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By Chris Geo on Aug 28, 2012 with Comments
‘Egyptian leader heads to China, Iran to find non-Western cash flow’ (Which is probably a good idea)
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is set to kick off his first visit to China, shortly followed by a historic trip to Tehran. Middle East history professor Lawrence Davidson believes Cairo wants to diversify its economic relations.
The Egyptian President, who took office in June, will hold talks with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao on Tuesday. His visit is expected to largely focus on economic cooperation, which is why Morsi is accompanied by a number of Egyptian businessmen.
On Thursday, the Egyptian president will visit Iran to attend the Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, which Tehran is hosting. The trip, which is expected to last for only a few hours, will nevertheless be a historic occasion, as diplomatic relations between the two countries largely deteriorated following the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. This will be the first visit by an Egyptian head of state since that date.
Mohamed Morsi: What Sinai military campaign?
DEBKAfile August 28, 2012, 8:39 AM (GMT+02:00)
In an interview to Reuter, Egyptian President Morsi said Egypt’s “neighbor” had nothing to fear from “a new military campaign in Sinai…” after gunmen attacked an Egyptian border post killing 16 guards. Egypt does not threaten anyone and its military campaign is in “full respect to international treaties.”
DEBKAfile: Israel is concerned by the buildup of military strength and armor across the Sinai border – especially as there is no sign of the oft-promised Egyptian anti-terror campaign. Indeed, instead of fighting armed Islamist groups linked to al Qaeda, Egyptian leaders are seeking accommodations.
September 11 widow collected $1.4M payout for ‘green-card marriage’
A 9/11 widow who was paid $1.4 million from the World Trade Center Victim Compensation Fund, is under fire from the son of her late husband, who claims his father’s marriage to the woman was a sham.
Evgueni Kniazev, a Russian waiter at the Windows on the World restaurant atop the World Trade Center, actually paid American Irina Dubenskaya $5,000 to marry him so he could become a legal resident, his son Dennis Vinichenko told the New York Post.
‘The relationship was temporary. There was no wedding. There was no wedding band. It was just paper,’ the son said. Their actual wedding date wasn’t provided but Dubenskaya moved into Kniazev’s Brooklyn home in June 2001.
Death Toll Reaches New Milestone For Afghan War
Al Qaeda targets Riyadh, Jeddah and Sderot. Saudi cell had chemicals
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report August 26, 2012, 10:23 PM (GMT+02:00)
For the first time, a thread links the three rockets which hit the Israeli town of Sderot Sunday, Aug. 26, slightly injuring two workmen, and the two terrorist cells captured in Riyadh and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on the same day, debkafile’s counter-terror sources report. Both events were conceived by Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula. AQAP has ordered its Sinai cells and Egyptian and Palestinian offshoots to step up their attacks from Sinai and the Gaza Strip.
By three happenings Sunday, AQAP broke new and menacing ground:
1. Three Qassam missiles fired at the industrial zone Sderot shares with Shear Hanegev ushered in a Gaza-based anti-Israel offensive launched by the “Shura Council in the Jerusalem Area” – the umbrella organization of all the Salafi groups operating in Sinai and the Gaza Strip.
This group’s 6,000-strong force of well-armed terrorists is commanded by an Egyptian by the name of Hisham Saydani. Al Qaeda has dubbed him Abu al-Walid al-Maqdisi. He and his lieutenants serve as liaison between the Sinai cells and AQAP headquarters in Yemen.
2. Hamas held Saydani in a special security prison cell in the Gaza Strip until two weeks ago when, for some unknown reason, which US, Egyptian and Israeli counter-terror agencies are trying to discover, Hamas let him go. His first action was to set up the Shura Council’s attack near Rafah, in which 16 Egyptian troops were killed and the Kerem Shalom crossing barrier into Israel was rammed. The gunmen were liquidated before they reached their target: the IDF Bedouin Reconnaissance Battalion’s command base nearby.
This operation was designed at the highest AQAP command level.
Suspecting that at least three of the perpetrators had gone to ground in the Gaza Strip, Egypt demanded that Hamas hunt them down and arrest them. The Shura Council’s three-missile volley against Sderot was its way of warning Hamas to call off the hunt or else the missile fire would continue and bring Israeli retribution down on the Hamas-ruled enclave.
