Bush White House ‘endorsed torture’

The Bush Administration explicitly endorsed torture techniques used by the CIA on al-Qaeda suspects, according to secret memos obtained by The Washington Post.  The Post has identified two documents sent by the White House to then CIA Director George Tenet in 2003 and 2004, endorsing controversial interrogation techniques such as ‘waterboarding’. >>>>>

James Bamford: The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America

The NSA had been tapping and eavesdropping on all calls made from that Yemen phone for years. So NSA recorded all of these phone calls. Indeed, the CIA knew as far back as 1999 that al-Mihdhar was coming to the U.S. Specifically, in 1999, CIA operatives tailing al-Mihdhar in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, obtained a copy of his passport. It contained visas for both Malaysia and the U.S., so they knew it was likely he would go from Kuala Lumpur to America.  >>>>>

Report: Bush Exceeded Power by Withholding Cheney Comments

The president’s decision to withhold the interview transcript from the committee in July “was legally unprecedented and an inappropriate use of executive privilege,” the report said.

The committee is investigating what role Cheney may have had in the leak of Plame’s work in 2003. Her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, had questioned evidence used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.  >>>>>

Public At Last Guantánamo’s SERE Standard Operating Procedures

One of the most important documents of the U.S. torture program has just become publicly available for the first time. This is the JTF GTMO “SERE” Interrogation Standard Operating Procedure, now posted on the website of the new documentary, Torturing Democracy. This document clearly specifies that the abusive interrogation techniques to be used at Guantamo [JTF GTMO] are based upon the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape [SERE] program. The document is notable for its documentation of the extent to which abuse was bureaucratically standardized for routineuse. http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m47935&hd=&size=1&l=e

Under Bush, US Influence in Latin America is Receding Before High Tide

The United States has also long served as chief educator to Latin America’s elite. Correa is among its presidents with a U.S. graduate degree – though that didn’t stop him from accusing the CIA of infiltrating his military, or refusing to renew a lease for U.S. counterdrug missions to fly out of Ecuador.

With the U.S. facing its own financial crisis, it’s unlikely to be able to leverage economic influence in Latin America anytime soon. Sen. Barack Obama’s senior adviser on Latin America, Dan Restrepo, acknowledges that his candidate is essentially proposing a symbolic shift in style – albeit adding a special White House envoy for the Americas. (In response to “US Influence in Latin America Wanes”):

Which is why false-flag operations would not be a surprise in the region aside from what has been conspired with regards to regional parties; for only the U.S. and Israel have a track record for containing the rise of the supposed “Islamo-Fascists.”  There are many Muslim and/or Arab enclaves in South and Central America.  The overwhelming majority have absolutely no Islamist-agenda within the respective countries they live.  Yet it would not take too much to get public opinion against this, while at the same time showing Latinos that the U.S. is still needed to champion ‘democracy and freedom’– just as the U.S. was needed to infiltrate and control select countries by way of the Drug Trade, and let’s not forget our own colonial history in the region.

Reports Link Karzai’s Brother to Afghanistan Heroin Trade

Numerous reports link Ahmed Wali Karzai to the drug trade, according to current and former officials from the White House, the State Department and the United States Embassy in Afghanistan, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity. In meetings with President Karzai, including a 2006 session with the United States ambassador, the Central Intelligence Agency’s station chief and their British counterparts, American officials have talked about the allegations in hopes that the president might move his brother out of the country, said several people who took part in or were briefed on the talks.

“We thought the concern expressed to Karzai might be enough to get him out of there,” one official said. But President Karzai has resisted, demanding clear-cut evidence of wrongdoing, several officials said. “We don’t have the kind of hard, direct evidence that you could take to get a criminal indictment,” a White House official said. “That allows Karzai to say, ‘where’s your proof?’ ” >>>>>

Pretty ironic that Karzai is ‘demanding clear-cut evidence of wrongdoing,’ when he somehow took over a country based on ignoring their previous government’s [Taliban] ’demand(ing) clear-cut evidence of wrongdoing.’

