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Who Are the Leading State Sponsors of Terrorism?

December 31, 2017

Who Are the Leading State Sponsors of Terrorism?

As 2017 draws to a close, it is difficult to be optimistic about what will be coming in the new year. The American President, whose margin of victory was certainly based on his pledge to avoid unnecessary wars, has doubled down on Afghanistan, refuses to leave Syria even though ISIS has been defeated, and is playing serious brinksmanship with a psychopathic and unpredictable regime in Pyongyang. The White House has also bought into the prevailing largely fabricated narrative about a Russia and has decided to arm Ukraine with offensive weapons, which has already resulted in a sharp response from Moscow and will make détente of any kind between the two leading powers all but impossible in the upcoming year.

But, as I have observed before, the red hazard light that continues to be blinking most brightly relates to Washington’s relationship with Iran, which has unnecessarily deteriorated dramatically over the past year and which brings with it collateral problems with Russia and Turkey that could trigger a much wider conflict. I say unnecessarily because all the steps taken to poison the relationship have come out of Washington, not Tehran. The Trump administration refused to certify that the Iranians had been in compliance with the nuclear agreement negotiated in 2015 and has since escalated its verbal attacks, mostly at the United Nations, claiming that the regime in Tehran is the major source of terrorism in the world and that it is seeking hegemony over a broad arc of countries running westward from its borders to the Mediterranean Sea.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Afghans View the Endless US War

November 2, 2017

How Afghans View the Endless US War

To understand why the 16-year-old U.S. war in Afghanistan continues to fail requires a look from the ground where Afghans live and suffer, a plight breeding strong opposition to the U.S. presence, explains Kathy Kelly.

On a recent Friday at the Afghan Peace Volunteers‘ (APV) Borderfree Center, here in Kabul, 30 mothers sat cross-legged along the walls of a large meeting room. Masoumah, who co-coordinates the Center’s “Street Kids School” project, had invited the mothers to a parents meeting. Burka-clad women who wore the veil over their faces looked identical to me, but Masoumah called each mother by name, inviting the mothers, one by one, to speak about difficulties they faced.

Afghan children await school supplies from Allied forces at Sozo School in Kabul. (French navy photo by Master Petty Officer Valverde)

From inside the netted opening of a burka, we heard soft voices and, sometimes, sheer despair. Others who weren’t wearing burkas also spoke gravely. Their eyes expressed pain and misery, and some quietly wept. Often a woman’s voice would break, and she would have to pause before she could continue:

“I have debts that I cannot pay,” whispered the first woman.

“My children and I are always moving from place to place. I don’t know what will happen.”

“I am afraid we will die in an explosion.”

“My husband is paralyzed and cannot work. We have no money for food, for fuel.”

“My husband is old and sick. We have no medicine.”

“I cannot feed my children.”

“How will we live through the winter?”

“I have pains throughout my whole body.”

“I feel hopeless.”

“I feel depressed, and I am always worried.”

“I feel that I’m losing my mind.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Reaper Drone Shot Down Over Afghanistan

October 14, 2017

US Reaper Drone Shot Down Over Afghanistan

In a rare, successful attack on one of the most advanced US offensive weapons, a US drone has reportedly been shot down over Afghanistan. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Voice of Jihad) reports that Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) said to be operated by the United States. The rea

The UAV above is believed to be a MQ-9 Reaper with a price tag of $10.5 million. The aircraft can stay airborne up to 36 hours with 1.7 tons of missiles and bombs. The wreckage of the plane is said to have been seized by the Mujahideen. So far, there has been no comment from from the US military.

The location of the downed drone is in Kunduz, a city in northern Afghanistan.

The attack may have been in retaliation for a US drone strike which yesterday killed 14 ISIS militants in the Kunar province, a northern boarder region in Afghanistan. According to The Guardian, “Abdul Ghani Musamim, a spokesman for the provincial governor, told the Associated Press that the drone had targeted a meeting of Isis commanders who were planning a terrorist attack.”

Apropos, on Thursday, we reported U.S. bombs dropped in Afghanistan surged to a 7-year high in the month of September, as it became clear that Trump’s Afghanistan war policy was simply to add to the local death toll by dropping more bombs.

As discussed before, we suspect that President Trump, gradually settling in into his role as the next “Warmonger-in-Chief” has reignited a trend that the military industrial complex is simply delighted about.

Deep State First

August 27, 2017

Deep State First

Lighting a Candle

POITOU, FRANCE – On Tuesday, Donald Trump, president of all the Americans, said his country would spend more blood and money trying to force the Afghans to do what it wants them to do, whatever that is.