The same tactic was behind the firing of two Grad missiles against the southern Israeli resort and port town of Eilat Friday, Aug. 17. That too was an al Qaeda warning to Cairo to call off the Egyptian military’s pursuit of Salafi terrorists in Sinai or else more missiles would be loosed against southern Israel.
Two days later, Israel placed Eilat under the guard of an Iron Dome missile defense battery.
Following these two incidents, al Qaeda’s Shura Council announced that Israeli towns would be held hostage for the halting of Egyptian and Hamas military pursuit of its members in Sinai and the Gaza Strip, which must stop forthwith.
3. Sunday, too, the Saudi Interior Minister announced the busting of two al Qaeda cells in the capital Riyadh and the Saudi summer capital of Jeddah on the Red Sea, which were plotting attacks on Western targets, and local security forces and public places in the kingdom. There were eight arrests, two Saudis and six Yemenis.
Saudi sources disclosed that they were members of AQAP, operating under the orders of the organization’s headquarters in Yemen. Found in their possession were weapons and explosives and also chemical substances for loading into explosive charges.
This is the first evidence since 2002, when a bomb packed with poison chemicals was detonated by Palestinian suicide killer in Jerusalem, of the use of chemical weapons by Middle East terrorists. It is feared that those weapons may also have found their way to Sinai.
Author of bin Laden raid memoir facing death threats after being outed
By Arturo Garcia
Saturday, August 25, 2012 18:49 EDT
The former Navy SEAL team member who wrote an eyewitness account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden under a pseudonym for his own safety has been the subject of online death threats after his identity released by both Fox News and the Associated Press.
According to NBC News websites connected to al Qaeda are calling for the “destruction” of the man calling himself “Mark Owen,” author of the upcoming book No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden, covering his experiences as part of the SEAL team that killed the terrorist group’s leader in May 2011.
“Oh Allah, make an example of him for the whole world and give him dark days ahead,” one post read.
Fox News reported the man’s real name on Thursday and posted pictures of him in combat gear on its website. The Associated Press later confirmed the information,* despite his publisher’s request to keep his identity a secret.
“”Mark Owen, like every SEAL he has served with, has put his life on the line time and again for his country for more than a decade,” the publisher, the Penguin Group, said in a statement. “Sharing the true story of his personal experience in “No Easy Day” is a courageous act in the face of obvious risks to his personal security. That personal security is the sole reason the book is being published under a pseudonym.”
Owen could face other problems: CNN reported that Owen, who reportedly spent more than 10 years in the military before retiring this past April, did not submit the manuscript to the Department of Defense for them to verify that he would not reveal sensitive information about the mission.
“He has no right to make public the details of that raid, and the operational information that is necessary in order to do that without getting approval,” said CNN national security analyst Fran Townsend.
The book is scheduled to be released on Sept. 11.
A report by CNN on Owen’s story, originally aired Friday, can be seen below.
Guantanamo 9/11 hearings delayed to mid-October
By Agence France-Presse
Saturday, August 25, 2012 0:40 EDT
Preliminary hearings for the trial of five alleged 9/11 plotters were canceled this week over Tropical Storm Isaac are now set for mid-October, the US military said Friday.
The hearings, at which confessed September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is due to appear, are now due to take place from October 15-19 at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to the US military commissions website.
Another series of hearings is set for December 3-7.
The hearings had already been postponed once so that the defendants could observe the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and then pushed back a day when a derailed freight train in Maryland caused an Internet outage at the base.
They were finally scrapped over the imminent arrival of Tropical Storm Isaac, which is now due to hit southeastern Cuba on Saturday.
Mohammed is on trial along with his Pakistani nephew Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi; Mustapha al-Hawsawi of Saudi Arabia and Yemenis Ramzi Binalshibh and Walid bin Attash.
The five face the death penalty if convicted for their roles in the 2001 attacks by Al-Qaeda militants in which hijacked planes were used to strike New York, Washington and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing 2,976 people.
The defendants have been held at the US “war on terror” detention center at Guantanamo Bay since 2006. Their trial is not expected to begin for at least a year.
