They are not subject to military detention, policing and tribunals, all the things we fought a revolution to make sure would never happen in this land."
The government had argued that the law did not change the practices of the United States since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and that the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to sue.
In March, the judge seemed sympathetic to the government's arguments until she asked a government attorney if he could assure the plaintiffs that they would not face detention under the law for their work.
She wrote Wednesday that the failure of the government to make such a representation required her to assume that government takes the position that the law covers "a wide swath of expressive and associational conduct."
Kyrsten Sinema supports Afghanistan war???
Wow!!! I guess Kyrsten Sinema will say anything to get elected!!!!!! I knew her as an anti-war protester and now she seems to want to have it both way. Against the war to get the Democratic votes and for the war to get the Republican votes.I also knew Kyrsten Sinema as a person who was against the police state and against police brutality, but all of her campaign signs say she is supported by the police.
So I suspect that Kyrsten Sinema wants it both ways on the issue of the police. She claims to be against the police state, but she seem to be willing to say anything to get the police vote.
Sinema criticized for Afghanistan stances
Rebekah L. Sanders, of The Arizona Republic's politics team, filed this post:
Democrats running in Congressional District 9 continue to sling arrows at each other after escalating their attacks earlier this week.
The latest argument is that former state Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (top) is flip-flopping on whether the United States should have deployed military force in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The criticism comes from Sinema's opponent Andrei Cherny, former chair of the Arizona Democratic Party (bottom). Cherny this week caught flak from Sinema and state Sen. David Schapira, the third Democrat in the race, over negative mailers Cherny sent in a California primary race a decade ago.
Cherny's campaign says Sinema is lying about her support of a military response in Afghanistan against Osama bin Laden, putting Sinema "far outside the mainstream of the Democratic Party." Sinema's campaign calls the criticism "trash talk" and says she would have voted for the joint resolution of force but draws a distinction between "military action" and "war."
Sinema was an active anti-war activist for several years and an organizer for the Arizona Alliance for Peaceful Justice starting at least by October 2001, according to Arizona Republic stories and a letter to the editor written by Sinema. The group formed after the Sept. 11 attacks to encourage humanitarian, legal and diplomatic approaches to terrorism and oppression. Its mission statement, http://www.azpeace.org/whow...>then and now, includes that "military action is an inappropriate response to terrorism."
No news stories quote Sinema directly opposing a military response in Afghanistan. But The Hill newspaper in Washington, D.C., this week reported that it obtained "internal communications from AAPJ and related groups" showing "Sinema spent the first few years after 9/11 as a passionate and vocal advocate for a nonviolent response to the terrorist attacks and an opponent of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq."
The Hill said Sinema posted on an online forum in 2006 that she was “one of the core organizers against the war from day one (September 12, 2011), I have always and will always continue to oppose war in all its forms."
This year, Sinema's candidate questionaire for the Progressive Democrats of America, which Cherny did not fill out, said she "led efforts opposing these wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) before they even started."
Sinema told The Hill she quit the AAPJ because its views became too extreme. She said her own views have evolved and military force is sometimes warranted. And she added she would have voted for the authorization of military force in Afghanistan passed by Congress shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, but that war and military intervention are different.
An e-mail to supporters from Sinema's campaign Thursday repeated her argument.
"Sinema supported military action against al-Qaida, and continues to do so. Sinema was against going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Invading a country and mounting a military attack on a terrorist group are not the same thing," it read. "For example, U.S. Navy Seals successfully attacked Osama bin Laden without invading and occupying the nation of Pakistan."
Cherny's campaign called that an "impossible position" for Sinema, saying "a 'core organizer' against the war on Sept. 12, 2001, would not have voted to go to war on Sept. 14, 2001." The campaign e-mail to supporters added that only one out of 535 members of Congress voted against going to war in Afghanistan.
Follow Rebekah on Twitter at @RebekahLSanders.
House OKs continued war in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — The House endorsed the continued war in Afghanistan on Thursday despite acknowledgment from Republicans and Democrats that the American people are war-weary after more than a decade of conflict.
By a vote of 303-113, lawmakers rejected an amendment that would have swiftly ended combat operations in Afghanistan by limiting funds only to the “safe and orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops and military contractors from Afghanistan.”
More than 10 years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, American public support for the overseas conflict has deteriorated. An Associated Press-GfK poll released last week showed that backing for the war has hit a new low and is on par with support for the Vietnam War in the early 1970s. Only 27 percent of Americans say they support the war effort, and 66 percent oppose it, according to the survey.
“The American people are far ahead of Congress,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., sponsor of the amendment, who called on Congress to stand squarely with the American people. “It’s past time to end the war and bring the troops home.”
Opponents of the amendment conceded that the public has grown tired of war, but they argued against a precipitous withdrawal.
“If we leave too early and the Taliban and al-Qaida return, more Americans will suffer,” Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said.
The vote came as the House considered a $642 billion defense budget for next year, debating more than 140 amendments to the far-reaching legislation. Final passage of the measure was expected Friday.
Rather than a speedy withdrawal from Afghanistan, the spending blueprint calls for keeping a sizable number of U.S. combat troops in the country. The bill cites significant uncertainty in Afghanistan about U.S. military support and says that to reduce the uncertainty and promote stability the president should “maintain a force of at least 68,000 troops through Dec. 31, 2014, unless fewer forces can achieve United States objectives.”
The United States currently has 88,000 troops there. President Barack Obama envisions a final withdrawal of U.S. combat troops in 2014. Earlier this month, he signed an agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on the role of America forces in counterterrorism and training of the Afghan military. The president insisted that the U.S. combat role was winding down.
In a series of votes late Thursday, the Republican-controlled House narrowly passed an amendment preventing federal agencies from requiring contractors to sign project labor agreements to secure federal contracts. The agreements require contractors to negotiate with union officials, recognize union wages and generally abide by collective-bargaining agreements. The vote was 211-209.
I suspect that is only the tip of the iceberg, because most of these cases were high profile murder cases where lots of money and effort were spent to get the people who were framed by the police off of death row.
Police, prosecutors and elected officials tell us that they would rather have 100 guilty people go free then have one innocent person go to jail, but that is 100 percent BS!
People are routinely framed by the police for crimes they didn't commit. People routinely accept plea bargains for crimes they are innocent of rather the fact draconian penalties if they go to trial and fight a charge they are innocent of. I know two of these people who accepted plea bargains for crimes they didn't commit. They are Laro Nicol and Kevin Walsh.
I was framed by the Arizona Department of Public Safety for selling drugs.
I was not convicted of the crime and I didn't spend any time in prison for it.
Originally I suspected my arrest was a case of mistaken identity but I later found
out by accident I was intentionally framed by the police because they
"thought" I was selling drugs.
Study: 2,000 convicted then exonerated in 23 years
(AP) WASHINGTON - More than 2,000 people who were falsely convicted of serious crimes have been exonerated in the United States in the past 23 years, according to a new archive compiled at two universities.
There is no official record-keeping system for exonerations of convicted criminals in the country, so academics set one up. The new national registry, or database, painstakingly assembled by the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, is the most complete list of exonerations ever compiled.
The database compiled and analyzed by the researchers contains information on 873 exonerations for which they have the most detailed evidence. The researchers are aware of nearly 1,200 other exonerations, for which they have less data.
They found that those 873 exonerated defendants spent a combined total of more than 10,000 years in prison, an average of more than 11 years each. Nine out of 10 of them are men and half are African-American.
Nearly half of the 873 exonerations were homicide cases, including 101 death sentences. Over one-third of the cases were sexual assaults.
DNA evidence led to exoneration in nearly one-third of the 416 homicides and in nearly two-thirds of the 305 sexual assaults.
Researchers estimate the total number of felony convictions in the United States is nearly a million a year.
The overall registry/list begins at the start of 1989. It gives an unprecedented view of the scope of the problem of wrongful convictions in the United States and the figure of more than 2,000 exonerations "is a good start," said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions.
"We know there are many more that we haven't found," added University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross, the editor of the newly opened National Registry of Exonerations.
Counties such as San Bernardino in California and Bexar County in Texas are heavily populated, yet seemingly have no exonerations, a circumstance that the academics say cannot possibly be correct.
The registry excludes at least 1,170 additional defendants. Their convictions were thrown out starting in 1995 amid the periodic exposures of 13 major police scandals around the country. In all the cases, police officers fabricated crimes, usually by planting drugs or guns on innocent defendants.
Regarding the 1,170 additional defendants who were left out of the registry, "we have only sketchy information about most of these cases," the report said. "Some of these group exonerations are well known; most are comparatively obscure. We began to notice them by accident, as a byproduct of searches for individual cases."
In half of the 873 exonerations studied in detail, the most common factor leading to false convictions was perjured testimony or false accusations. Forty-three percent of the cases involved mistaken eyewitness identification, and 24 percent of the cases involved false or misleading forensic evidence.
In two out of three homicides, perjury or false accusation was the most common factor leading to false conviction. In four out of five sexual assaults, mistaken eyewitness identification was the leading cause of false conviction.
Seven percent of the exonerations were drug, white-collar and other nonviolent crimes, 5 percent were robberies and 5 percent were other types of violent crimes.
"It used to be that almost all the exonerations we knew about were murder and rape cases. We're finally beginning to see beyond that. This is a sea change," said Gross.
Exonerations often take place with no public fanfare and the 106-page report that coincides with the opening of the registry explains why.
On TV, an exoneration looks like a singular victory for a criminal defense attorney, "but there's usually someone to blame for the underlying tragedy, often more than one person, and the common culprits include defense lawyers as well as police officers, prosecutors and judges. In many cases, everybody involved has egg on their face," according to the report.
Despite a claim of wrongful conviction that was widely publicized last week, a Texas convict executed two decades ago is not in the database because he has not been officially exonerated. Carlos deLuna was executed for the fatal stabbing of a Corpus Christi convenience store clerk. A team headed by a Columbia University law professor just published a 400-page report that contends DeLuna didn't kill the clerk, Wanda Jean Lopez.
I never dreamed I would read an article about appointed White House bureaucrats sitting around having meetings in which they decide which of their enemies to murder with drone strikes.
Sure I don't like Emperor Obama any more then I liked Emperor Bush, but I was hoping Emperor Obama would be less of a war monger then Emperor Bush, but sadly I was wrong about that too.
My next question is when will these White House staff meeting start deciding to murder suspected drug dealers in the USA with drone strikes?
Sure the White House will admit it's unconstitutional to murder drug dealers in the USA, just like it is unconstitutional to murder suspected terrorists in the rest of the world, but they will come up with some cockamamie excuse to justify it like they always do.
U.S. drone strike policy refined
White House takes lead in targeting terrorists
by Kimberly Dozier - May. 22, 2012 12:21 AM
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - White House counterterror chief John Brennan has seized the lead in guiding the debate on which terror leaders will be targeted for drone attacks or raids, establishing a new procedure to vet both military and CIA targets.
The move concentrates power at the White House over the use of lethal U.S. force outside war zones.
The process, which is about a month old, means Brennan's staff consults the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies as to who should go on the list, making a previous military-run review process in place since 2009 less relevant, according to two current and three former U.S. officials aware of the evolution in how the government targets terrorists.
In describing Brennan's arrangement to the Associated Press, the officials provided the first detailed description of the military's previous review process that set a schedule for killing or capturing terror leaders around the Arab world and beyond. They spoke on condition of anonymity because U.S. officials are not allowed to publicly describe the classified targeting program.
One senior administration official argues that Brennan's move adds another layer of review that augments rather than detracts from the Pentagon's role. The official says that, in fact, there will be more people at the table making the decisions, including representatives from every agency involved in counterterrorism, before they are reviewed by senior officials and ultimately the president.