If you are destined to stay on the Afghan plantation forever, might as well plant something. [PT]

Cartoon by Steve Bell

And so… a darkness covered the land. From Sioux City to Savannah, a shadow passed between Earth and sun. Strange and fearful events were reported. A calf was born with two heads outside of Des Moines. Pomegranate trees flowered in Manhattan. An LGBTQQ+ person wondered WTF?

The people were sore afraid.

Nowhere was the darkness deeper than in the nation’s capital. There, no light shone. No flicker of awareness… observation… learning… or reflection appeared.

Hello, darkness.

Donald J. Trump had promised to light a candle. But it was nowhere to be seen. Five years ago, he said, “Ron Paul is right.” The Afghanistan adventure was “wasting our money.” It was a “total disaster,” he added.

He asked, “What are we doing there? These people hate us.” Then, a year later, he said, “We should leave Afghanistan immediately.”

And in his bid for the White House, he had offered something better. “America First,” he called it. Instead of trying, fruitlessly, to build a better country in the Hindu Kush, he would try to build a better country at home!

No more losing wars. No more strangling regulations. No more losing deals with the rest of the world. Even from the mouth of Donald Trump, these promises sounded good, good enough to win the nation’s highest office.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The New Trump: War President

August 22, 2017

The New Trump: War President

Exclusive: President Trump’s reversal on the Afghan War – now promising to “win” not withdraw – further makes him a “war president” along with his “fire and fury” belligerence over North Korea, as Jonathan Marshall observes.

Say what you will about Charlottesville, the national debate over neo-Nazis at least took our minds off the threat of nuclear war with North Korea. With the start of U.S.-South Korean war games, that specter will quickly return to haunt us.

President Donald Trump describing his policy toward the Afghan War, at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, on Aug. 21, 2017. (Screenshot from Whitehouse.gov)

How worried should we be? The answer lies much more in Washington than in Pyongyang. The Kim regime has been almost entirely consistent in its policy: It means to keep building a credible nuclear arsenal, complete with ICBMs, until it has the capacity to deter a U.S. attack. For all its posturing and bombast, North Korea’s policy is fundamentally defensive.

In contrast, the Trump administration has sent a host of confusing messages. Some top officials buy into sane, defensive notions of mutual nuclear deterrence. Others, however, insist that Kim’s regime must be vanquished before it acquires greater nuclear capabilities. The fate of millions of people rests on which policy President Trump adopts.

One of Steve Bannon’s last declarations before being fired by the White House was that no “military option” exists for dealing with North Korea, because of the extraordinary damage a war would cause.

As I’ve discussed before, however, another influential Washington figure, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, has lobbied Trump to order an all-out attack if Pyongyang continues testing missiles capable of reaching the United States — even if a war turns South Korea and Japan into wastelands.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Could Go Wrong? Saudis Want To Give Surface-To-Air Missiles To Syrian Rebels

February 22, 2016

What Could Go Wrong? Saudis Want To Give Surface-To-Air Missiles To Syrian Rebels

When the Russians started flying from Latakia on September 30 it put the Syrian opposition in a decisively precarious situation.

Whereas the Syrian air force was largely out of date and relied on replacement parts and continual maintenance to remain viable, Moscow brought one of the most formidable sky attacks on the planet to a fight against rebels with zero air capability and exceptionally limited capacity to defend themselves against an aerial assault.

Starting in October, the Russian Defense Ministry began posting video clips (hundreds of them) depicting strikes on a variety of rebel and militant targets and The Kremlin also went out of its way to capture full color, HD footage of Su-34s and long-range bombers in action over Syria where the opposition was quite simply powerless to defend itself.

For about a month (sometime between mid-November and mid-December) it appeared that President Obama was right. The fanfare around the initial wave of Russian airstrikes had subsided and the push north to Aleppo appeared to have stalled. The “quagmire” it seemed, was real. Then, suddenly, Hezbollah surrounded Aleppo and reports indicated the Russian air force had implemented what amounts to a scorched earth policy when it comes to the militants battling Iranian forces.