Al-Qaeda front group claims 43 attacks in Iraq
By Agence France-Presse
Friday, August 24, 2012 7:09 EDT
Al-Qaeda’s front group in Iraq claimed it carried out a series of attacks, mostly on security forces, in the western province of Anbar in June and July, a statement posted on jihadist forums said.
The 43 attacks purportedly carried out by the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) were largely in the form of bombings and shootings against Iraqi soldiers, police and anti-Qaeda militiamen known as the Sahwa, according to the statement, which was posted on Wednesday.
It comes after ISI declared a campaign last month to retake territory it had abandoned in the years since the peak of Iraq’s sectarian bloodshed between 2006 and 2008.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq is regarded by Iraqi officials as significantly weaker than at the peak of its strength in 2006 and 2007, but it is still capable of spectacular mass-casualty attacks across the country.
The group claimed a wave of attacks on July 23 that killed 113 people nationwide, the deadliest violence to hit Iraq in more than two and a half years.
Globalist Rag Gives “Two Cheers” for Terrorism
Tony Cartalucci
Infowars.com
Aug 24, 2012
Foreign Policy published a recent article literally titled, “Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists.” In it, general editor of the Neo-Con Middle East Forum Gary Gambill concedes that the Syrian government “would not be in the trouble it’s in today were it not for the Islamists,” revealing what the West and its media houses have attempted but failed at obfuscating – that the violence in Syria is the work of sectarian extremists, not “pro-democracy activists.” The latter’s existence was amplified by the Western media specifically to provide cover and legitimacy for the violence and subversion of the former.
Image: Must be seen to believe – screenshot of FP’s article literally titled, “Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists.” The writer, Gary Gambill, comes from the Middle East Forum which regular features the warmongering rants of Neo-Cons like Daniel Pipes and Islamophobia-propagandist Robert Spencer.
Gambill continues his “two cheers” for terrorism in perhaps the most perverse statement found to-date in the Western press on the subject:
“Islamists — many of them hardened by years of fighting U.S. forces in Iraq — are simply more effective fighters than their secular counterparts. Assad has had extraordinary difficulty countering tactics perfected by his former jihadist allies, particularly suicide bombings and roadside bombs.”
Gambill is gushingly praising men who have killed Western troops, admiring their prowess on the battlefield through their use of indiscriminate terrorist tactics which have killed and maimed tens of thousands of civilians across the Arab World.
The Big Lie
Gambill continues by stating, “The Sunni Islamist surge may also be essential to inflicting a full-blown strategic defeat on Iran,” before concluding at length as to why the US should support terrorism in Syria:
“For the foreseeable future, however, Iran constitutes a far greater and more immediate threat to U.S. national interests. Whatever misfortunes Sunni Islamists may visit upon the Syrian people, any government they form will be strategically preferable to the Assad regime, for three reasons: A new government in Damascus will find continuing the alliance with Tehran unthinkable, it won’t have to distract Syrians from its minority status with foreign policy adventurism like the ancien régime, and it will be flush with petrodollars from Arab Gulf states (relatively) friendly to Washington.
So long as Syrian jihadis are committed to fighting Iran and its Arab proxies, we should quietly root for them — while keeping our distance from a conflict that is going to get very ugly before the smoke clears. There will be plenty of time to tame the beast after Iran’s regional hegemonic ambitions have gone down in flames. ” -Gary Gambill, “Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists,” (2012)
In this, Gambill divulges the true agenda behind destabilizing Syria – the isolation and undermining of Iran to the east, and Hezbollah in Lebanon to the West. Gambill also mentions the destruction of Syria as a means of realigning Iraq to US interests.
Gambill disingenuously claims that the US can do “little about” what he calls the “political ascendancy” of these sectarian extremists, portraying the rise of violence across the Levant and the miraculous resurrection of the Muslim Brotherhood across the Arab World as coincidentally aligned to American interests, and something that should be allowed, even encouraged, to run its course.
Gambill fails to mention, however, that this “political ascendancy” was planned, funded, armed, and organized by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia as far back as 2007, according to a detailed, 9-page report published by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker titled “The Redirection.”