The CIA's process remains unchanged but never included the large number of interagency players the Pentagon brought to the table for its debates.
And the move gives Brennan greater input earlier in the process, before senior officials make the final recommendation to President Barack Obama. Officials outside the White House expressed concern that drawing more of the decision-making process to Brennan's office could turn it into a pseudo-military headquarters, entrusting the fate of al-Qaida targets to a small number of senior officials. Previously, targets were first discussed in meetings run by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen at the time, with Brennan being just one of the voices in the debate.
The new Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Martin Dempsey, has been more focused on shrinking the U.S. military as the Afghan war winds down and less on the covert wars overseas. With Dempsey less involved, Brennan believed there was an even greater need to draw together different agencies' viewpoints, showing the American public that al-Qaida targets are chosen only after painstaking and exhaustive debate, the senior administration official said.
But some of the officials carrying out the policy are equally leery of "how easy it has become to kill someone," one said. The U.S. is targeting al-Qaida operatives for reasons such as being heard in an intercepted conversation plotting to attack a U.S. ambassador overseas, the official said. Stateside, that conversation could trigger an investigation by the Secret Service or FBI.
Defense Department spokesman George Little said the department is "entirely comfortable with the process by which American counterterrorism operations are managed."
The CIA did not respond to a request for comment.
Drone strikes are highly controversial in Pakistan, too. Obama met briefly on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Chicago on Monday with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Pakistan has closed key routes used by NATO to send supplies to troops in Afghanistan in response to a U.S. airstrike that killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers.
An example of a recent Pentagon-led drone strike was the fatal attack in January on al-Qaida commander Bilal al-Berjawi in Somalia. U.S. intelligence and military forces had been watching him for days. When his car reached the outskirts of Mogadishu, the drones fired a volley of missiles, obliterating his vehicle and killing him instantly.
The drones belonged to the elite U.S. Joint Special Operations Command. Berjawi, a British-Lebanese citizen, ended up on the command's list after a studied debate run by the Pentagon.
The Defense Department's list of potential drone or raid targets is about two dozen names long, the officials said. The previous process for vetting them, now mostly defunct, was established by Mullen early in the Obama administration, with a major revamp in the spring of 2011, two officials said.
Drone attacks were split between the command and the CIA, which keeps a separate list of targets, although it overlaps with the Pentagon list. By law, the CIA can target only al-Qaida operatives or affiliates who directly threaten the U.S. The command has a little more leeway, allowed by statute to target members of the larger al-Qaida network.
Under the old Pentagon-run review, the first step was to gather evidence on a potential target. The case would be discussed over an interagency secure video teleconference, involving the National Counterterrorism Center and the State Department, among other agencies. Among the data considered: Is the target a member of al-Qaida or its affiliates; and is he engaged in activities aimed at the U.S. overseas or at home?
If a target isn't captured or killed within 30 days after he is chosen, his case must be reviewed to see if he's still a threat.
The CIA's process is more insular. Only a select number of high-ranking staff can preside over the debates by the agency's Covert Action Review Group, which passes the list to the CIA's Counterterrorism Center to carry out the drone strikes. Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper is briefed on those actions, one official said.
Berjawi's name was technically on both lists, the Pentagon's and the CIA's. In areas where both the command and the CIA operate, the military task-force commander and CIA chief of station confer, together with representatives of U.S. law enforcement, on how best to hit the target. If it's deemed possible to grab the target for interrogation or simply to gather DNA to prove the identity of a deceased person, a special team is sent.
"Two F-15 fighter jets were scrambled to intercept the flight over the Atlantic"
Fighter jets scrambled to intercept U.S.-bound flight
US Airways flight diverted after passenger claims to have device surgically implanted inside her
By Dylan Stableford | The Lookout
A flight from Paris bound for Charlotte was diverted to Maine on Tuesday after reports say a passenger claimed to have a device surgically implanted device inside.
US Airways flight 787--which left Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport shortly after 11:00 a.m. local time en route to Charlotte Douglas International--was rerouted to Bangor, Maine, shortly after noon ET, CNN reported. The Boeing 767 was carrying 179 passengers and a crew of nine, a spokesman for the airline said, confirming that there had been an unspecified "security issue."
A Homeland Security official told NBC News that the flight was diverted because a "passenger was acting suspiciously."
According to CNN, a French woman on board the
flight handed a note to a flight attendant,
claiming that she had a surgically implanted explosive inside of her.
Two F-15 fighter jets were scrambled to intercept the flight over the Atlantic,
NORAD said.
The plane landed safely in Bangor.
Doctors on board the flight examined the woman and
"saw no sign of recent scars,"
according to House Homeland Security Committee chairman Peter King's office.
The woman, a French citizen from Cameroon,
had planned a 10-day visit to the United States,
CNN added. She was traveling alone and had no checked baggage.
"[We are] aware of reports of a passenger
who exhibited suspicious behavior during flight,"
the TSA said in a statement.
"Out of an abundance of caution the flight was
diverted to BGR where it was met by law enforcement."
The FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force
is assisting with the investigation,
but officials told the network they did not believe it was a terrorist threat.
According to US Airways, the flight was scheduled to leave Bangor at 1:00 p.m.
and arrive in Charlotte at 3:27 p.m. ET, though as of 1:50 p.m.
was still shown sitting on the tarmac.
It's not the first time a flight from Paris has been diverted to Bangor.
In 2010, a Delta flight from Paris to Atlanta was diverted to Bangor
after a man claimed to be carrying dynamite in his luggage.
The man, Derek Stansberry, a 26-year-old Air Force veteran from Florida,
was later found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Just last week, a US Airways flight from Maine to Philadelphia was interrupted when a man allegedly tried to enter the cockpit.
That flight was diverted to Boston, and the man was arrested.
Doctore Shakil Afridi who helped the American Empire in it's illegal invasion of Pakistan and with the murder of bin Laden received a 33 year prison sentence.
Doctor Who Helped Find Bin Laden Given Jail Term, Official Says
By ISMAIL KHAN
Published: May 23, 2012
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A Pakistani doctor who helped the Central Intelligence Agency pin down Osama bin Laden's location under cover of a vaccination drive was convicted on Wednesday of treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a senior official in Pakistan said.
A tribal court here in northwestern Pakistan found the doctor, Shakil Afridi, guilty of acting against the state, said Mutahir Zeb Khan, the administrator for the Khyber tribal region. Along with the jail term, the court imposed a fine of $3,500. Dr. Afridi, who may appeal the verdict, was then sent to Central Prison in Peshawar.
He had been charged under a British-era regulation for frontier crimes that unlike the national criminal code does not carry the death penalty for treason. Under Pakistani penal law, he almost certainly would have received the death penalty, a Pakistani lawyer said.
Dr. Afridi's fate has been an added source of tension between Pakistan and United States, at a time when the two countries remain at loggerheads over reopening supply lines through Pakistan to Afghanistan.
In January, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta confirmed that the United States had been working with Dr. Afridi while trying to confirm the location of Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad in the months before the raid. American officials had previously said that the doctor been running a hepatitis B vaccination program as a ruse to obtain DNA evidence from members of Bin Laden’s family, who were thought to be hiding in the city. American officials say Dr. Afridi did not know the identity of his target.
According to Pakistani security officials, Dr. Afridi admitted to helping the C.I.A. before the raid by Navy Seals that killed Bin Laden in May 2011. That operation angered Pakistani officials, who had not been informed ahead of time and who viewed it as a violation of the country's sovereignty.
Dr. Afridi, 48, was detained by Pakistan’s military intelligence agency near Peshawar in the weeks following Bin Laden's killing. A judicial commission in Pakistan investigating the circumstances leading to the death of Bin Laden had recommended in October that Dr. Afridi be charged with high treason.
American officials have said that while Dr. Afridi never gained DNA samples from inside the compound, his work aided the mission that led to Bin Laden's death. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called for Dr. Afridi to be released.
Mr. Panetta expressed anger in a television interview in January that Dr. Afridi had been charged with treason, insisting that the man's work in informing on terrorists helped protect Pakistanis, too. “For them to take this kind of action against somebody who was helping to go after terrorism, I just think is a real mistake on their part,” he said.
Pakistani doctor who helped find Bin Laden gets 33 years in prison
May 23, 2012 | 7:05 am
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A Pakistani doctor who led a phony vaccination campaign aimed at helping the CIA pinpoint Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts was convicted of treason Wednesday and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a decision that is likely to further erode Washington’s fragile relations with Islamabad.
The U.S. has been seeking the release of Shakeel Afridi ever since his arrest by Pakistani authorities after the secret U.S. commando raid that killed the Al Qaeda leader in his compound in the military city of Abbottabad a year ago. In January, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told CBS’ "60 Minutes" that Afridi had provided intelligence that assisted the raid and criticized Pakistan’s arrest of someone involved in helping track down the world’s most wanted man.
From the start, however, Pakistani authorities have regarded Afridi as a traitor and have ignored Washington’s calls for his release. He was tried in a tribal court in the Khyber region along the Afghan border, where he once was designated the chief surgeon.
Under Pakistani law, he could have been given the death penalty. In addition to the 33-year term, Afridi was also fined about $3,500.
The phony hepatitis B vaccination scheme was aimed at obtaining DNA evidence from Bin Laden’s residence, a sprawling, three-story compound down the road from the Pakistani military’s version of West Point and just a two hours’ drive from the capital, Islamabad. DNA samples would have allowed U.S. authorities to compare that evidence with DNA from Bin Laden relatives on file in Washington.
Afridi and his team of healthcare workers were unable to obtain DNA samples from the Bin Laden compound, but Panetta told "60 Minutes" that he provided information to the CIA that was “very helpful.”
However, Afridi’s vaccination ruse has also severely hampered the work of numerous Western aid organizations in Pakistan that report being harassed by the country's intelligence agents, who have grown suspicious of their affiliations. Some aid groups have reported difficulties in getting visas renewed for their Pakistan-based workers, while others say they are under constant surveillance by authorities or have had workers detained.
Is the war on terrorism a lame excuse to expand the "war on drugs", and use terrorism as a lame excuse to flush the Constitution down the toilet when fighting the "drug war". I suspect it probably is.
In this article about a drug bust in Chandler they mention a
Chandler mother, sons lead police to major drug ring
Clues emerge from investigation of family
by Laurie Merrill - May. 23, 2012 06:16 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
What ended as the multi-agency smashup of an international conspiracy to sell millions of dollars of Mexican narcotics to Arizona prisoners began as the simple probe of a Chandler mom and her sons, police say.
Ultimately, the investigation was called "Operation Family Tradition" and the mother and her sons the "Lara-Valencia Syndicate."
At least 44 suspects were arrested on more than 300 drug- and gang-related charges during two different sweeps, one of which was Friday.
Multiple indictments were handed down by the Arizona Attorney General's Office.
In all, 32 pounds of heroin and 5 pounds of cocaine were seized with a combined estimated street value of $1.7 million.
The drugs wound up on the streets of the East Valley as well as Arizona prisons, Chandler police Detective Seth Tyler said.
"It was available to anyone with an appetite for it," he said Monday.
It all started more than a year ago, in early 2011, when the Chandler police Narcotics Unit began investigating Grace Valencia and two of her nine sons, Ricky and Jonathan, who resided on the 200 block of South Dakota Street, Tyler said.
"Eight of the boys are involved" in the drug trade, Tyler said.
"Six are already in the state Department of Corrections."
Three of Valencia's sons -- Vincent Lara, 38; Angel Lara, 35; and Daniel Lara, 31 -- are serving sentences ranging from 10 to 14 years for a kidnapping conviction, according to reports.