Pakistan: Blasts conspiracy against Islam

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari says Islamabad bombings are an unfortunate step to malign the religion which preaches humanity and harmony.

“Some enemies of humanity, Islam and the country tried to damage the rising image of state by carrying out a terrible suicide blast in Islamabad,” Zardari stressed in his message to the nation on Eid-ul-Fitr. >>>>>

FBI Prevents Agents from Telling ‘Truth’ About 9/11 on PBS

Pre-9/11 intelligence mishaps have been generally attributed to bureaucratic screw-ups — a “failure to connect the dots,” exacerbated by spy agency rivalries.

But Rossini and Miller, who were assigned to the CIA-run Counterterrorist Center during the run-up to the 9/11 attacks, are prepared to describe on camera how the CIA blocked them from sharing crucial intelligence with FBI headquarters – and then later pressured them not to tell the truth to investigators. >>>>>

If they were Muslim, they would have been rightfully accused of obstruction of justice, witness tampering and treason.

US Forces Join Combat Operations In Southern Philippines

An alliance of militant Filipino teachers opposed to the continued stay of US forces in the Philippines urged the Philippine Senate to investigate the involvement of the American military in combat operations in Mindanao.

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers said the Senate Legislative Oversight Committee on the Visiting Forces Agreement should investigate the US role in the operation that killed Abu Sayyaf leader Aldam Tilao, also known as Abu Sabaya.  >>>>>

Pakistan: Whose Drone is it Anyway?

Following up on yesterday’s myriad of reports regarding what did or didn’t happen to a US Predator Drone near the South Waziristan border, Pakistan’s military has officially admitted to recovering the wreckage of a downed US drone near the border which suffered a malfunction and crashed, finally putting to rest speculation about the incident…

And the mysterious group which claimed credit for Saturday’s suicide bombing in Islamabad has issued a new message in which it threatens to target other Pakistanis who cooperate with “Americans and NATO crusaders.” This message, like the previous one, was delivered to the media over the phone, and in English. Pakistani officials said the preliminary report pointed to Waziristan, the target of America’s recent strikes. >>>>>

Two bombs (pun intended) are disclosed in this story and won’t be in the mainstream media.:

1. If you really want to know who sent the drone, start looking at countries that have drones and are not mentioned in the story.

2. The mysterious group is no doubt a Western terrorist organization pretending to be a Pakistani terrorist group.

Rice Admits She Led High-Level White House Talks About Torture

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has admitted for the first time that she led high-level discussions beginning in 2002 with other senior Bush administration officials about subjecting suspected al-Qaeda terrorists detained at military prisons to the harsh interrogation technique known as waterboarding, according to documents released late Wednesday by Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee.  >>>>>

Neo-cons, Ex-Israeli Diplomats Push Islamophobic Video

Foreign nationals and companies, and domestic tax-exempt 501(c)3 non-profits are prohibited by federal election law from attempting to sway U.S. elections at any level through either contributions to campaigns or advocacy.

Morgenstern, EMET’s spokesman, said that the DVD distribution only went to “swing states” because media attention is focused there, and EMET is hoping to spark a public debate about the threats posed by” radical Islam”.

But CAIR has filed a complaint asking the Federal Election Commission to review the actions of the Clarion Fund both as a foreign entity and as a non-profit. >>>>>

The Real Story Behind Marriott Attack

It is now clear that our so-called friends have been playing a double game. Now that USA has bared its teeth and let its intentions known, to pretend that it would stop short of achieving its objectives will be like living in fools’ paradise. It is simply degrading to unashamedly say that we cannot fight the Americans. It is also preposterous to assume that Pakistan may not survive without American support. Pro-American elements within Pakistan on U.S. payroll have been parroting this theme since creation of Pakistan to safeguard their vested interest. North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Iran, Somalia are living examples who have survived despite adopting hostile posture against USA. It is high time that we gird up our loins and put our act together to face up to the challenge boldly. >>>>>

CIA forged Habbush’s letter

In his new book The Way of the World, Pulitzer-Prize reporter Ron Suskind makes two accusations against the Bush administration. First, that the Bush administration received credible information from the British intelligence (who were informed by Iraq’s intelligence chief Tahir Habbush) that Saddam Hussain had no weapons of mass destruction. Bush, and especially Dick Cheney and his neo-conservative entourage dismissed the information because they were intent on waging war.