In the report, it explicitly states:
“To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.” -Seymour Hersh, The Redirection (2007)
Hersh’s report would also include:
“the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations.” -Seymour Hersh, The Redirection (2007)
In essence, Gambill’s gushing support for terrorism – and in particular, terrorists who have fought and killed Americans – is but the latest in an attempt to spin and repackage Al Qaeda and the fraudulent “War on Terror” as public awareness outgrows the fallacious “humanitarian pretenses” the operation has been couched within hitherto.
Gambill’s material support for terrorism echos a recent article titled, “Al-Qaeda’s Specter in Syria,” published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a premier Fortune 500-funded US think-tank, which stated:
“The Syrian rebels would be immeasurably weaker today without al-Qaeda in their ranks. By and large, Free Syrian Army (FSA) battalions are tired, divided, chaotic, and ineffective. Feeling abandoned by the West, rebel forces are increasingly demoralized as they square off with the Assad regime’s superior weaponry and professional army. Al-Qaeda fighters, however, may help improve morale. The influx of jihadis brings discipline, religious fervor, battle experience from Iraq, funding from Sunni sympathizers in the Gulf, and most importantly, deadly results. In short, the FSA needs al-Qaeda now.”
Why is Gambill Writing This?
Consider the audience of Foreign Policy. It is not propaganda fit for the masses. Rather it is for aspiring, as well as low to mid-level members of the global corporate-financier establishment. Western involvement in both Libya and Syria have undermined the governments, institutions, and organizations many of these people work for, and as public awareness (and anger) grows, it will be these low to mid-level members who bear the brunt of the system’s collapsing legitimacy. Many are already expressing doubts over the viability and nature of the West’s global agenda as it unfolds.
It must be remembered that the terrorists Gambill is “cheering” for had ensnared millions of Western troops for over a decade in the so-called “War on Terror.” It has killed thousands of troops, tens of thousands were maimed both physically and psychologically, and hundreds of thousands have forever lost time they could have spent at home with their loved ones. As public awareness grows of Western support for these very terrorists, it would be almost inconceivable that there would not be a profound, perhaps even violent backlash against people like Gambill and the establishment he represents.
Gambill’s cheerleading is designed to rally the lower ranks of the establishment around this new narrative as he and fellow warmongers attempt to flee forward through Syria and then into Iran. Eventually, the reckless promotion of terrorism Gambill and others are committed to will once again call US soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen into harms way – either to fight nations defending themselves against US-sponsored terrorism, or to liquidate US-supported terrorists when their services are longer needed.
Gambill by causally saying, “there will be plenty of time to tame the beast after Iran’s regional hegemonic ambitions have gone down in flames,” means specifically more US troops will be deployed, and will most certainly die, all in the pursuit of corporate-financier interests in the Middle East. Gambill specifically refers to “hegemonic ambitions,” not any conceivable threat to US defense, as the impetus for cheering on terrorism, a theme that is omnipresent throughout US policy papers on Iran.
Legendary US Marine Corps General Smedley Butler once said “war is a racket.” For an increasing number of people worldwide, they are beginning to understand why.
Tony Cartalucci is the writer and editor at Land Destroyer
General Notes Taliban Coercion in Some Attacks on Troops
By THOM SHANKER
Published: August 23, 2012
WASHINGTON — The senior commander in Afghanistan made new allowances on Thursday that Taliban influence could play a large role in attacks by Afghan security forces on Americans, saying that up to one-quarter of the killings could be caused by Taliban infiltration or coercion. But he reiterated that most of such insider attacks have still been attributed to personal grievances and animosities.
The commander, Gen. John R. Allen of the Marine Corps, addressed the subject in a video news conference on Thursday, a day after Afghan officials blamed foreign intelligence services for being behind most of the insider killings. He said he had not seen the information that prompted that claim, but sought to clarify what NATO commanders knew about why Afghan forces have taken to killing their American colleagues in increasing numbers.
Previously, NATO military officials had said that only about 10 percent of the insider attacks could be attributed to Taliban infiltration or impersonation of Afghan security units. But on Thursday, General Allen said that in addition to that infiltration figure, another roughly 15 percent of the attacks could be caused by Taliban coercion of soldiers or police officers, either directly or through family members.
