Here are the first three paragraphs of a review by Ronald Bleier of Annie Machon's 2005 book, Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers: MI5, MI6 And the Shayler Affair . To read the entire review (3800 words)go to: http://desip.igc.org/machon.html
Some of the main themes of corruption, illegality and sponsorship of terror in the British security services and in the broader culture are encapsulated by two quotes from the book.
We joined the services to stop terrorism, not become involved in it.”
“It appears that we have given up on the notion of due process, fair trials and democratic rights in Britain.”
-- Annie Machon
It’s the (Intelligence and Security) Services, Stupid: A review of Annie Machon’s Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers: MI5, MI6 And the Shayler Affair
By Ronald Bleier
February 2008
In August 1997 two ex- MI5 officers, David Shayler and his companion Annie Machon, fled to France in connection with their plan to expose corruption and mismanagement in MI5 and MI6, Britain’s domestic and foreign intelligence services. Both highly rated agents, they had spent years unsuccessfully attempting to redress issues of corruption and mismanagement. Spies, Lies tells their story in remarkable and eye opening detail as they blow the whistle on outmoded procedures, low officer morale and drunkenness, and on misguided and illegal operations. Their book traces the steps by which they came to the alarming conclusion that the intelligence and security services have devolved into the enablers and initiators of terror.
At the heart of the book is the exposure of a sensational case of MI6 collusion with an Islamic extremist group that tried to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi. The public didn’t learn of the plot until the New York Times (NYT) published an account on August 5, 1998 under the interrogative title: “Did the British government try to assassinate Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi the Libyan leader, in February 1996 by planting a bomb under his motorcade?” The Times noted that MI6 paid $160,000 to the group. (pp. 247- 250) The NYT story was soon confirmed on BBC’s Panorama TV program and a few months later, in November 1998, the government of Libya showed TV footage of the attack.
Machon explains that she and Shayler decided to voluntarily leave the service about a year before they fled England. They coordinated their flight with the publication of an article by Shayler in the Mail on Sunday, the sister publication of Britain’s popular newspaper, The Daily Mail. They fled in order to give the newly elected Labour government led by Tony Blair time to investigate their evidence. They were optimistic about getting a fair hearing since Blair had just won an election by a landslide on a reform platform that included human rights and an ethical foreign policy. (p. 192)
Read more:
http://desip.igc.org/machon.html
Showing posts with label war on terror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war on terror. Show all posts
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Monday, May 14, 2007
Xymphora and Nimmo: Fort Dix Patsies Duped into Life Terms
5.8.07
Xymphora writes:
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/
The Fort Dix suicide attack.
Think of it from the point of view of the alleged attackers. You’re going to give up your life to make a point. Why waste it to kill at most a half-dozen American soldiers – about what are killed in a day in Iraq – and probably not kill anyone at all at the very well-guarded base, when you could do much more harm in other ways? When you add the fact that they dropped their jihad tapes off at a local video store to be DVD’d, they spoke openly to a Philadelphia police sergeant about obtaining maps of Fort Dix, they were infiltrated at an early stage (probably before they actually decided to do anything, with the juiciest plans suggested by the infiltrator, just like in Canada), the authorities start with an attack on Fort Dix and s-l-i-d-e into an attack on a football game, and the ‘terrorists’ played paintball (!), they is almost no chance that this was any more than some young guys who were fooling around and were duped by the authorities. When are young Muslim men going to wake up and realize they have targets on their backs? An innocent game of paintball could land you in jail for the rest of your life.
Kurt Nimmo writes:
Pizza Delivery Guy and Cohorts Planned Fort Dix Attack
May 08th 2007
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=861
How many of us put any credence into this stuff, let alone pay attention? “Federal authorities announced Tuesday that they had foiled a terrorist plot to attack Fort Dix. Six men were charged with planning to kill as many soldiers as they could,” the Associated Press would have us believe. “One of the suspects, Serdar Tatar, had delivered pizza on the base and said he knew it like the back of his hand,” according to the government, never mind the “post has had especially tight security since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”
According to the FBI, the United States “dodged a bullet”—or maybe extra cheese and Italian sausage—thanks to paid informants who apparently had little trouble penetrating the group and videotaping them. “What we witnessed here was a brand new form of terrorism,” that is to say terrorist plots cooked up in pizza delivery joints by delusional patsies who apparently believed it was possible to attack a military installation with weapons to be provided by “a confidential government witness.”
“The charging documents, filed in federal court in Camden yesterday and unsealed today, portray an ambitious and cold-blooded—but somewhat bungling—cadre who hoped to kill at least 100 soldiers, but also dropped training videos off at a local store to be copied, and spoke openly to a Philadelphia police sergeant about obtaining maps of Fort Dix,” the Washington Post, reports.
Naturally, the key word here is “bungling,” although it appears these hapless patsies are, more than anything, delusional in the true psychiatric sense of the word, i.e., the would-be (with the promise of “confidential government witness” assistance) perps entertained an erroneous belief it was possible to attack a military base with “three AK-47 automatic assault rifles and four semi-automatic M-16 rifles,” going up against hundreds of trained soldiers, and actually “kill as many soldiers as possible.”
“Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Justice Department database has served as the key source of statistics on the status of terrorism investigations in the United States and has been cited frequently in official speeches and testimony to Congress,” the Washington Post reported in June, 2005. Out of 361 cases, the Washington Post “identified 180 cases in which no connection to al Qaeda or another terrorist group could be found in court records, official statements, the 9/11 commission report or news accounts. Even some of the terrorism-related cases featured early allegations of terrorist connections that were later dropped.”
Of the 142 individuals on the list linked to terrorist groups, 39 were convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security. More than a dozen defendants were acquitted or had their charges dismissed, including three Moroccan men in Detroit whose convictions were tossed out in September after the Justice Department admitted prosecutorial misconduct.
Not surprisingly, these minor crimes produced modest punishments. The median sentence for all cases adjudicated, whether or not they were terrorism-related, was 11 months. About three dozen other defendants were given probation or were deported. The most common convictions were on charges of fraud, making false statements, passport violations and conspiracy.
[…]
“What we’re seeing over time is the equivalent of mission creep: Cases that would not be terrorism cases before Sept. 11 are swept onto the terrorism docket,” said Juliette Kayyem, a former Clinton administration Justice official who heads the national security program at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “The problem is that it’s not good to cook the numbers. . . . We have no accurate assessment of whether the war on terrorism is actually working.”
In other words, the government is not particularly interested in detecting, arresting, and prosecuting supposed “homegrown” terrorists, but rather making a big headline splash with initial arrests and hyperbolic allegations, as the WOT is all about propaganda, not actual threats.
It seems to hardly matter if the alleged plots are completely ludicrous.
Would you like crazy crust with that?
Xymphora writes:
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/
The Fort Dix suicide attack.
Think of it from the point of view of the alleged attackers. You’re going to give up your life to make a point. Why waste it to kill at most a half-dozen American soldiers – about what are killed in a day in Iraq – and probably not kill anyone at all at the very well-guarded base, when you could do much more harm in other ways? When you add the fact that they dropped their jihad tapes off at a local video store to be DVD’d, they spoke openly to a Philadelphia police sergeant about obtaining maps of Fort Dix, they were infiltrated at an early stage (probably before they actually decided to do anything, with the juiciest plans suggested by the infiltrator, just like in Canada), the authorities start with an attack on Fort Dix and s-l-i-d-e into an attack on a football game, and the ‘terrorists’ played paintball (!), they is almost no chance that this was any more than some young guys who were fooling around and were duped by the authorities. When are young Muslim men going to wake up and realize they have targets on their backs? An innocent game of paintball could land you in jail for the rest of your life.
Kurt Nimmo writes:
Pizza Delivery Guy and Cohorts Planned Fort Dix Attack
May 08th 2007
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=861
How many of us put any credence into this stuff, let alone pay attention? “Federal authorities announced Tuesday that they had foiled a terrorist plot to attack Fort Dix. Six men were charged with planning to kill as many soldiers as they could,” the Associated Press would have us believe. “One of the suspects, Serdar Tatar, had delivered pizza on the base and said he knew it like the back of his hand,” according to the government, never mind the “post has had especially tight security since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”
According to the FBI, the United States “dodged a bullet”—or maybe extra cheese and Italian sausage—thanks to paid informants who apparently had little trouble penetrating the group and videotaping them. “What we witnessed here was a brand new form of terrorism,” that is to say terrorist plots cooked up in pizza delivery joints by delusional patsies who apparently believed it was possible to attack a military installation with weapons to be provided by “a confidential government witness.”
“The charging documents, filed in federal court in Camden yesterday and unsealed today, portray an ambitious and cold-blooded—but somewhat bungling—cadre who hoped to kill at least 100 soldiers, but also dropped training videos off at a local store to be copied, and spoke openly to a Philadelphia police sergeant about obtaining maps of Fort Dix,” the Washington Post, reports.
Naturally, the key word here is “bungling,” although it appears these hapless patsies are, more than anything, delusional in the true psychiatric sense of the word, i.e., the would-be (with the promise of “confidential government witness” assistance) perps entertained an erroneous belief it was possible to attack a military base with “three AK-47 automatic assault rifles and four semi-automatic M-16 rifles,” going up against hundreds of trained soldiers, and actually “kill as many soldiers as possible.”
“Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Justice Department database has served as the key source of statistics on the status of terrorism investigations in the United States and has been cited frequently in official speeches and testimony to Congress,” the Washington Post reported in June, 2005. Out of 361 cases, the Washington Post “identified 180 cases in which no connection to al Qaeda or another terrorist group could be found in court records, official statements, the 9/11 commission report or news accounts. Even some of the terrorism-related cases featured early allegations of terrorist connections that were later dropped.”
Of the 142 individuals on the list linked to terrorist groups, 39 were convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security. More than a dozen defendants were acquitted or had their charges dismissed, including three Moroccan men in Detroit whose convictions were tossed out in September after the Justice Department admitted prosecutorial misconduct.