Chandler police soon suspected that Valencia and her sons were part of a larger organization with gang and possibly international ties.
First, they called in the Chandler police Gang Unit.
Next, they called Arizona Department of Public Safety State Gang Task Force came on board.
DPS and Chandler investigators then learned the family and associates bought drugs directly from Mexico, smuggled them into prison and sold them to East Valley residents.
One prison visitor was apprehended trying to smuggle black tar heroin inside a sock, officials said.
Street and prison gang members and illegal-drug trade criminals comprised the organization, Tyler said.
As the enormity of what they were investigating was revealed, the investigators decided they required help from organizations with more resources.
They called on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Gang Investigations Group, the DPS Highway Patrol, the Arizona Department of Corrections Security Threat Group Unit and the state Attorney General's Office to help with the investigation.
"The family was definitely part of the distribution of drugs," Tyler said. "They were not small time. They were better organized. They were getting the drugs from Mexico."
The Attorney General's Office has named Ricky Valencia as one of the kingpins of the organization.
He was charged with a total of 107 counts.
U.S. vets' disability filings reach historic rate
By Charles Dharapak, AP
Marine Cpl. Larry Bailey II, of Zion, Ill., is a triple amputee and expects to get a hand transplant this summer. He is still transitioning from active duty and is not yet a veteran.
A staggering 45% of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related. That is more than double the estimate of 21% who filed such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials told the Associated Press.
What's more, these new veterans are claiming eight to nine ailments on average, and the most recent ones over the last year are claiming 11 to 14. By comparison, Vietnam veterans are currently receiving compensation for fewer than four, on average, and those from World War II and Korea just two.
It's unclear how much worse off these new veterans are than their predecessors. Many factors are driving the dramatic increase in claims — the weak economy, more troops surviving wounds, and more awareness of problems such as concussions and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Almost one-third have been granted disability so far.
Government officials and some veterans' advocates say that veterans who might have been able to work with certain disabilities may be more inclined to seek benefits now because they lost jobs or can't find any. Aggressive outreach and advocacy efforts also have brought more veterans into the system, which must evaluate each claim to see if it is war-related. Payments range from $127 a month for a 10% disability to $2,769 for a full one.
As the U.S. commemorates the more than 6,400 troops who died in post-Sept. 11, 2001 wars, the problems of those who survived also draw attention. These new veterans are seeking a level of help the government did not anticipate, and for which there is no special fund set aside to pay.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is mired in backlogged claims, but "our mission is to take care of whatever the population is," says Allison Hickey, the VA's undersecretary for benefits. "We want them to have what their entitlement is."
The 21% who filed claims in previous wars is Hickey's estimate of an average for the 1990-91 Operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield to oust Iraqi troops from Kuwait. The VA has details only on the current disability claims being paid to veterans of each war.
The AP spent three months reviewing records and talking with doctors, government officials and former troops to take stock of the new veterans. They are different in many ways from those who fought before them.
More are from the Reserves and National Guard— 28% of those filing disability claims — rather than career military. Reserves and National Guard made up a greater percentage of troops in these wars than they did in previous ones. About 31% of Guard/Reserve new veterans have filed claims, compared with 56% of career military ones.
More of the new veterans are women, accounting for 12% of those who have sought care through the VA. Women also served in greater numbers in these wars than in the past. Some female veterans are claiming PTSD because of military sexual trauma — a new challenge from a disability rating standpoint, Hickey says.
The new veterans have different types of injuries than previous veterans did. That's partly because improvised bombs have been the main weapon and because body armor and improved battlefield care allowed many of them to survive wounds that in past wars proved fatal.
"They're being kept alive at unprecedented rates," says David Cifu, the VA's medical rehabilitation chief. More than 95% of troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have survived.
Larry Bailey II of Zion, Ill., north of Chicago, is an example. The 26-year-old Marine remembers flying into the air, then fellow troops attending to him, after he tripped a rooftop bomb in Afghanistan last June. He ended up a triple amputee.
"I pretty much knew that my legs were gone. My left hand, from what I remember I still had three fingers on it," although they didn't seem right, Bailey said.
He is still transitioning from active duty and is not yet a veteran.
A look at the numbers
Of those who have sought VA care:
• More than 1,600 of them lost a limb; many others lost fingers or toes.
• At least 156 are blind, and thousands of others have impaired vision.
• More than 177,000 have hearing loss, and more than 350,000 report tinnitus — noise or ringing in the ears.
• Thousands are disfigured, as many as 200 of them so badly that they may need face transplants. One-quarter of battlefield injuries requiring evacuation included wounds to the face or jaw, one study found.
"The numbers are pretty staggering," says Bohdan Pomahac, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who has done four face transplants on non-military patients and expects to start doing them soon on veterans.
Others have invisible wounds. More than 400,000 of these new veterans have been treated by the VA for a mental health problem, most commonly PTSD.
Tens of thousands of veterans suffered traumatic brain injury, or TBI — mostly mild concussions from bomb blasts — and doctors don't know what's in store for them long-term. Cifu, of the VA, says that roughly 20% of active-duty troops suffered concussions, but only one-third of them have symptoms lasting beyond a few months.
That's still a big number, and "it's very rare that someone has just a single concussion," says David Hovda, director of the UCLA Brain Injury Research Center. Suffering multiple concussions, or one soon after another, raises the risk of long-term problems. A brain injury also makes the brain more susceptible to PTSD, he says.
Body armor takes a toll, too
On a more mundane level, many new veterans have back, shoulder and knee problems, aggravated by carrying heavy packs and wearing the body armor that helped keep them alive. One recent study found that 19% required orthopedic surgery consultations and 4% needed surgery after returning from combat.
All of this adds up to more disability claims, which for years have been coming in faster than the government can handle them. The average wait to get a new one processed grows longer each month and is now about eight months — time that a frustrated, injured veteran might spend with no income.
More than 560,000 veterans from all wars currently have claims that are backlogged — older than 125 days. The VA's benefits chief, Hickey, says the backlog is the result of sheer volume, the high number of ailments per claim, and a new mandate to do oldest cases first.
With any war, the cost of caring for veterans rises for several decades and peaks 30 to 40 years later, when diseases of aging are more common, says Harvard economist Linda Bilmes. She estimates the health care and disability costs of the recent wars at $600 billion to $900 billion.
"This is a huge number, and there's no money set aside," she says. "Unless we take steps now into some kind of fund that will grow over time, it's very plausible many people will feel we can't afford these benefits we overpromised."
Army seeks to replace combat vehicles, but it won't be easy
By Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – After more than a decade of war, the Army wants to replace combat vehicles worn out from millions of miles in rugged terrain in Iraq and Afghanistan or blown up by roadside bombs.
Its new personnel carriers must be safe enough for troops yet light and maneuverable enough to be deployed rapidly in support of the Obama administration's shift in strategy away from long-term occupations.
Trying to develop a light truck and a heavy personnel carrier that do everything the Army wants won't be cheap and could mean "we're pricing ourselves out of land warfare," says Andrew Krepinevich, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a non-partisan defense think tank. He regularly advises top Defense officials.
The future, instead, could mean repairs, not replacements.
"I wouldn't gamble my house on those programs coming to fruition at the scale people are hoping," says Peter Singer, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution. Federal budgets will be too tight, political support for major new weapons programs will be lacking, and industry hasn't been able to deliver systems the Pentagon wants at a reasonable cost, Singer says.
"That triumvirate is setting them up for not complete replacement but more likely a series of upgrades to existing vehicles," Singer says.
On the drawing board
The Army hasn't had much luck in fielding new vehicles in recent years. The Army spent $18 billion to develop the Ground Combat Vehicle for its Future Combat System, only to scrap it in 2009 because it couldn't protect from improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Another project, the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) meant to replace the workhorse Humvee, has been on the drawing board for more than a dozen years and still is not in production.
Despite that history, Lt. Gen. William Phillips, a top Army weapons buyer, says the Army has learned its lessons and will be able to field affordable vehicles relatively quickly.
[Yea, sure, "affordable" has a totally different meaning to military bureaucrats then to us normal folks]
Now, Phillips said in an interview with USA TODAY, the Pentagon hopes to have an operational JLTV by 2016 that would have the Humvee's maneuverability and the protection of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) trucks credited with saving thousands of lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.
JLTV's sticker price: about $300,000. An October 2011 report from the Government Accountability Office said, however, that meeting that price target "will be a challenge and will also likely depend on what type of contract the services award." [I guess "affordable" means $300K for a stinking jeep in military terms, well before the standard cost overruns]
The other vehicle, the proposed Ground Combat Vehicle, is a larger armored personnel carrier designed to ferry about nine soldiers around battlefields. Its anticipated cost is about $10 million apiece, about half previous estimates, Phillips says. It wouldn't be ready for a mission until about 2019. [Hmmm, now "affordable" has jumped from $300K to $10 million, again before the standard cost overruns]
Both vehicles are essential to protecting troops from future threats, Phillips says.
However, as has been evident in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. enemies can blow up even the best armored vehicles with homemade bombs made from cheap fertilizer, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an audience in an address at Harvard in April. [Cool, so stinking fertilizer or ammonium nitrate is the weapon of freedom fighters battling the American Empire]
"The issue here is not whether it costs $10 million or $17 million," says Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute and defense industry consultant. "When an enemy can destroy it for a couple hundred dollars, that's the worst cost-exchange ratio I've ever seen."
Thompson points out that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan weren't fought against front-line foes.
"We need to understand that we have been fighting very under-resourced adversaries," Thompson says. "They nearly fought us to a standstill. What would a country with real capabilities do to us?"
Upgrading old vehicles
For the Army, the old may become new again. It has had some success retrofitting one combat vehicle, the Stryker. The Stryker is a lightweight armored personnel carrier. In Afghanistan, insurgent bomb attacks on Strykers regularly killed or wounded several soldiers. That changed when the Army attached V-shaped hulls to 256 Stryker vehicles, according to Phillips.
The V-shaped hull is the main feature of the MRAP trucks in Iraq and Afghanistan credited for saving lives because it directs the force from a buried bomb away from a vehicle's center and away from the troops inside.
Retrofitted Strykers have performed well in Afghanistan, Phillips says. Of 41 Strykers hit by roadside bombs, three of them were breached badly enough for soldiers to be wounded or killed, he says, adding that they have saved "hundreds of lives."
"We knew we had to do something to protect our soldiers better in the Stryker against IEDs, and the result of that was the double-V hull," Phillips says.
And that's fighting against a cheap weapon, Krepinevich says. Upgraded armor may not be enough to protect troops from high-tech, guided weapons that they'll be likely to encounter in the future, he says. Insurgents in Iraq used armor-piercing weapons to blast holes in tanks and MRAPs.
Even if more armor did provide adequate protection, the heavy, bulky vehicles might not be able to navigate crowded cities where enemies may seek to fight U.S. forces, Singer says. Fighting among civilians negates the U.S. advantage in firepower and airpower because of the concern that American shells and bombs could kill innocent bystanders.
Remember the jackbooted thugs at the Department of Homeland Security are reading every word you type in an email letter, search for using Google, post onto a web page, or use on Facebook or other websites.
And of course if you get this in an email from me, remember the police state thugs at Homeland Security will probably read the email before you see it.
Revealed: Hundreds of words to avoid using online if you don't want the government spying on you (and they include 'pork', 'cloud' and 'Mexico')
By Daniel Miller
PUBLISHED: 04:32 EST, 26 May 2012 | UPDATED: 12:46 EST, 26 May 2012
The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.
The intriguing the list includes obvious choices such as 'attack', 'Al Qaeda', 'terrorism' and 'dirty bomb' alongside dozens of seemingly innocent words like 'pork', 'cloud', 'team' and 'Mexico'.
Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats.
The words are included in the department's 2011 'Analyst's Desktop Binder' used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify 'media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities'.
Department chiefs were forced to release the manual following a House hearing over documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit which revealed how analysts monitor social networks and media organisations for comments that 'reflect adversely' on the government.
However they insisted the practice was aimed not at policing the internet for disparaging remarks about the government and signs of general dissent, but to provide awareness of any potential threats.
As well as terrorism, analysts are instructed to search for evidence of unfolding natural disasters, public health threats and serious crimes such as mall/school shootings, major drug busts, illegal immigrant busts.
The list has been posted online by the Electronic Privacy Information Center - a privacy watchdog group who filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act before suing to obtain the release of the documents.
In a letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counter-terrorism and Intelligence, the centre described the choice of words as 'broad, vague and ambiguous'.
Threat detection: Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats
Threat detection: Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats
They point out that it includes 'vast amounts of First Amendment protected speech that is entirely unrelated to the Department of Homeland Security mission to protect the public against terrorism and disasters.'
A senior Homeland Security official told the Huffington Post that the manual 'is a starting point, not the endgame' in maintaining situational awareness of natural and man-made threats and denied that the government was monitoring signs of dissent.
However the agency admitted that the language used was vague and in need of updating.
Spokesman Matthew Chandler told website: 'To ensure clarity, as part of ... routine compliance review, DHS will review the language contained in all materials to clearly and accurately convey the parameters and intention of the program.'
This URL contains a list of the words that the Homeland Security looks for when they read our email:
scribd.com/doc/82701103/Analyst-Desktop-Binder-REDACTED
The document is called the "The Analysts Desktop Binder" and the keywords are on pages 20 thru 23.
If I get the full list of words I will put them here:
Column: Domestic use of drones? Bad idea
By Cal Thomas and Bob Beckel
Cal Thomas is a conservative columnist. Bob Beckel is a liberal Democratic strategist. But as longtime friends, they can often find common ground on issues that lawmakers in Washington cannot.
Today: Domestic use of drones.
Bob:President Obama and Congress recently signaled their willingness to allow wider use of drones — the pilotless aircraft used in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia against Islamic terrorists — for domestic purposes. This is Big Brother at its worst. The ACLU and privacy groups have demanded that the Federal Aviation Administration address the "unique threat" posed by drones, as well they should.
Cal: Hold onto your ACLU card, Bob. I'm with you and civil liberties organizations that are deeply worried about government seizing this kind of intrusive and invasive power for itself.
Bob: Now there's a first, Cal agreeing with the American Civil Liberties Union.
Cal: Not really. I've sided with them on various issues, including the freedom of expression and even some religious matters. But back to the drones. While these planes have performed well in killing terrorists overseas, they are the last thing we need flying over America. The technology is so good that they can operate undetected and low enough to identify people attending your backyard barbecue.
Bob: I'm surprised how little we've heard from Congress, besides a letter of concern to the FAA from Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Texas.
Cal: Maybe that's because there's a congressional "drone caucus," which has 58 members. Many of them have received generous campaign contributions from defense contractors, including General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin (a major manufacturer of drones and missiles that can be attached to them) and Raytheon.
Bob: Once again, money wins out over an important principle: the right to privacy. The news media tend to report actions by drones when they bomb terrorists, but the planes have several other significant capabilities. They can also see and capture pictures in the smallest detail from thousands of feet in the sky. They can detect cellphone conversations and other means of communications.
Cal: Bad things are often ushered in with good intentions. As constitutional attorney John Whitehead commented, "Certainly these unmanned vehicles could be used for legitimate purposes, such as search-and-rescue missions, etc., but living as we do already in a semi-surveillance state with our constitutional rights in peril at every turn, these drones, which can be armed with surveillance devices, as well as weapons, are yet another building block in a total control society."
Bob: Whitehead is right. Already we have millions of surveillance cameras watching us when we're in public places, not to mention the Patriot Act, which gives the FBI unprecedented powers to enter homes without notice, look at our library cards and much more. These drones are usually operated by the CIA against terrorists abroad. The law expressly forbids the CIA to operate within U.S. borders.
Cal: Here's something else to consider: In 2009, insurgents in Iraq hijacked Predator drones with a software program that cost $26. They gained access to footage shot by the spy planes. Another potential danger, which even the FAA acknowledges, is whether drones would add to the air traffic congestion already experienced at major airports. Commercial airline pilots, who also rely on visual flight rules, are concerned about safety hazards from unmanned drones.
Bob: Good point. Let's hope that the FAA listens to the suggestions for privacy and safety rules from privacy groups — and let's hope, too, that members of Congress put our constitutional rights above special interest money and speak up. President Obama should do so as well.
Cal: We are already further along with drones than the public may know. The FAA reform act requires the FAA to create a comprehensive program to safely integrate drone technology into the national air space by 2015. The FAA predicts there could be 30,000 drones crisscrossing American skies by 2020, all part of an industry that could be worth $12 billion a year. Dwight Eisenhower was right to warn us against the "military-industrial complex." Drones are just the latest example of the industry's intrusions into our liberties.
Bob: That's right. In this case, the section of the FAA reform act that permits drones in our domestic airspace was written by a lobbyist for the contractors who build drones. I will guarantee you that the members of Congress who inserted that provision in the FAA act have all received political contributions from the makers of drones.
Cal: Granted, there can be legitimate uses of drone technology. They can cut costs for police departments and are more effective than helicopters in locating and apprehending armed and dangerous suspects. Since 2005, drones have been used along our lengthy border with Mexico to deter immigrants from entering our country illegally. But permitting the domestic use of drones for these purposes allows the camel's nose under the tent. Do we want our government collecting a constant stream of information on our whereabouts? Drones equipped with Tasers and beanbag guns could fly over political demonstrations, sporting events and concert arenas. The ability of these machines to collect information is almost unlimited — and if we allow it to happen, we will have accepted the Orwellian vision of Big Brother. Trying to recover liberties after losing them is like trying to regain your lost virginity.
Bob: In fact, drones have already been deployed to assist local police departments, which on its face may seem like a good idea. But local police don't control the drones; that's done by trained drone pilots in the U.S. military. So police departments may request assistance on a local crime issue, but who knows what other information is being collected by the U.S. government while the drone is flying over a particular area? On the subject of using drones for domestic purposes, Cal, we have found complete common ground.
Cal: A few groups, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, are pushing back. They are filing lawsuits against the FAA, demanding records of the drone certificates that the FAA has issued to various government agencies and research groups. But, says constitutional attorney Whitehead, "It is unlikely that the implementation of this technology can be stopped. Based upon the government's positions on wiretapping, GPS tracking devices, and Internet tracking technologies, it is also unlikely that our elected officials will do anything to protect the American people from the prying eye of the American government."
Bob: The potential for abuse from government and law enforcement domestic surveillance by drones is terrifying. And if we're worried about congested air space, just wait until the commercial industry gets into the act. Already drone manufacturers are envisioning use by private companies where the technology might be used for journalistic purposes or disaster relief. But do we really want this technology in the hands of private companies?
Cal: And drones aren't the only threat. As The New York Times reported recently, while Google was roaming the world's streets with special cameras attached to car roofs for their Street View project, they were also collecting data such as e-mails, chat and instant messages, postings on websites and social networks — all sorts of private Internet communications. The company says the data collection was a mistake. But combine that technology with domestic drones, and the possibilities for Big Brother intrusion seem limitless. That's what scares me.
Stop Following a Failed Policy
Otto Pérez Molina
May 30, 2012
In 1961 the international community signed a United Nations treaty that reflected an inter-governmental consensus on how to fight drugs all over the world. Basically, the consensus was the following: drug consumption is very damaging for human beings, and the best way for preventing this type of consumption is to prohibit the production, trafficking and use of drugs.
Today, 51 years after reaching this consensus, something is pretty clear: drugs are prohibited but drugs continue to be consumed in quantities so large that the global market is calculated in hundreds of billions of dollars. In other words, the global consensus is far from being successful. Actually, I prefer to call it what it really is: a failure.
We need to rigorously evaluate the impact of what we are doing, and analyze other policy options we can implement, including drug regulation.
Unfortunately, the global consensus failure is not just expressed in the existence of a huge and incredibly profitable drug market. Big money has also brought greater violence. So the drug market has both increased in its supply of dollars, as well as in its demand for blood.
My home country, Guatemala, as well as other countries in Central America and the Caribbean are suffering this bloodshed, the same bloodshed that is present in many poor urban neighborhoods in the United States, which affects disproportionately young black and Latino Americans.
My government has called for an open dialogue on global drug policy based on a simple assumption: we cannot continue to expect different results if we continue to do the same things. Something is wrong with our global strategy, and in order to know better what is wrong we need an evidence-based approach to drug policy and not an ideological one. This means that we need to evaluate rigorously what is the impact of what we are doing, and analyze carefully what other policy options we can implement.
Moving beyond ideology may involve discussing different policy alternatives. Some people (not my government) may call for full-fledged liberalization of the drug market, as opposed to the current full-fledged prohibition scheme. I believe in a third way: drug regulation, which is a discrete and more nuanced approach that may allow for legal access to drugs currently prohibited, but using institutional and market-based regulatory frameworks. This third way may work best, but let us all be clear that only an evidence-based analysis will lead us to better policies.
Half a century is enough time for assessing the success or failure of a policy. Our children are demanding us to be responsible and to search for the best possible ways to protect them from drug abuse. Let us not waste our time anymore in doing what has proven to be wrong. While we deliver endless speeches on our commitment to a failed approach, more young people are becoming drug addicts who won´t be treated by our health system, but by our criminal justice institutions.
It is a sad story, but I am convinced it doesn´t need to be this way. We can certainly do better than this. And, by all means, we have to.
The "drug war" is also a lame excuse for the American government to give millions of dollars in foreign aid to tyrants and dictators in third world countries who murder and terrorize their citizens helping American with it's insane "drug war".
Despite Deaths in Honduran Raid, U.S. to Press Ahead With New Antidrug Policy
By DAMIEN CAVE, CHARLIE SAVAGE and THOM SHANKER
Published: May 31, 2012
WASHINGTON — After several villagers were killed on a Honduran river this month during a raid on drug smugglers by Honduran and American agents, a local backlash raised concerns that the United States’ expanding counternarcotics efforts in Central America might be going too far. But United States officials in charge of that policy see it differently.
Throughout 2011, counternarcotics officials watched their radar screens almost helplessly as more than 100 small planes flew from South America to isolated landing strips in Honduras. But this month — after establishing a new strategy emphasizing more cooperation across various United States departments and agencies — two smugglers’ flights were intercepted within a single week, a development that explains why American officials say they are determined to press forward with the approach.
“In the first four months of this year, I’d say we actually have gotten it together across the military, law enforcement and developmental communities,” said William R. Brownfield, the assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs. “My guess is narcotics traffickers are hitting the pause button. For the first time in a decade, air shipments are being intercepted immediately upon landing.”
With Washington’s attention swinging from Iraq and Afghanistan — and with budget dollars similarly flowing in new directions — the United States is expanding and unifying its antidrug efforts in Central America, where violence has skyrocketed as enforcement efforts in the Caribbean, Colombia and Mexico have pushed cocaine traffic to smaller countries with weaker security forces.
As part of those efforts, the United States is pressing governments across Central America to work together against their shared threat — sharing intelligence and even allowing security forces from one nation to operate on the sovereign soil of another — an approach that was on display in the disputed raid. But reviews from Central America include uncertainty and skepticism.
Government leaders in Honduras — who came to power in a controversial election a few months after a 2009 coup — have strongly supported assistance from the United States, but skeptics contend that enthusiasm is in part because the partnership bolsters their fragile hold on power.