Suskind reports that after the invasion of Iraq and the confirmation that Habbush was telling the truth, the Americans made a secret arrangement with him, hid him in Jordan and paid him $5 million. >>>>>

If this were correct, should not Jordan investigate, and if the information is accurate – freeze the assets, indict Habbush and place the U.S. on a list of terror?  Is this too much idealism to ask?

Mexico Drug Plane Used For US ‘Rendition’ Flights

The plane was carrying Colombian drugs for the fugitive leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman, when it crash-landed in the Yucatan peninsula on September 24, El Universal reported.

The daily said it had obtained documents from the United States and the European Parliament which “show that that plane flew several times to Guantanamo, Cuba, presumably to transfer terrorism suspects.”

It said the European Parliament was investigating the private Grumman Gulfstream II, registered by the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation, for suspected use in CIA “rendition” flights in which prisoners are covertly transfered to a third country or US-run detention centers.  >>>>>

NY Times confirms US involvement in Nuclear Black Market

The article demonstrates (again) that the New York Times, Sanger & Broad in particular, has simply become a mouthpiece for the government (see my previous articles 1, 2, 3) but they did let one fact slip through to the readership. I can only presume that the slip was accidental, because they don’t appear to have understood the ramifications of what they reported:
The US Government is covering up the fact that US citizens and entities are involved in the nuclear black market.  >>>>>

Jewish Media Group, IntelCenter, releases their latest aL-Qaeda recording

Let’s see, the next scheduled “aL-Qaeda” tape will be around 9/11, when one of the Jewish Media Groups, either IntelCenter or Rita Katz’s SITE, digs up–literally, by using a shovel–Bin Laden to rave about AQ’s actions on 9/11, when even the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist page on BL doesn’t say anything about BL and 9/11.

After that, there will be one released right before the November election, in which the CIA created, financed and run aL-Qaeda tries to scare gullible American voters into voting for McCain.  >>>>>

Judge says gov’t must produce waterboarding memos

U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein says the memos are “clearly responsive” to a lawsuit filed in 2003 by the ACLU and other civil rights groups seeking records on the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody overseas.  >>>>>

CIA memos reveal doubts over ‘key’ Lockerbie witness

Mr Giaka eventually returned to Tripoli in 1990 after the CIA money dried up. But the agency kept in touch with him and finally persuaded him in 1991 to come to America. Nine years later, Majid Giaka arrived at the Lockerbie bombing trial in the Netherlands. He described how he had seen Megrahi and his co-accused, Khalifa Fhimah, at Luqa airport before the bombing with a large brown suitcase. But the CIA cables confirm that nearly two years before, Mr Giaka didn’t remember anything.

At the Lockerbie trial, the four judges described some of his evidence as “at best grossly exaggerated and at worst simply untrue” and concluded he was “largely motivated by financial considerations”. >>>>>

Millions of dollars wasted on prosecuting the wrong parties. Millions Muslim lives are adversely affected, if not killed based on mere lies. This attack on civilization is more grand than most people care to face.

British Court Rules Against UK and US in Guantánamo Case

When justice finally came for Binyam, it was not at Guantánamo, but in London’s High Court, where, last Thursday, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr. Justice Lloyd Jones delivered a stinging rebuke to both the British and the American governments: to the British for the complicity of the UK intelligence services in the U.S. administration’s post-9/11 policies of “extraordinary rendition” and torture, and to the Americans for the lawless conduct of the trials by military commission that were established in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to deal with “terror suspects” like Binyam (even though the judges professed in their ruling that they “did not consider it necessary to form any view about the overall fairness of the military commissions procedure”).  >>>>>