Once it became apparent that the country’s largest city would soon be recaptured by forces loyal to Assad, both Turkey and Saudi Arabia began to weigh their options. A ground assault by Ankara and Riyadh would be a veritable nightmare for the US and the West. It would invariably devolve into a direct conflict with Iranian forces and the first time a Russian jet hit Saudi or Turkish troops the world would be plunged into a global conflict with the potential to drag every nation in the developed world to war.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Western warmongers have all the answers, and they’re all wrong

January 31, 2016

Western warmongers have all the answers, and they’re all wrong

The wars in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan failed not because of noble errors, but because short-sighted Western interests trumped the needs of the people. And this is why the creeping return to war will fail again

Despite an almost total lack of public debate, Western military escalation in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya is on the rise.

Renewed military interventionism has been largely justified as a response to the meteoric rise of Islamic State networks, spreading across parts of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.

Missing from government pronouncements, though, is any acknowledgement that the proliferation of Islamist terrorism is a direct consequence of the knee-jerk response of military escalation.

Discarded to the memory hole is the fact that before each of the major interventions in these three countries, our political leaders promised they would bring security, freedom and prosperity.

Instead, they have done precisely the opposite.

White man’s burden for Afghan freedom

In October 2001, as US special forces were roaming Afghanistan in the search for Osama bin Laden, Max Boot – a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations – wrote a gushing article in the Weekly Standard titled, The Case for American Empire.

“Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets,” he said.

“Occupation would be a temporary expedient to allow the people to get back on their feet until a responsible, humane, preferably democratic, government takes over… Is this an ambitious agenda? Without a doubt. Does America have the resources to carry it out? Also without a doubt.”

Fifteen years into the war in Afghanistan, it is patently clear that this imperial dream is nothing more than a self-soothing fantasy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Defeat is Victory

January 19, 2016

Defeat is Victory

John Holcroft

On the wall of George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth from his novel 1984 there were three slogans:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

It occurred to me that these apply just a little bit too well to the way the Washington, DC establishment operates.

War certainly is peace: just look at how peaceful Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Syria and the Ukraine have become thanks to their peacemaking efforts. The only departures from absolute peacefulness which might be taking place there have to do with the fact that there are some people still alive there. This should resolve itself on its own, especially in the Ukraine, where the people now face the prospect of surviving a cold winter without heat or electricity.

Freedom is indeed slavery: to enjoy their “freedom,” Americans spend most of their lives working off debt, be it a mortgage, medical debt incurred due to an illness, or student loans. Alternatively, they can also enjoy it by rotting in jail. They also work longer hours with less time off and worse benefits than in any other developed country, and their wages haven’t increased in two generations.

And what keeps it all happening is the fact that ignorance is indeed strength; if it wasn’t for the Americans’ overwhelming, willful ignorance of both their own affairs and the world at large, they would have rebelled by now, and the whole house of cards would have come tumbling down.

But there is a fourth slogan they need to add to the wall of Washington’s Ministry of Truth. It is this:

DEFEAT IS VICTORY

The preposterous nature of the first three slogans can be finessed away in various ways.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Secret” Norwegian Report Details ISIS-Turkey Oil Trade As UN Vows To “Cut Off” Terrorist “Funding Sources”

December 18, 2015

“Secret” Norwegian Report Details ISIS-Turkey Oil Trade As UN Vows To “Cut Off” Terrorist “Funding Sources

“The resolution gives us more flexibility to go after those who are helping Isil [Isis], whether to move funds, to store funds or to earn funds”.

That’s from Adam Szubin, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the US Treasury. Szubin is referencing a Security Council resolution proposed by Washington and Moscow that calls for a crackdown on Islamic State’s access to the international financial system.

As FT reports, the “rare meeting of Security Council member finance ministers also resolved to press other nations to enforce more rigorously existing rules that are designed to limit the flow of revenues, fighters and equipment to the Islamist militant group.”

And here’s a bit of largely meaningless rhetoric from the UN itself:

At its first ever meeting at Finance Ministers’ level, the United Nations Security Council today stepped up its efforts to cut off all sources of funding for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIL) and other terrorist groups, including ransom payments, no matter by whom.

The Council also called on Member States to promote enhanced vigilance by persons within their jurisdiction to detect any diversion of explosives and raw materials and components that can be used to manufacture improvised explosive devices or unconventional weapons, including chemical components, detonators, detonating cord, or poisons.