More broadly, there is discontent in Latin America with United States efforts that some leaders and independent experts see as too focused on dramatic seizures of shipments bound for North America rather than local drug-related murders, corruption and chaos.
“Violence has grown a lot; crimes connected to trafficking keep increasing — that’s Central America’s big complaint,” President Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala said in an interview. He added that the drug cartels are better organized than they were 20 years ago and that “if there are no innovations, if we don’t see something truly different than what we have been doing, then this war is on the road to defeat.”
Mr. Pérez Molina, a former general, has been criticized by American officials for proposing a form of drug legalization, but he argues that his goal is to create discussion of new ideas — like compensating Central American countries for the drugs they confiscate, or creating a regional court for organized crime.
In the area of Honduras called the Mosquito Coast, where the two recent operations occurred, residents have simpler demands. “If you’re going to come to the Mosquito Coast, come to invest,” said Terry Martinez, the director of development programs for the Gracias a Dios area. “Help us get our legitimate goods to market. That will help secure the area.”
American officials say they know that interdiction alone is not enough. The number of United States officials assigned to programs that are designed to strengthen Central America’s weak criminal justice systems has quadrupled, to about 80 over the past five years.
And the United States Agency for International Development has, since 2009, helped open more than 70 outreach centers for young people, offering job training and places to go after school, officials report.
“If your drug policy is an exclusively ‘hard side’ negative policy, it will not succeed,” said Mr. Brownfield, a former ambassador to Colombia. “There has to be a positive side: providing alternative economic livelihoods, clinics, roads — the sorts of things that actually give poor communities a stake in their future so they do not participate in narcotics trafficking.”
Despite the shift that officials described, federal budgets and performance measures outlined in government documents show that the priorities of the drug war have not significantly changed. Even as cocaine consumption in the United States has fallen, the government’s antidrug efforts abroad continue to be heavily weighted toward seizing cocaine.
Most financing for the Central American Regional Security Initiative has gone to security and interdiction work, according to a recent Congressional report.
“The problem is that the budget doesn’t match the rhetoric,” said John Carnevale, who served as the director of planning, budget and research for the Office of National Drug Control Policy from 1989 to 2000. “The budget that is currently being funded for drug control is still very much like the one we’ve had for 10 or 12 years, or really over the past couple of decades.”
American officials counter that interdiction efforts include programs to increase the professionalism of local police units. And increasingly, Central American governments are helping to train one another’s forces, using common equipment, and sharing counternarcotics intelligence. United States agencies are also combining their efforts in new ways. Officials say the May 11 raid near the town of Ahuas — and another one earlier in May in Honduras, during which there was also a firefight but no one is believed to have been killed — illustrated that joint effort.
The May 11 raid started with Colombian intelligence passing along a tip about the plane to a joint intelligence task force under the American military’s Southern Command, which has its headquarters in Miami.
An American Navy surveillance aircraft then tracked the plane as it landed, leading to a raid that was carried out by four State Department helicopters. They flew out of one of three new forward operating bases built this year by the American military’s Joint Task Force-Bravo in Honduras.
Guatemalan pilots flew the aircraft — after overcoming some resistance from Honduran officials — because Honduras lacks qualified pilots. The helicopters carried a strike force of Honduran police officers who had been specially vetted and trained by United States Drug Enforcement Administration agents, several of whom are part of a special commando-style squad that was on board as advisers.
The helicopters struck about 2 a.m., after about 30 men had unloaded 17 bales of cocaine from the plane into a pickup truck, which had carried it to a boat in the nearby Patuca River. Men working on the boat scattered as the helicopters swooped down, and a ground force moved in to secure the cargo.
What happened next remains under investigation in Honduras. Officials say a second boat approached and opened fire on the agents on the ground. They and a door gunner aboard the helicopter returned fire in a quick burst.
But rather than hitting drug traffickers, villagers contend, the government forces instead hit another boat that was returning from a long trip upriver — killing four unarmed people, including two pregnant women. While the D.E.A.’s rules of engagement allowed agents to fire back to protect themselves and their counterparts, both United States and Honduran government officials insist that no Americans fired.
Nonetheless, broader questions remain. Even if the air route to Honduras is shut down, as long as the United States — and, increasingly, Africa and Europe — remains a lucrative market for cocaine, traffickers will continue to seek a way to move their product.
United States officials say they are already bolstering efforts in the Caribbean, anticipating another shift in direction for drugs.
Barack Obama: Drone Warrior
By Charles Krauthammer, Published: May 31
A very strange story, that 6,000-word front-page New York Times piece on how, every Tuesday, Barack Obama shuffles “baseball cards” with the pictures and bios of suspected terrorists from around the world and chooses who shall die by drone strike. He even reserves for himself the decision of whether to proceed when the probability of killing family members or bystanders is significant.
The article could have been titled “Barack Obama: Drone Warrior.” Great detail on how Obama personally runs the assassination campaign. On-the-record quotes from the highest officials. This was no leak. This was a White House press release.
Why? To portray Obama as tough guy. And why now? Because in crisis after recent crisis, Obama has looked particularly weak: standing helplessly by as thousands are massacred in Syria; being played by Iran in nuclear negotiations, now reeling with the collapse of the latest round in Baghdad; being treated with contempt by Vladimir Putin, who blocks any action on Syria or Iran and adds personal insult by standing up Obama at the latter’s G-8 and NATO summits.
The Obama camp thought that any political problem with foreign policy would be cured by the Osama bin Laden operation. But the administration’s attempt to politically exploit the raid’s one-year anniversary backfired, earning ridicule and condemnation for its crude appropriation of the heroic acts of others.
A campaign ad had Bill Clinton praising Obama for the courage of ordering the raid because, had it failed and Americans been killed, “the downside would have been horrible for him. “ Outraged vets released a response ad, pointing out that it would have been considerably more horrible for the dead SEALs.
That ad also highlighted the many self-references Obama made in announcing the bin Laden raid: “I can report . . . I directed . . . I met repeatedly . . . I determined . . . at my direction . . . I, as commander in chief,” etc. ad nauseam. (Eisenhower’s announcement of the D-Day invasion made not a single mention of his role, whereas the alternate statement he’d prepared had the landing been repulsed was entirely about it being his failure.)
Obama only compounded the self-aggrandizement problem when he spoke a week later about the military “fighting on my behalf.”
The Osama-slayer card having been vastly overplayed, what to do? A new card: Obama, drone warrior, steely and solitary, delivering death with cool dispatch to the rest of the al-Qaeda depth chart.
So the peacemaker, Nobel laureate, nuclear disarmer, apologizer to the world for America having lost its moral way when it harshly interrogated the very people Obama now kills, has become — just in time for the 2012 campaign — Zeus the Avenger, smiting by lightning strike.
A rather strange ethics. You go around the world preening about how America has turned a new moral page by electing a president profoundly offended by George W. Bush’s belligerence and prisoner maltreatment, and now you’re ostentatiously telling the world that you personally play judge, jury and executioner to unseen combatants of your choosing and whatever innocents happen to be in their company.
This is not to argue against drone attacks. In principle, they are fully justified. No quarter need be given to terrorists who wear civilian clothes, hide among civilians and target civilians indiscriminately. But it is to question the moral amnesia of those whose delicate sensibilities were offended by the Bush methods that kept America safe for a decade — and who now embrace Obama’s campaign of assassination by remote control.
Moreover, there is an acute military problem. Dead terrorists can’t talk.
Drone attacks are cheap — which is good. But the path of least resistance has a cost. It yields no intelligence about terror networks or terror plans.
One capture could potentially make us safer than 10 killings. But because of the moral incoherence of Obama’s war on terror, there are practically no captures anymore. What would be the point? There’s nowhere for the CIA to interrogate. And what would they learn even if they did, Obama having decreed a new regime of kid-gloves, name-rank-and-serial-number interrogation?
This administration came out opposing military tribunals, wanting to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in New York, reading the Christmas Day bomber his Miranda rights and trying mightily (and unsuccessfully, there being — surprise! — no plausible alternative) to close Guantanamo. Yet alongside this exquisite delicacy about the rights of terrorists is the campaign to kill them in their beds.
You festoon your prisoners with rights — but you take no prisoners. The morality is perverse. Which is why the results are so mixed. We do kill terror operatives, an important part of the war on terror, but we gratuitously forfeit potentially life-saving intelligence.
But that will cost us later. For now, we are to bask in the moral seriousness and cool purpose of our drone warrior president.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Screw that little part of the Constitution that says only Congress can declare war. Emperor Obama thinks he has the power to initiate force against any government he feels like without the approval of Congress.
Obama stepped up cyberattacks on Iran: report
(AFP)
WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama accelerated cyberattacks on Iran's nuclear program and expanded the assault even after the Stuxnet virus accidentally escaped in 2010, the New York Times reported Friday.
The operation, begun under president George W. Bush and codenamed "Olympic Games," is the first known sustained US cyberattack ever launched on another country, and used malicious code developed with Israel, the Times said.
The Times said the article was based on 18 months of interviews with current and former US, European and Israeli officials, and was adapted from the book "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power," by David Sanger, set to be published next week.
The cyberattack, aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons and keeping Israel from launching a preventive military strike, sowed widespread confusion in Iran's Natanz nuclear plant, the Times said.
However, top administration officials considered suspending it after Stuxnet -- a complex virus developed jointly with Israel -- "escaped" the facility and began appearing in computer systems in several countries, the Times said.
Obama eventually ordered the attacks to continue, and within a week of Stuxnet's escape a newer version of the bug temporarily brought down 1,000 of Iran's 5,000 nuclear centrifuges spinning at the time, the Times said.
Experts have long suspected that Stuxnet, which targeted computer control systems made by German industrial giant Siemens, was of US and Israeli origin, but neither country has admitted to having a hand in it.
A Pentagon spokesman, Captain John Kirby, declined to comment in detail on the article but said that Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have put a priority on the cyber realm.
"As we've said many times and the president and secretary made clear, cyber domain is a domain that we need to constantly evaluate and constantly assess and try to improve the range of capabilities that we have in cyberspace," Kirby told reporters.
The United States and Israel have long accused Iran of seeking nuclear weapons in the guise of a civilian program, charges denied by Tehran, which insists its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes.
The Times article comes days after experts at Russia's Kaspersky Lab, a top anti-virus software firm, discovered "Flame," a sophisticated virus several times larger than Stuxnet that also seems to have been aimed at Iran.
Obama Ordered Computer Virus Attacks Against Iran
Decided Program Would Continue After Stuxnet Disaster
by Jason Ditz, June 01, 2012
Adding fuel to the speculation that the Flame Virus is a government-created weapon, new reports reveal that President Obama ordered the launch of “cyberattacks” using computer malware as one of his first acts as president.
US dalliances into this sort of attack are of course well established, with the 2010 leak of the Stuxnet worm causing worldwide havoc. The worm, a joint creation of the US and Israel, was meant to target Iran’s uranium enrichment facility and was developed to attack Siemens computers. After its escape, it was altered by other groups and attacked Siemens computers worldwide, including in the United States.
Apparently even getting caught out on the Stuxnet disaster didn’t phase Obama, who ordered the program to continue even after this. The US is also said to have used viruses to attack Iran’s Russian built Bushehr power plant, bizarre since the president has insisted that the US doesn’t object to the energy program.
After initial confirmation from unnamed officials in the media, the US has denied any role in the Flame Virus, which is spreading across the Middle East. The virus, one of the most advanced ever seen, allows the attacker to capture keystrokes and screenshots, and even to turn on the microphones of affected systems to record conversations happening nearby.