Technical Glitch Delays 9/11 Hearing at Guantanamo
The next court appearance of five men charged over the 9/11 attacks has been delayed until Thursday due to an Internet outage, the presiding judge said Tuesday.
The preliminary hearings at a U.S. military court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba had already been pushed back so that the accused could observe the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and were due to run from Wednesday through August 28.
But the Internet failure prompted defense attorneys to ask Judge James Pohl for more time to prepare, and the motion to delay was granted. The hearings will now begin at 9:00 am (13:00 GMT) on Thursday, the judge said in his ruling.
9/11 Hearing Cancelled But Secrecy Issues Remain
Daphne Eviatar
huffingtonpost.com
Can the government classify the words of an accused terrorist before he even utters them? That was to be the subject of much debate in hearings at Guantanamo Bay, now cancelled due to Hurricane Isaac. (Originally scheduled to start today, a train derailment in Baltimore yesterday cut the cable line that provides the Gitmo base with Internet access.) A military commission was scheduled to hold pre-trial hearings to hammer out some of the key issues affecting the upcoming trial of the alleged plotters of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.
In documents filed with the military judge, Army Col. James Pohl, the government claims all statements of the detainees — anything they said in the past or might say in the future — must be “presumptively classified.” The government wants to review every statement before its release to determine whether it would harm national security.
The primary concern is what the five defendants accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks might say about their treatment during interrogation at secret CIA prisons overseas, and then after they were transferred to the prison at Guantanamo Bay. According to the government, whatever they might say about their capture and treatment must be kept secret.
Read more
OPSEC Dishonorable Disclosure & National Security
By Avalon
theintelhub.com
Intelligence is the Paramount
– Ben Smith, US Navy Seal
A new documentary by former military officers, Dishonorable Disclosure, charges the Obama Administration of serious National Security violations in deliberately leaking classified and/or top secret intelligence.
To say that these charges are going to be controversial might be an understatement.
The documentary features a range of testimony detailing specific aspects of operations, and points out the failures of Intelligence Security as it relates to operational success – more specifically as it applies to covert operations.
The documentary Dishonorable Disclosure is produced by Special Operations (OPSEC) Political Committee, is registered as a 501(c)4, or “dark money” group, meaning that it doesn’t have to reveal its donors to the public.
As the controversy heats up, a number of major corporate media machines have geared up to control the story.
The CNN report By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst, posted an opinion piece (how convenient) titled Are ‘Swift Boat’ attacks on Obama bogus? Oddly enough, the article was updated 2:07 PM EDT, Sun August 19, 2012 – probably to correct a few loose ends.
It’s more important to note that Peter Bergen, CNN’s national security analyst, is a director at the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank that seeks innovative solutions across the ideological spectrum, and the author of the new book “Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden — From 9/11 to Abbottabad.”
At the end of this article is a SPECIAL ADDENDUM which is an extracted cache from Google from the New America Foundation article posted at SourceWatch.com.
The New America Foundation article posted at SourceWatch.com disappeared soon after researching for this article began. Noteworthy members of the New America Foundation should be a clue into the possibility of a cover-story being created at a very high level and by very intelligent ‘operatives’ shilling for the Obama Administration – but I digress.
The Washington Times jumps into the fray with their article (filed under Communities Home Life’s Online 21st-Century Pacifist) Dishonorable Disclosures: Film criticizes President Obama for alleged leaks, as well as the Huffington Post which placed this news in the Entertainment section, implying that there’s nothing to see here, move along.
The Huffington Post article is titled, OPSEC ‘Dishonorable Disclosures’ Video Says Hollywood Received Leaked Information From Obama. The Examiner put together a good article titled, The movie Dishonorable Disclosure sends message to Obama: You didn’t build that
The American Prospect, a monthly print and online political magazine based in Washington, DC, which was founded in 1990 by Robert Kuttner, Paul Starr and Robert Reich.