“They (the terrorists) are agile and have been far too successful in attaining resources for their heinous acts,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Council at the start of the debate. “As Da’esh (another name for ISIL) and other terrorist groups disseminate their hateful propaganda and ratchet up murderous attacks, we must join forces to prevent them from acquiring and deploying resources to do further harm,” he stressed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Special Relationship

December 18, 2015

A Special Relationship

The United States is teaming up with Al Qaeda, again

One morning early in 1988, Ed McWilliams, a foreign-service officer posted to the American Embassy in Kabul, heard the thump of a massive explosion from somewhere on the other side of the city. It was more than eight years after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and the embassy was a tiny enclave with only a handful of diplomats. McWilliams, a former Army intelligence operative, had made it his business to venture as much as possible into the Soviet-occupied capital. Now he set out to see what had happened.

It was obviously something big: although the explosion had taken place on the other side of Sher Darwaza, a mountain in the center of Kabul, McWilliams had heard it clearly. After negotiating a maze of narrow streets on the south side of the city, he found the site. A massive car bomb, designed to kill as many civilians as possible, had been detonated in a neighborhood full of Hazaras, a much-persecuted minority.

Afghan mujahedeen move toward the front line during the battle for Jalalabad, Afghanistan, March 1989 © Robert Nickelsberg

McWilliams took pictures of the devastation, headed back to the embassy, and sent a report to Washington. It was very badly received — not because someone had launched a terrorist attack against Afghan civilians, but because McWilliams had reported it. The bomb, it turned out, had been the work of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the mujahedeen commander who received more CIA money and support than any other leader of the Afghan rebellion. The attack, the first of many, was part of a CIA-blessed scheme to “put pressure” on the Soviet presence in Kabul. Informing the Washington bureaucracy that Hekmatyar’s explosives were being deployed to kill civilians was therefore entirely unwelcome.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

House Democrat Warns Obama’s Actions Could Lead To “Devastating Nuclear War”

December 2, 2015

House Democrat Warns Obama’s Actions Could Lead To “Devastating Nuclear War”

It was so much easier when Obama was running a military “sneakers on the ground” campaign in Iraq and Syria where there was no official confirmation of the thousands of “military advisors” engaging directly with various known and unknown adversaries. However, a recent surge of media reports by mainstream publications exposing America’s illicit troops operating in the middle eastern combat zones has made a total mockery of the latest US attempt at clandestine ops, and as a result earlier today the White House was forced to admit it would backtrack on its countless promises there would be “no boots on the ground” in Iraq.

Did we say countless, we actually counted some of them – there are at least 16 specific instances in just the past two years in which Obama promised to not do what he just did:

Remarks before meeting with Baltic State leaders, Aug. 30, 2013

“In no event are we considering any kind of military action that would involve boots on the ground, that would involve a long-term campaign. But we are looking at the possibility of a limited, narrow act that would help make sure that not only Syria, but others around the world, understand that the international community cares about maintaining this chemical weapons ban and norm. So again, I repeat, we’re not considering any open-ended commitment. We’re not considering any boots-on-the-ground approach.”

Remarks in the Rose Garden, Aug. 31, 2013

“After careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets. This would not be an open-ended intervention. We would not put boots on the ground. Instead, our action would be designed to be limited in duration and scope.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

They Sow the Cyclone – We Reap the Blowback

November 27, 2015

They Sow the Cyclone – We Reap the Blowback

How Uncle Sam Seeded Global Jihad and Cultivates It to This Day

“For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” — Hosea 8:7

It may be surprising to hear, but it is a plain historical fact that modern international jihad originated as an instrument of US foreign policy. The “great menace of our era” was built up by the CIA to wage a proxy war against the Soviets.

A 1973 coup in Afghanistan installed a new secular government that, while not fully communist, was Soviet-leaning. That was a capital offense from the perspective of America’s Cold War national security state, at the time headed by Henry Kissinger.

Conveniently for Kissinger, the dirt poor country was sandwiched between two US client states: Pakistan to the east and Iran (then still ruled by the CIA-installed Shah) to the west. Immediately after the coup, the CIA and the clandestine security agencies of Pakistan (ISI) and Iran (SAVAK) began regime change operations in Afghanistan, orchestrating and sponsoring Islamic fundamentalist insurrections and coup attempts.

Due to these efforts, as well as the government’s own oppressiveness, a widespread rebellion broke out in Afghanistan in 1978. In July 1979, US President Jimmy Carter, on the advice of National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, officially authorized aid to the puritanical Mujahideen rebels, to be delivered through the CIA’s “Operation Cyclone.” This was on top of the unofficial aid that the CIA had already been funneling to Afghan Islamist insurgents for years through Pakistan and Iran.