Obama Ordered Stuxnet Virus, Part of Organized Cyberattacks Against Iran
By Colin Lecher Posted 06.01.2012 at 1:01 pm 23 Comments
Cyberattacks Escalated Obama's cyberattack order significantly expands the historical use of cyberweapons in the United States. Wikimedia Commons
According to a report today in the New York Times, President Obama secretly ordered accelerated cyberattacks against the computers running Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities.
Started by the Bush administration in 2006, the stealth operation went under the handle "Olympic Games" and a major part of the project, a worm planted by spies meant to knock out enrichment facilities, went public in the summer of 2010 when the worm escaped Iran's Natanz plant because of a programming error and made it into the Internet. The president and other members of the administration then considered shutting it down, but ultimately let it continue. Two new versions of the worm hit the plant in the coming weeks and at one point shut down 1,000 of the 5,000 centrifuges Iran was using to purify uranium. After that, the worm was discovered -- though its source was unknown -- and named Stuxnet. Observers marveled at how advanced the malware was.
According to the report, it's since been shut down, but Olympic Games as a whole is marching on.
New presidential duty: The 'kill list'
By Susan Walsh, AP
The nation learned details this week of a new and deadly presidential duty: The 'kill list."
Early in his term, President Obama, counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan, and Gen. James Cartwright formed what author Daniel Klaidman calls "a kind of special troika on targeted killings" of suspected al Qaeda members and other terrorists.
"The three men were making life-and-death decisions, picking targets, rejecting or accepting names put forward by the military, feeling their way through a new kind of war -- Obama's war," Klaidman writes in his forthcoming book, Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency.
It's another sign of the new times in war. It involves not battalions on open battlefields, but intelligence gathering, legal analysis, and unmanned drones aimed at specific targets. The list can range from Osama bin Laden to al Qaeda foot soldiers whose names are virtually unknown to the American public.
In a book excerpt published in Newsweek magazine, Klaidman writes that Obama has made "brutally difficult" decisions that have taken a toll on him and his staff.
Writes Klaidman:
In quiet conversations with his advisers, the president would sometimes later reflect on whether they knew with certainty that the people they were targeting posed a genuine and specific threat to American interests.
Similar angst and debate was coursing through the administration as a whole. Every targeted killing, in fact, had to be lawyered -- either by the CIA's attorneys, in the case of agency operations, or by other lawyers when the military was involved.
The New York Times also provided details of a process in which "Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret 'nominations' process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical."
Obama often looks over yearbook-like charts with pictures, bios, and allegations against potential targets, the Times reports:
He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values; the chart, introducing people whose deaths he might soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal conundrum this could be.
Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding "kill list," poring over terrorist suspects' biographies on what one official calls the macabre "baseball cards" of an unconventional war.
When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises -- but his family is with him -- it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.
Watch out citizens of the world. If you piss off the American Empire, President Obama will hunt you down and murder you any where you are in the world.
No wonder most of the world hates the American government.
Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 leader killed in U.S. airstrike
By Joby Warrick and Greg Miller, Published: June 5
Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 leader, Abu Yahya al-Libi, the charismatic commander who helped steer the terrorist group after Osama bin Laden’s death last year, was killed by a CIA drone strike in Pakistan’s lawless frontier region, U.S. officials confirmed Tuesday.
U.S. intelligence officials said the death of the Libyan jihadist, who escaped from U.S. custody in Afghanistan in 2005, leaves al-Qaeda’s leadership ranks in Pakistan so depleted that there is no obvious successor.
Libi, the second al-Qaeda deputy commander to be killed in 10 months, was targeted in a drone strike early Monday on a house in North Waziristan, U.S. officials said. Despite reports from Pakistan that more than a dozen people died, U.S. officials said Libi was the only one killed.
A U.S. official described Libi as one of al-Qaeda’s “most experienced and versatile leaders.” His death was viewed as a particularly heavy loss for al-Qaeda because of his standing as both a spiritual figure and operational manager for a terrorist organization that has been struggling since bin Laden’s death at the hands of Navy SEALs last year.
The death of Libi “puts additional pressure on al-Qaeda in the post-bin Laden era,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney. It “damages the group’s morale and cohesion and brings it closer to demise than ever before,” he said.
The missile strike also illustrates the Obama administration’s determination to continue the CIA drone campaign despite escalating Pakistani objections, which were reiterated Tuesday when an American diplomat was summoned to Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry in Islamabad.
U.S. charge d’affaires Richard Hoagland “was informed that the drone strikes were unlawful, against international law and a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty,” according to a statement from the Islamabad government.
The message was delivered amid a flurry of drone activity in Pakistan, with three strikes since Saturday. U.S. officials said Libi was among a total of three operatives killed.
The pace of the drone campaign reflects the extent to which the CIA has continued to patrol Pakistan with unmanned aircraft, even as the terrorist threat has shifted. U.S. officials now see al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen as significantly more dangerous than the core group in Pakistan, but the number of strikes this year in each country stands about even.
According to the Long War Journal Web site, there have been 22 drone strikes in Yemen and 21 in Pakistan.
Libi’s death “underscores we cannot give in to Pakistan’s demand for an end to drone operations,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst who is a counterterrorism expert at the Brookings Institution.
‘He was an absolutist’
Libi was among a collection of aliases used by a militant whose given name was Muhammad Hasan Qaid, according to the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism.
He was one of the last surviving members of the generation of al-Qaeda fighters who battled against the Soviets in Afghanistan. He was admired among the group’s rank and file and served as a bridge between al-Qaeda’s Pakistan leadership and affiliates around the world. Libi also possessed credentials that allowed him to issue religious edicts and operational mandates to the group’s adherents.
Libi “played a critical role in the group’s planning against the West,” said the U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss American counterterrorism operations. “There is no one who even comes close in terms of replacing the expertise AQ has just lost.”
Libi, thought to be in his late 40s, had moved into the No. 2 spot after the death in August of Atiyah abd al-Rahman, another Libyan national killed in a missile strike. Like his predecessor, Libi was regarded as the group’s general manager, answering to al-Qaeda’s senior commander, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Libi, a former member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, rose to celebrity within al-Qaeda’s ranks after he escaped in 2005 from the U.S. detention facility at Bagram, Afghanistan.
Jarret Brachman, a government consultant and al-Qaeda expert, said Libi was embittered by his imprisonment and animated by an ideology that was virulently anti-Western and “extreme,” even by al-Qaeda’s standards. “He was off the reservation, ideologically,” Brachman said. “He was an absolutist, at war with the West, at war with the Shia. Yet he knew how to package his views and communicate them in a way that sold.”
Libi is the latest in a series of leaders to be killed within months of ascending to al-Qaeda’s top operational post. The position was considered the group’s No. 3 job before bin Laden’s death.
In a measure of the rapidity of that turnover, Libi was not even listed on public U.S. counterterrorism charts until 2009, when he was added to the Rewards for Justice Web site, which until this week had offered $1 million for information on his whereabouts.
Differing accounts of strike
A senior Pakistani official played down Libi’s importance and said the government in Islamabad had played no role in providing information for the drone strike. The drone program is “unfinished bad business between us,” the official said. “They rarely get anything more than foot soldiers. It’s diminishing returns.”
U.S. and Pakistani officials confirmed that the missile targeting Libi had struck a house in North Waziristan at sunrise Monday. A security official from the area said in a phone interview that numerous “foreigners” were described as being among the victims, and other Pakistani sources put the death toll at 16. U.S. officials disputed those reports, calling them “wildly” inaccurate.
With Libi’s death, al-Qaeda lost not only a seasoned leader but also a key representative to its affiliates abroad, said Seth Jones, a Rand Corp. analyst and author of “Hunting in the Shadows: The Pursuit of al Qa’ida after 9/11.”
Libi “was most directly involved in maintaining relations with the affiliates,” including franchises in North Africa, Jones said. “His death will have an impact on those networks,” Jones said, though he added that al-Qaeda has managed to survive previous losses of key leaders. “No one is irreplaceable,” he said.
Special correspondents Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad and staff researcher Julie Tate and staff writer David Nakamura in Washington contributed to this report.
NATO apologizes for Afghan civilian deaths
by Deb Riechmann - Jun. 8, 2012 07:27 AM
Associated Press
PATROL BASE PUL-I-ALAM, Afghanistan -- The commander of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan apologized Friday for civilian deaths in a coalition airstrike earlier this week -- the first confirmation by NATO forces that civilians were killed in the operation.
Marine Gen. John Allen flew to Logar province to personally deliver his regrets to villagers and provincial officials for the deaths of women, children and village elders in Wednesday's pre-dawn raid to capture a Taliban operative.
Afghan officials have said the airstrike called in by NATO troops killed 18 civilians.
"I know that no apology can bring back the lives of the children or the people who perished in this tragedy and this accident, but I want you to know that you have my apology and we will do the right thing by the families," Allen told the group of about two dozen Afghans gathered at a base at the provincial capital of Pul-i-Alam.
Nighttime raids on militants taking cover in villages have been a repeated source of strain between the Afghan government, which says the raids put civilians in the crossfire, and its international allies, who say such operations are key to rooting out insurgent leaders.
A deal signed in April was supposed to resolve the issue by putting the Afghan government in charge of such operations, and the troops involved in Wednesday's raid included Afghan soldiers. But Afghan President Hamid Karzai has put the blame for this week's deaths squarely on the international coalition, condemning their actions and calling for them to give a fuller account of how small children were among the dead.
NATO and Afghan officials have said the troops were on an operation to capture a Taliban leader who had holed up in the house in Baraki Barak district's Sajawand village. As they tried to breach the compound, they came under fire and fought back, eventually calling in an airstrike.
Villagers have said there was a wedding at the house the evening before and that it was full of families visiting for the celebration. The morning after the bombing, they piled the bodies of the dead into vans and drove them to the provincial capital to protest the airstrike.
An Afghan doctor who examined the bodies and interviewed two women injured in the airstrike said a group of Taliban fighters decided to spend the night in the house because they thought the wedding would provide them cover. When NATO and Afghan troops started advancing on the house in the middle of the night, they called out for any civilians to come out, but the insurgents didn't allow them to leave, said Wali Wakil.
"The Taliban stopped them from getting out of the house," Wakil said. He said the 18 dead civilians including four women, two old men, three teenage boys and nine young children. Six Taliban fighters were also killed, Wakil said, citing the witnesses. Police had said previously that the district Taliban commander was killed.
Allen said that the troops did not know that there were civilians inside the house when they called in the airstrike.
"They were taken under fire. A hand grenade was thrown. Three of our people were wounded. We called for the people who were shooting to come out, and then the situation became more grave and innocent people were killed," he told The Associated Press after talking with the group gathered in Logar.
"Our weapons killed these people," Allen said. He declined to confirm the exact death toll or provide more details on the operation, citing the ongoing investigation.
In Logar, Allen met with the governor before taking his message to the assembled group of Baraki Barak residents and local officials. He invoked his own family, saying that he kept seeing the faces of his own children as he thought about the children who had been killed.
Who knows, maybe Emperor Obama is planning on invading some third world African country!!!
Army to send 3,000 soldiers to safe areas of Africa next year
by John Ryan - Jun. 8, 2012 11:17 PM
Army Times
WASHINGTON - An Army brigade will deploy to Africa next year in a pilot program that rotates brigades to regions around the globe, the Army said.
Roughly 3,000 soldiers, possibly more, are expected to serve tours across the continent in 2013, training foreign militaries and aiding locals.
As part of a "regionally aligned force concept," soldiers will live and work among Africans in safe communities approved by the U.S. government.
Tours could last a few weeks or months and include multiple missions at different locations. The Army has not announced which brigade would deploy or where the soldiers would come from.