Their use of the term ‘Swiftboating’ is an attempt to discredit the documentary from the start. Quoting from the article The Worst-Ever Attempt at Swiftboating by Jamelle Bouie posted August 16, 2012:
“Attacking a sitting president as weak is not the best idea, especially when he ordered the attack that killed Osama bin Laden.” The “swift boat” attacks in the 2004 presidential election were effective, in part, because they played on real public anxiety: “We’re fighting two wars, is now a good time to change leaders?” For a critical number of Americans, the answer was no, and John Kerry couldn’t overcome the sense that we shouldn’t change horses in midstream (to use a cliché).
“Dishonorable Disclosures” is a 22-minute video from a group of former special operations and C.I.A. officers that attempts to do the same to President Obama. The group, called Special Operations Education Fund (OPSEC), bills itself as a nonpartisan group—it calls on supporters to “stop the politicians, President Obama and others”— whose main goal is to inform the public.
More specifically, it’s registered as a 501(c)4, or “dark money” group, which doesn’t have to reveal its donors to the public. Its message is straightforward: The Obama administration is leaking sensitive national security information for the sake of political gain. In particular, the ad accuses Obama of bragging about the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, and using its success as a weapon against his political opponents.
Of course, it’s hard to take this seriously as “educational” when key members of the group have ties to the Republican Party. Scott Taylor, the president of OPSEC, ran as a Republican in Virginia’s second congressional district (he lost the primary). The spokesperson, Chad Kolton, worked in the Bush administration, at the Republican National Committee, and in the office of John Boehner. OPSEC also shares an address with two GOP consulting firms—the Trailblazer Group and TelOpinion. I’d be surprised if that were a coincidence.
Americans ignore the war in Afghanistan, despite 2,000 US casualties
Nearly 12 years after it began, America’s war in Afghanistan has all but approached a stalemate. Now the cost for such an outcome is once again being brought up after the number of US casualties hits another milestone: 2,000.
There are more than 80,000 US troops still fighting a war overseas that has been on the verge of ending since President Barack Obama took the oath of office over three years ago. But with America’s exit from the Afghan War almost as drawn out as the operation itself, the country’s collective attention span is spent as not only support for the mission wanes, but even public acknowledgment of the endeavor and its atrocities seem to be slipping away.
At the same time, though, US troops are being killed at a rate that exceeds what soldiers experience during the height of the war. As of August 22, the US Defense Department reports that 1,972 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since the post-9/11 war began, with an additional 116 troops losing their lives in other locales, like Pakistan and Yemen, as part of the greater War in Afghanistan. Even still, exactly why the US is still in Afghanistan is being brought up less and less as young servicemen see a surge in battlefield fatalities.
“We all laugh about how no one really cares,” 29-year-old Matthew Farwell tells the Associated Press this week. Farwell served in the US Army for five years , around a quarter of which was spent in eastern Afghanistan. There, he tells the AP, he received letters from grade school students that were meant for “the brave Marines in Iraq,” and not the troops such as himself stationed in Afghanistan.
“All the ‘support the troops’ stuff is bumper sticker deep,” Farwell says.
Statistics show that Farwell isn’t exactly speaking in the minority, either. The AP notes that a recent Quinnipiac University poll concluded that only 31 percent of registered voters say the US should still be in Afghanistan, with 60 percent downright declaring that America should exit Afghanistan entirely. Separately, 66 percent of Americans polled by the Associated Press this May said they opposed the war, with barely a quarter of those sampled saying they support it. Moreover, a Reuters/Ipsos poll published that same month found 88 percent of the Americans polled are in favor of taking all US combat troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2012.
Earlier this year, George Washington University law professor Steven L Schooner studied the correlation between casualties and the level of support for foreign wars, finding historically, an increase in military deaths has in turn caused a decrease in public support for those operations. He also came across something more alarming, perhaps, in that a large number of the casualties suffered by Americans overseas fall on citizens, not soldiers.
“[O]n the modern battlefield, contractor personnel are dying at rates similar to – and at times in excess of – soldiers,” Schooner writes in the study he co-authored with GWU’s Collin D Swan. “For the most part, this ‘substitution’ has taken place outside of the cognizance of the public and, potentially, Congress.”