In a 1998 interview, Brzezinski openly admitted that he and Carter thus “knowingly increased the probability” that the Soviets would militarily intervene. And indeed Russia did invade in December 1979, beginning the decade-long Soviet-Afghan War. In the same 1998 interview, Brzezinski boasted:

“The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Doctors Without Borders Calls U.S. Report on Afghan Hospital Bombing ‘Shocking’

November 26, 2015

Doctors Without Borders Calls U.S. Report on Afghan Hospital Bombing ‘Shocking’

CNN

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Wednesday that “human error” was a factor in the Oct. 3 bombing of the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that killed 30 civilians and left 37 wounded. In a statement, Doctors Without Borders, which had previously called the attack a probable war crime, said the report was “shocking” and left “more questions than answers.”

Gen. John F. Campbell said the strike was “tragic, but avoidable.” Human errors compounded by technical malfunctions onboard the AC-130 attack aircraft caused the strike, he said, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon in a video broadcast from Kabul.

The military investigation found that the “cause of this tragedy was … avoidable human error, compounded by process and equipment failures,” Campbell said.

Campbell addresses reporters in this CNN video:

From the Los Angeles Times:

The medical facility was misidentified as a target by U.S. military personnel who believed they were striking a different building several hundred meters away where there were reports of Taliban fighters, he said. The hospital was on the military’s so-called “no-strike list.”

Campbell did not identify the names or number of individuals suspended and did not say whether they would face disciplinary or criminal charges. Decisions on whether to prosecute will be made by the U.S. Special Operations Command, officials said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, Corruption U.S.A.

November 25, 2015

Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, Corruption U.S.A.

I recently took a little trip into the past and deep into America’s distant war zones to write a piece I called “It’s a $cam.” It was, for me, an eye-opening journey into those long-gone years of American “nation-building” and “reconstruction” in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mind you, I still remembered some of what had been reported at the time like the “urine-soaked” police academy built in Baghdad by an American private contractor with taxpayer dollars. But it was the cumulative effect of it all that now struck me — one damning report after another that made it clear Washington was incapable of building or rebuilding anything whatsoever. There were all those poorly constructed or unfinished military barracks, police stations, and outposts for the new national security forces the U.S. military was so eagerly “standing up” in both countries. There were the unfinished or miserably constructed schools, training centers, and “roads to nowhere.” There were those local militaries and police forces whose ranks were heavily populated by “ghost soldiers.” There was that shiny new U.S. military headquarters in Afghanistan that cost $25 million and no one wanted or would ever use. It was, in short, a litany of fiascoes and disasters that never seemed to end.

Financially, Washington had invested sums in both countries that far exceeded the Marshall Plan, which so successfully put Western Europe back on its feet after World War II. Yet Iraq and Afghanistan were left on their knees amid a carnival of corruption and misspent taxpayer money. What made revisiting this spectacle so stunning wasn’t just the inability of the U.S. military, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and a crew of crony warrior corporations raking in the big bucks to do anything right, but that this was the United States of America.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘No armed combatants, no fighting’: MSF issues Afghan hospital bombing report

November 5, 2015

‘No armed combatants, no fighting’: MSF issues Afghan hospital bombing report

A wounded Afghan man, who survived a U.S. air strike on a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, receives treatment at the Emergency Hospital in Kabul October 8, 2015. © Mohammad Ismail

A Médecins Sans Frontières investigation into the Afghan hospital bombing by US forces has found that there were no armed combatants or weapons within the compound, and no fighting in the direct vicinity of the hospital at the time of the airstrikes.

In its report released on Thursday, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF/Doctors Without Borders) addressed the “relentless and brutal aerial attack by US forces” which took place in Kunduz on October 3 and killed at least 30 people, including MSF staff.

“The MSF rules in the hospital were implemented and respected, including the ‘no weapon’ policy and MSF was in full control of the hospital at the time of the airstrikes,” the organization stated.

The document also said there were “no armed combatants within the hospital compound and there was no fighting from or in the direct vicinity” of the trauma center at the time of the strikes.

The hospital was “fully functioning” at the time of the airstrikes, with 105 patients admitted and surgeries taking place, according to the findings of the investigation.

In addition, MSF said the “agreement to respect the neutrality of our medical facility based on the applicable sections of International Humanitarian Law was fully in place and agreed with all parties to the conflict prior to the attack.”

Despite that neutrality, the hospital was still the target of a US airstrike, leading MSF to ask how such an attack was allowed to happen.

“The question remains as to whether our hospital lost its protected status in the eyes of the military forces engaged in this attack – and if so, why,” MSF said in its statement.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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