As the Afghanistan war winds down, the new program affords Army units more time to learn regional cultures and languages and train for specific missions.
Africa in particular has emerged as a greater priority for the U.S. government because terrorist groups there have become an increasing threat.
Although U.S. soldiers have operated in Africa for decades, including more than 1,200 soldiers now stationed at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, the region in many ways remains the Army's last frontier.
Opposing view: Drones are unlawful and dangerous
By Kirsty Wigglesworth, AP
Robert Grenier, the head of the CIA's counterterrorism center during the Bush administration, said last week that "we have been seduced" by drones, and that drone killings "are creating more enemies than we are removing from the battlefield." He's right.
When our nation violates the law in the name of our national security, it gives propaganda tools to our enemies and alienates our allies. That is why the government's targeted killing program, which has resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths, is both unlawful and dangerous.
To be sure, targeted killing is not always illegal, nor is the use of drones. Under international law and our Constitution, the government can use lethal force when, for example, an individual takes up arms against the United States in an actual war, or against a person who poses an imminent threat to life and no means other than killing will prevent the threat. These are not the rules the government is following.
Today, our government is killing people in countries in which the United States is not at war. It reportedly adds suspected terrorists — including U.S. citizens — to "kill lists" for months at a time, which by definition cannot be limited to genuinely imminent threats. The New York Times disclosed that the government "counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants" unless intelligence proves them innocent — but only after they are dead.
Rate the debate
When mistakes are made, our nation refuses to acknowledge them and does not compensate victims. The first Yemeni missile strike President Obama authorized, in December 2009, targeted alleged militants but killed 21 children and 14 women. WikiLeaks revealed a secret agreement by Yemen to accept responsibility for the U.S. killing. Yemenis were enraged, but most Americans probably never heard about it.
White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan admits that the U.S. targeted killing program sets a precedent. Russia, China or Iran may claim tomorrow, as our government does today, the power to declare individuals enemies of the state and kill them far from any battlefield, based on secret legal criteria, secret evidence and a secret process. That is the world we are unleashing unless the program is stopped.
Hina Shamsi is director of the ACLU's National Security Project.
Woodward and Bernstein: 40 years after Watergate, Nixon was far worse than we thought
By Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, Published: June 8
As Sen. Sam Ervin completed his 20-year Senate career in 1974 and issued his final report as chairman of the Senate Watergate committee, he posed the question: “What was Watergate?”
Countless answers have been offered in the 40 years since June 17, 1972, when a team of burglars wearing business suits and rubber gloves was arrested at 2:30 a.m. at the headquarters of the Democratic Party in the Watergate office building in Washington. Four days afterward, the Nixon White House offered its answer: “Certain elements may try to stretch this beyond what it was,” press secretary Ronald Ziegler scoffed, dismissing the incident as a “third-rate burglary.”
History proved that it was anything but. Two years later, Richard Nixon would become the first and only U.S. president to resign, his role in the criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice — the Watergate coverup — definitively established.
Another answer has since persisted, often unchallenged: the notion that the coverup was worse than the crime. This idea minimizes the scale and reach of Nixon’s criminal actions.
Ervin’s answer to his own question hints at the magnitude of Watergate: “To destroy, insofar as the presidential election of 1972 was concerned, the integrity of the process by which the President of the United States is nominated and elected.” Yet Watergate was far more than that. At its most virulent, Watergate was a brazen and daring assault, led by Nixon himself, against the heart of American democracy: the Constitution, our system of free elections, the rule of law.
Today, much more than when we first covered this story as young Washington Post reporters, an abundant record provides unambiguous answers and evidence about Watergate and its meaning. This record has expanded continuously over the decades with the transcription of hundreds of hours of Nixon’s secret tapes, adding detail and context to the hearings in the Senate and House of Representatives; the trials and guilty pleas of some 40 Nixon aides and associates who went to jail; and the memoirs of Nixon and his deputies. Such documentation makes it possible to trace the president’s personal dominance over a massive campaign of political espionage, sabotage and other illegal activities against his real or perceived opponents.
In the course of his five-and-a-half-year presidency, beginning in 1969, Nixon launched and managed five successive and overlapping wars — against the anti-Vietnam War movement, the news media, the Democrats, the justice system and, finally, against history itself. All reflected a mind-set and a pattern of behavior that were uniquely and pervasively Nixon’s: a willingness to disregard the law for political advantage, and a quest for dirt and secrets about his opponents as an organizing principle of his presidency.
Long before the Watergate break-in, gumshoeing, burglary, wiretapping and political sabotage had become a way of life in the Nixon White House.
Nixon’s first war was against the anti-Vietnam War movement. The president considered it subversive and thought it constrained his ability to prosecute the war in Southeast Asia on his terms. In 1970, he approved the top-secret Huston Plan, authorizing the CIA, the FBI and military intelligence units to intensify electronic surveillance of individuals identified as “domestic security threats.” The plan called for, among other things, intercepting mail and lifting restrictions on “surreptitious entry” — that is, break-ins or “black bag jobs.”
Thomas Charles Huston, the White House aide who devised the plan, informed Nixon that it was illegal, but the president approved it regardless. It was not formally rescinded until FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover objected — not on principle, but because he considered those types of activities the FBI’s turf. Undeterred, Nixon remained fixated on such operations.
In a memorandum dated March 3, 1970, presidential aide Patrick Buchanan wrote to Nixon about what he called the “institutionalized power of the left concentrated in the foundations that succor the Democratic Party.” Of particular concern was the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank with liberal leanings.
On June 17, 1971 — exactly one year before the Watergate break-in — Nixon met in the Oval Office with his chief of staff, H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, and national security adviser Henry Kissinger. At issue was a file about former president Lyndon Johnson’s handling of the 1968 bombing halt in Vietnam.
“You can blackmail Johnson on this stuff, and it might be worth doing,” Haldeman said, according to the tape of the meeting.
“Yeah,” Kissinger said, “but Bob and I have been trying to put the damn thing together for three years.” They wanted the complete story of Johnson’s actions.
“Huston swears to God there’s a file on it at Brookings,” Haldeman said.
“Bob,” Nixon said, “now you remember Huston’s plan? Implement it. . . . I mean, I want it implemented on a thievery basis. God damn it, get in and get those files. Blow the safe and get it.”
Nixon would not let the matter drop. Thirteen days later, according to another taped discussion with Haldeman and Kissinger, the president said: “Break in and take it out. You understand?”
The next morning, Nixon said: “Bob, get on the Brookings thing right away. I’ve got to get that safe cracked over there.” And later that morning, he persisted, “Who’s gonna break in the Brookings Institution?”
For reasons that have never been made clear, the break-in apparently was not carried out.
2. The war on the news media
Nixon’s second war was waged ceaselessly against the press, which was reporting more insistently on the faltering Vietnam War and the effectiveness of the antiwar movement. Although Hoover thought he had shut down the Huston Plan, it was in fact implemented by high-level Nixon deputies. A “Plumbers” unit and burglary team were set up under the direction of White House counsel John Ehrlichman and an assistant, Egil Krogh, and led by the operational chiefs of the future Watergate burglary, ex-CIA operative Howard Hunt and former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy. Hunt was hired as a consultant by Nixon political aide Charles Colson, whose take-no-prisoners sensibility matched the president’s.
SNIP
To read the full article go to the Washington Post.
Russia sending attack helicopters to Syria, U.S. charges
By Bradley Klapper
Associated Press
Posted: 06/12/2012 11:28:53 AM PDT
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration said Tuesday that Russia is sending attack helicopters to Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime and warned that the Arab country's 15-month conflict could become even deadlier.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. was "concerned about the latest information we have that there are attack helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria."
She said the shipment "will escalate the conflict quite dramatically."
Clinton's comments at a public appearance with Israeli President Shimon Peres augured poorly for a peaceful solution to Syria's conflict. Officials from around the world are warning that the violence risks becoming an all-out civil war, with Middle East power brokers from Iran to Turkey possibly being drawn into the fighting.
Diplomatic hopes have rested on Washington and Moscow agreeing on a transition plan that would end the 4-decade-long Assad regime.
But Moscow has consistently rejected outside forces to end the conflict or any international plan to force regime change in Damascus. Despite withering criticism from the West, it insists that any arms it supplies to Syria are not being used to quell anti-government dissent.
With diplomacy at a standstill, the reported shipment of helicopters suggests a dangerous new turn for Syria after more than a year of harsh government crackdowns on mainly peaceful protests and the emergence of an increasingly organized
Russia and Syria have a longstanding military relationship and Syria hosts Russia's only naval base on the Mediterranean Sea. But in light of the brutal violence, the U.S. has repeatedly demanded that any further deliveries of weaponry be halted. Russian military support in the form of materiel as advanced as attack helicopters would deal a serious blow to efforts to starve the Syrian army of supplies.
Some 13,000 people have died, according to opposition groups, but the U.S. and its allies have been hoping that sanctions on Assad's government and its increased isolation would make it increasingly difficult to carry out military campaigns..
On Monday, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland decried what she called "horrific new tactics" by Syrian forces, including the use of helicopters to fire on civilians from the air. She called the attacks a "very serious escalation" and said Syrian commanders would be held responsible for any crimes against humanity.
Clinton, as well, warned about a massing of Syrian forces near Aleppo over the last two days, saying such a deployment could be a "red line" for Syria's northern neighbor Turkey "in terms of their strategic and national interests."
"We are watching this very carefully," she said.
Let me get this straight. The American Empire spends more on our military then all the other countries of the world combined spend, but the generals at the Pentagon say any cuts in defense spending would be a disaster.
That is rubbish.
Lets face it the America military is just an unneeded jobs program for the overpaid generals and admirals in in the Pentagon and a billion dollar welfare program for the companies in the military industrial complex.
Pentagon: Defense cuts would be 'disaster'
by Donna Cassata - Jun. 13, 2012 10:59 PM
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pleaded with Congress Wednesday to avoid the disaster of automatic defense cuts even as he criticized lawmakers' affection for protecting aging ships and aircraft.
Ramping up the pressure, Panetta and Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, painted a bleak picture of the military and its power if the across-the-board reductions, known as "sequestration," go into effect beginning Jan. 2.
The Pentagon would face cuts of about $500 billion in projected spending over 10 years on top of the $492 billion that President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans already agreed to in last summer's deficit-cutting budget.
Dempsey said the cuts would mean fewer troops, the possible cancellation of major weapons and the disruption of operations.
"We can't yet say precisely how bad the damage would be, but it is clear that sequestration would risk hollowing out our force and reducing its military options available to the nation," Dempsey told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee. "We would go from being unquestionably powerful everywhere to being less visible globally and presenting less of an overmatch to our adversaries, and that would translate into a different deterrent calculus and potentially, therefore, increase the likelihood of conflict."
Panetta also confirmed that it is costing about $100 million per month for the U.S. to send war supplies to Afghanistan through a northern route because Pakistan closed key border crossings last November after a U.S. airstrike mistakenly killed two dozen Pakistani troops.
The Associated Press reported in January that the cost was about $104 million per month -- roughly $87 million more than the monthly cost when the cargo moved through Pakistan.
Negotiations between the U.S. and Pakistan to reopen the border crossings have dragged on for months, and have stalled over disagreements.
While Panetta appealed to lawmakers for help, he also took a swipe at members of Congress who have changed Obama's defense budget request for the next fiscal year. In the initial rounds, the House added billions to the budget, preserved weapons, ships and aircraft that the Pentagon wanted to cut and balked at the reductions in the Army and Marine Corps. The Senate Armed Services Committee, in its version of the budget, rejected the Pentagon's proposed cuts in personnel and equipment for the Air National Guard.