“By continuing to outsource high-risk jobs that were previously performed by soldiers, the military, in effect, is privatizing the ultimate sacrifice,” Schooner explained to the New York Times.
US Drone Strikes Target Rescuers in Pakistan – and the West Stays Silent
The US government has long maintained, reasonably enough, that a defining tactic of terrorism is to launch a follow-up attack aimed at those who go to the scene of the original attack to rescue the wounded and remove the dead.
Morally, such methods have also been widely condemned by the west as a hallmark of savagery. Yet, as was demonstrated yet again this weekend in Pakistan, this has become one of the favorite tactics of the very same US government.
A 2004 official alert from the FBI warned that “terrorists may use secondary explosive devices to kill and injure emergency personnel responding to an initial attack”; the bulletin advised that such terror devices “are generally detonated less than one hour after initial attack, targeting first responders as well as the general population”.
Security experts have long noted that the evil of this tactic lies in its exploitation of the natural human tendency to go to the scene of an attack to provide aid to those who are injured, and is specifically potent for sowing terror by instilling in the population an expectation that attacks can, and likely will, occur again at any time and place:
“‘The problem is that once the initial explosion goes off, many people will believe that’s it, and will respond accordingly,’ [the Heritage Foundation's Jack] Spencer said … The goal is to ‘incite more terror. If there’s an initial explosion and a second explosion, then we’re thinking about a third explosion,’ Spencer said.”
Definitive Questions to be Argued at 9/11 Hearings at Gitmo This Week
Daphne Eviatar
Huffington Post
Starting tomorrow, almost 11 years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, the U.S. military commissions at Guantanamo Bay will hear the first set of arguments in preparation for the trial of the five alleged plotters.
Lawyers will argue over whether the U.S. constitution applies at Guantanamo Bay, as it would in a regular U.S. court; whether everything that Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his four alleged co-conspirators say is “presumptively classified” — especially any statements about their capture and treatment by the U.S. government in CIA custody; and whether the government can prevent defense lawyers from sharing even unclassified information with the media.
In the upcoming hearings, scheduled over the next eight days, the government is expected to argue that the judge shouldn’t decide whether or not the U.S. Constitution applies at Gitmo; that the government can keep secret every statement from the five defendants about their experiences being subjected to torture and so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the CIA; and that the government should be allowed to keep the public from seeing information that’s not classified but, the government says, would nonetheless be “detrimental to the public interest” if released.
Al-Qaeda leader arrested in Algeria
By Agence France-Presse
Monday, August 20, 2012 14:42 EDT
Three armed Islamists, including a senior member of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) thought to be close to its leader, have been arrested in southern Algeria, official media reported Monday.
Necib Tayeb, also known as Abderrahmane Abou Ishak Essoufi, one of the oldest members of Al-Qaeda’s north African branch, headed its so-called “judicial committee” and had been wanted since 1995, the APS news agency said.
The three men were arrested last Wednesday in the town of Berriane, some 600 kilometres south of Algiers, as they were travelling towards the Sahel border region in a 4X4 vehicle, APS reported, citing well-informed sources.
The operation, which was carried out by the Algerian army’s special forces, dealt a “fatal blow” to AQIM, according to the same sources, given Tayeb’s close links to AQIM chief Abdelmalek Droukdel.
An Algiers court in June sentenced Droukdel to death in absentia for a series of murders and bombings.
AQIM, which stems from a group started in the late 1990s by radical Algerian Islamists, formally subscribed to Al-Qaeda’s ideology in 2007, but after a string of high-profile attacks, the army managed to severely curtail its operations.
It has since been boosted by the turmoil in neighbouring Mali that followed a coup there in March, with hardline Islamist occupying the country’s vast northern region.
Bin Laden’s Zero Dark Thirty: Phony Hollywood Movie Is not Final Act
A.M. Freyed
Infowars.com
August 20, 2012
Is the anticipation overwhelming you? In December, Sony Pictures will release Zero Dark Thirty, the movie that some have called “the most expensive political ad ever made.” But a trailer was just released.
Movie to be released December 2012At US$30 million, it’s not big by Hollywood standards, but it’s a movie that is bound to get a lot of attention because it purports to tell how the US tracked and killed the world’s Number One “most wanted” terrorist, Osama bin Laden.
It is not the Final Act, however. The Final Act is yet to come.
Those involved with the film deny a political agenda. The President is not “depicted” we’re informed. And a lot of people are going to be “surprised.” yet the whole scenario is political. The only way we’ll be surprised is if the film shows the apparent truth of the matter: Bin Laden wasn’t there. If anyone was shot, it was likely a patsy.
This phase of phony history has been conjured for various reasons. Perhaps to close a narrative that had become inconvenient, and in doing so to reinforce the election chances of yet another apparent CIA intel-asset, US President Barack Obama.
He’s going to win one way or another, most probably. The voting machines are electronic these days, aren’t they – and easily reprogrammable? But the “death” helps buttress the larger tale.
Simply by making the film and hewing to the established narrative, those involved must inevitably show off the steady moral purpose of President Barack Obama. It was he, after all, who steadfastly pursued this brutal man until finally he was found in Pakistan, executed and dumped at sea. This is the story surely presented in Zero Dark Thirty.
For those who have figured out what’s really going on in the world and are not afraid to face it, such a movie is ridiculous. It’s not what happened at all. But it does cast further light on the evident and obvious relationship between Hollywood and Washington DC.
It also helps explain why Hollywood is so focused on enforcing copyright and why Washington DC has proven so helpful in supporting the effort – even sending a squad of FBI agents halfway around the world to participate in the takedown of Kim Dotcom and his supposedly copyright-infringing Megaupload.
The bottom line reality is that Hollywood acts as a propaganda outlet for Washington DC, which in turn acts similarly for the global elites that want to run the world formally. Not all movies are outright propaganda. But the necessary ones are.
The conspiracy to build world government has been ongoing for some 100 years … perhaps 300. It involves the constant building of facilities like the UN, IMF, World Bank and other globalist institutions.
It is funded by central banks, presumably owned or controlled by the dynastic families involved in the top level of this conspiracy. One hundred years ago there were a few central bank and today there are about 150.
These elitists are trying to create world government via directed history, a state of affairs in which they use war, economic depressions and authoritarian regulation to frighten people and make them helpless and malleable. At every turn, further laws are passed that support globalization.
Within this context, the war on terror and the role of Osama bin Laden as the world’s chief terrorist makes perfect sense. Like a snake, the modern globalist conspiracy swallows the world in sinuous gulps, stopping every now and then to digest its progress.
The last gulp began, apparently, on 911 and has continued ever since. It is ongoing, driven by a race against the Internet that has actually exposed the conspiracy bit by bit.
Al Qaeda and bin Laden himself were creations of the CIA, and while one can argue about the reality of 9/11, the idea that men squatting in a cave carried it off is likely far off the mark. No one is under any obligation to provide a narrative for 9/11, only to observe it did not happen as the official story presents it. Bin Laden himself denied participation.
Nonetheless, he was pursued to Afghanistan, at which point he and the rest of his fighters, along with senior Taliban fighters, were allowed to leave for Pakistan. This has been amply documented. “Enemy” forces were surrounded on three sides and left on via the fourth.
After this, bin Laden, for years released a series of videos exhorting the faithful to destroy the West. But not really. By then, bin Laden was probably already dead. Benazir Bhutto announced his death to David Frost early in the 2000s, claiming he was murdered. His death had been announced even before, in a Fox News report.
Perhaps he died in a hospital, his kidneys failing from the larger condition called Marfan Syndrome, or perhaps he died violently. Either way he died. All the videos the CIA released were evidently fake.
The supposed death in 2011 was laughable. Eyewitnesses contradict Washington DC’s cover story. No photos were released. No DNA. Who knows who died, or if anyone died? The SEALS started talking about the “mission,” and suddenly a number of them perished in a helicopter crash.
This is how a mob hit works. First an execution takes place, and then the actors themselves are done away with.
And now … another Act as a Hollywood movie purports to tell us what happened.
It is not the Final Act, of course. That will only occur when the actual truth is revealed.
For additional links see www.AmericanFreed.com
Filed Under: FALSE FLAGS / FAKE TERROR • FEATURED • WORLD NEWS
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