"In reversing difficult decisions and restoring funds to those areas that achieve necessary savings, Congress risks upending the careful balance we sought to achieve in our strategy," Panetta said in his prepared testimony. He added in the open session: "There's no free lunch here. Every low-priority program or overhead cost that is retained will have to be offset in cuts in higher-priority investments in order to comply" with last year's budget agreement.
He implored members of the Senate Appropriations Committee to follow the Defense Department's budget recommendations as it crafts a spending plan for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, called Dempsey's description of the likely effects of the automatic spending cuts "candid but frightening."
Panetta said layoffs of civilian employees were possible and the cuts were certain to hit military contractors, with a possible 1 percent spike in the nation's unemployment rate. The rate ticked up to 8.2 percent in May as the economic recovery remains sluggish.
Dempsey said the billions for warfighters in Afghanistan would be subject to the cuts. To avoid that drastic step, the Pentagon would look to offset the reductions with cuts in other accounts, he said. Defense Comptroller Robert Hale said the president could exempt military personnel, but the reductions would affect the department's ability to pay for health care.
The Pentagon would be facing a 20 percent cut in weapons systems, training, equipment -- all elements of the budget.
"It was designed as a meat ax," Panetta said. "It was designed to be a disaster. Because the hope was, because it's such a disaster, that Congress would respond and do what was right. And so I'm just here to tell you, yes, it would be a disaster."
Last year's failure of a congressional bipartisan supercommittee to come up with $1.2 trillion in spending cuts set in motion the automatic cuts that would slash domestic and defense programs by $1.2 trillion over a decade. Republicans and Democrats have struggled to come up with a budget to avert the cuts, and an answer may not emerge until after the November election in a lame-duck session.
That could prove too late as the fiscal year begins Oct. 1 and companies that might lay off hundreds or thousands need to notify employees 60 days in advance.
In a message to both parties, Panetta, a former House Budget Committee chairman and director of the Office of Management and Budget, said all elements of the budget must be part of any solution, from entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security that Democrats look to protect to tax increases that the GOP opposes.
U.S. expands secret intelligence operations in Africa
By Craig Whitlock, Published: June 13
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — The U.S. military is expanding its secret intelligence operations across Africa, establishing a network of small air bases to spy on terrorist hideouts from the fringes of the Sahara to jungle terrain along the equator, according to documents and people involved in the project.
At the heart of the surveillance operations are small, unarmed turboprop aircraft disguised as private planes. Equipped with hidden sensors that can record full-motion video, track infrared heat patterns, and vacuum up radio and cellphone signals, the planes refuel on isolated airstrips favored by African bush pilots, extending their effective flight range by thousands of miles.
About a dozen air bases have been established in Africa since 2007, according to a former senior U.S. commander involved in setting up the network. Most are small operations run out of secluded hangars at African military bases or civilian airports.
The nature and extent of the missions, as well as many of the bases being used, have not been previously reported but are partially documented in public Defense Department contracts. The operations have intensified in recent months, part of a growing shadow war against al-Qaeda affiliates and other militant groups. The surveillance is overseen by U.S. Special Operations forces but relies heavily on private military contractors and support from African troops.
The surveillance underscores how Special Operations forces, which have played an outsize role in the Obama administration’s national security strategy, are working clandestinely all over the globe, not just in war zones. The lightly equipped commando units train foreign security forces and perform aid missions, but they also include teams dedicated to tracking and killing terrorism suspects.
The establishment of the Africa missions also highlights the ways in which Special Operations forces are blurring the lines that govern the secret world of intelligence, moving aggressively into spheres once reserved for the CIA. The CIA has expanded its counterterrorism and intelligence-gathering operations in Africa, but its manpower and resources pale in comparison with those of the military.
U.S. officials said the African surveillance operations are necessary to track terrorist groups that have taken root in failed states on the continent and threaten to destabilize neighboring countries.
A hub for secret network
A key hub of the U.S. spying network can be found in Ouagadougou (WAH-gah-DOO-goo), the flat, sunbaked capital of Burkina Faso, one of the most impoverished countries in Africa.
Under a classified surveillance program code-named Creek Sand, dozens of U.S. personnel and contractors have come to Ouagadougou in recent years to establish a small air base on the military side of the international airport.
The unarmed U.S. spy planes fly hundreds of miles north to Mali, Mauritania and the Sahara, where they search for fighters from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a regional network that kidnaps Westerners for ransom.
The surveillance flights have taken on added importance in the turbulent aftermath of a March coup in Mali, which has enabled al-Qaeda sympathizers to declare an independent Islamist state in the northern half of the country.
Elsewhere, commanders have said they are increasingly worried about the spread of Boko Haram, an Islamist group in Nigeria blamed for a rash of bombings there. U.S. forces are orchestrating a regional intervention in Somalia to target al-Shabab, another al-Qaeda affiliate. In Central Africa, about 100 American Special Operations troops are helping to coordinate the hunt for Joseph Kony, the Ugandan leader of a brutal guerrilla group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army.
The results of the American surveillance missions are shrouded in secrecy. Although the U.S. military has launched airstrikes and raids in Somalia, commanders said that in other places, they generally limit their involvement to sharing intelligence with allied African forces so they can attack terrorist camps on their own territory.
The creeping U.S. military involvement in long-simmering African conflicts, however, carries risks. Some State Department officials have expressed reservations about the militarization of U.S. foreign policy on the continent. They have argued that most terrorist cells in Africa are pursuing local aims, not global ones, and do not present a direct threat to the United States.
The potential for creating a popular backlash can be seen across the Red Sea, where an escalating campaign of U.S. drone strikes in Yemen is angering tribesmen and generating sympathy for an al-Qaeda franchise there.
In a response to written questions from The Washington Post, the U.S. Africa Command said that it would not comment on “specific operational details.”
“We do, however, work closely with our African partners to facilitate access, when required, to conduct missions or operations that support and further our mutual security goals,” the command said.
Surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations, it added, are “simply a tool we employ to enable host nation militaries to better understand the threat picture.”
Uncovering the details
The U.S. military has largely kept details of its spy flights in Africa secret. The Post pieced together descriptions of the surveillance network by examining references to it in unclassified military reports, U.S. government contracting documents and diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group.
Further details were provided by interviews with American and African officials, as well as military contractors.
In addition to Burkina Faso, U.S. surveillance planes have operated periodically out of nearby Mauritania. In Central Africa, the main hub is in Uganda, though there are plans to open a base in South Sudan. In East Africa, U.S. aircraft fly out of bases in Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and the Indian Ocean archipelago of the Seychelles.
Army Gen. Carter F. Ham, the head of U.S. Africa Command, which is responsible for military operations on the continent, hinted at the importance and extent of the air bases while testifying before Congress in March. Without divulging locations, he made clear that, in Africa, he wanted to expand “ISR,” the military’s acronym for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
SNIP
I only got the first 2 pages of the article.
Check out the Washington Post for the rest of the article.
Screw the Constitution and that thing about Congress having to declare war. The American Emperor will declare war on whoever he feels like.
U.S. declassifies new strikes
Report acknowledges counterterror attacks in Yemen and Somalia
Jun. 15, 2012 10:30 PM
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The White House is partially lifting the lid of secrecy on its counterterrorism campaign against al-Qaida in Yemen and Somalia by formally acknowledging for the first time that it is conducting lethal attacks in those countries, officials said Friday.
The White House's semiannual report to Congress on the state of U.S. combat operations abroad, delivered Friday, mentions what has been widely reported for years but never formally acknowledged by the administration: The U.S. military has been taking "direct action" against members of al-Qaida and affiliates in Yemen and Somalia.
The report does not elaborate, but "direct action" is a military term of art that refers to a range of lethal attacks, which in the case of Yemen and Somalia include attacks by armed drones. The report does not mention drones or other weapons.
The report applies only to U.S. military operations, including those by special operations forces -- not those conducted by the CIA.
The report does not provide details of any military operations in either Yemen or Somalia. It merely acknowledges they have happened. Killings of terror suspects overseas are acknowledged by the administration, but it does not mention the involvement of drones. The CIA and military have separate drone fleets.
The decision by President Barack Obama to declassify the existence of the counterterror actions in those two countries amounts an incremental move toward greater openness about the use of U.S. force overseas. It does not reflect any change in the intensity or basic character of the U.S. campaign to defeat al-Qaida.
House OKs continued war in Afghanistan
The US Government is out of touch with the American people. The House continues to support the war in Afghanistan which is really a government welfare program for the corporations in the military industrial complex along with being a jobs program for the highly paid general and admirals that run the war.
2,000 people framed by the police have been exonerated
2,000 people framed by the police have been exonerated in the last 23 years
White House staff meetings decide who to murder with drone strikes
White House bureaucrats have meetings to decide which Arabs to murder with drone strikes.
Fighter jets scrambled to intercept U.S.-bound flight
My questions is what were the jets that intercepted the flight going to do?
Shoot it down and kill all 188 people on board????
Doctor who helped US murder Bin Laden gets 33 years for treason.
When the American Empire invaded Pakistan to murder bin Laden it was a crime against both international law and American law.
"War on terrorism" is just a lame excuse to expand the "war on drugs"????
The "war on terrorism" is just a lame excuse to expand the "war on drugs"????
"U.S. Department of Homeland Security Gang Investigations Group"
I can't see any reason on earth that Homeland Security which to pretends to protect us from foreign Muslim and Arab terrorists should be investigating local teenage gang bangers in Latino barrio in downtown Chandler. Well other then that the "war on terrorism" is really an extension of the "drug war"!!!
America is going to pay thru the nose for George Bush and Barack Obama's wars!!!!
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Affordable military vehicles - Now that's an oxymoron!!!
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Keywords Homeland Security looks for when they read your email
Keywords Homeland Security searches for when they spy on your web use,
read your email, and do the other things government tyrants do to terrorize
the serfs they rule over.
homelandsecuritykeywords.html
Column: Domestic use of drones? Bad idea
I don't have a problem with civilian drones, but we don't need government nannies spying on us 24/7 with drones.
Guatemalan President thinks the drug war is a dismal failure!!!
Otto Pérez Molina the president of Guatemala thinks the drug war is a dismal failure!!!
Full speed ahead with the insane drug war in Honduras
The insane and unconstitutional "drug war" is nothing more then a jobs program for overpaid government bureaucrats, cops and generals. Sadly it looks like it is moving full speed ahead according to this article.
Barack Obama: Drone Warrior
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Obama ordered cyberattacks on Iran!!!!
Obama ordered cyberattacks on Iran!!!!
New presidential duty: The 'kill list'
Emperor Obama really does sound like an Emperor!!!!
American Empire murders Al-Qaeda leader in Pakistan.
American Empire used drone to murder Al-Qaeda leader in Pakistan.
NATO apologizes for Afghan civilian deaths
Talk is cheap!!!! If we really wanted to tell the people of Afghanistan
we are sorry for murdering their people and destroying their country
we would get the f*ck out of Afghanistan and leave them alone!
Army to send 3,000 soldiers to safe areas of Africa next year
Think of it as a jobs program for Generals!!!!
Drones are unlawful and dangerous
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Woodward and Bernstein: 40 years after Watergate
Government hasn't change much since the corrupt Nixon White House days.
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Russia sending attack helicopters to Syria, U.S. charges
What's the difference between Russia giving Syria attack helicopters to terrorize their people and the US giving Iraq and Afghanistan weapons to terrorize their people? Not much!!!
Pentagon: Defense cuts would be 'disaster'
U.S. expands secret intelligence operations in Africa
Think of it as a jobs program for generals and a government welfare program for the businesses in the military industrial complex!
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Does this mean we are officially at war with Yemen and Somolia??
Does this mean we are no longer secretly at war in Yemen and Somalia???