Not surprisingly, these minor crimes produced modest punishments. The median sentence for all cases adjudicated, whether or not they were terrorism-related, was 11 months. About three dozen other defendants were given probation or were deported. The most common convictions were on charges of fraud, making false statements, passport violations and conspiracy.
[…]
“What we’re seeing over time is the equivalent of mission creep: Cases that would not be terrorism cases before Sept. 11 are swept onto the terrorism docket,” said Juliette Kayyem, a former Clinton administration Justice official who heads the national security program at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “The problem is that it’s not good to cook the numbers. . . . We have no accurate assessment of whether the war on terrorism is actually working.”
In other words, the government is not particularly interested in detecting, arresting, and prosecuting supposed “homegrown” terrorists, but rather making a big headline splash with initial arrests and hyperbolic allegations, as the WOT is all about propaganda, not actual threats.
It seems to hardly matter if the alleged plots are completely ludicrous.
Would you like crazy crust with that?
Saturday, May 12, 2007
2/05: Mike Whitney (Max Fuller): US Driving Violence In Iraq
2/12/05
America’s Covert War in Iraq
by Mike Whitney
Max Fuller has written the most disturbing and thought provoking article of the year. In his “Crying Wolf: Media Disinformation and Death Squads in Occupied Iraq”, (Global Research) Fuller painstakingly lays out the details and documentation to prove that the United States intelligence agencies are behind the vast incidents of murder and torture being carried out in Iraq today. If Fuller’s thesis is correct, then the War on Terror, that mighty engine of imperial carnage, is nothing more than a public relations scam intended to enlist public support for an unpopular conflict
The war on terror is the “seminal lie” from which all the administration’s criminal excesses are mere tributaries. America’s unprovoked aggression in Iraq, as well as the appalling assault on civil liberties, has been carried out in the name of the war on terror. In fact, it has been used as to mask everything from police-state legislation at home to massive human rights violations abroad. The war on terror is an all-consuming fraud that poses the greatest threat to personal freedom and global security the world has ever seen. If unchallenged, the dictatorial-powers of the president will continue to increase and the world to be plunged into another century of war.
Fuller’s article sweeps away the illusions created by the war on terror. With laser-like intensity he focuses attention on the most expansive clandestine Intel-operation of all time; the terrorizing of an entire nation, pushing it inexorably towards civil war. The Interior Ministry is the epicenter of Iraq’s violent malaise. It is the headquarters for the Badr and Wolf Brigades; the American-trained death squads which are responsible for the massive assassination program directed at “alleged” Sunni resistance fighters. The torture chambers, death squads, and random bombings are not caused by foreign terrorists, nor are they the work of Iranian agents striving for a theocratic regime in Baghdad. They are, in fact, the nefarious activities of American puppet-masters, who matriculated in the terror wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Now, under Uncle Sam’s benign gaze, they are plying their trade in Iraq; wreaking havoc and spreading suffering on an unimaginable scale.
What does this mean?
It means that the “central front in the war on terror” is a phantom; a specter; a chimera that cloaks itself in the dull braying of plutocrats who promise democracy, but only deliver greater deprivation, sorrow and fear. It means that the ideological headwaters of global terrorism is Washington and that behind the scratchy façade of Al Qaida videos and dubious accounts of suicide bombers, the insidious fist of the imperial master continues to pound away at its victims. It means that, as Martin Luther King said, “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own country.”
The media has played a pivotal role in trying to obfuscate the details of America’s involvement in the terror-war. By characterizing the hundreds of murders of Sunni men as merely the unlucky victims of tit-for-tat sectarian violence or of rogue Shiite militias, the media has concealed the bloody fingerprints of the Central Intelligence Agency and their Iraqi consorts. But, as Fuller deftly demonstrates, the more likely explanation is that the Ministry is executing a clear strategy of terror devised and directed by American managers.
The media’s disinformation campaign is designed to shift blame from American Intelligence agencies to alleged sectarian rivals. This creates the rationale for civil war, which advances American policy objectives of Balkanizing the country to control its resources.
The one reporter who diverged from these fabrications was Yasser Salihee, reporter for Knight-Ridder news. Salihee had uncovered critical information about the weaponry, vehicles and origins of the death squads, and was expected to file reports on those topics. His coverage, however, was cut short when he was assassinated in a gangland style hit at a checkpoint outside Baghdad by an American sniper. With just one precision shot to the forehead, another unembedded journalist was removed from covering Bush’s folly.
Fuller’s research exposes the Interior Ministry as the hub of the clandestine death squad activity. The assumption that the ministry is manned exclusively by theocratic Shiites is just more misleading gibberish. In fact, one of the more brutal counterinsurgency groups, the Sunni-led Special Police Commandos, is headed by a former officer in Saddam’s Baath Party. (The Commandos were founded by the son of the former Iraqi Chief of Staff Falah al-Naqib, who many believed to be a CIA asset.) The connections of Interior Ministry chieftains to their CIA managers are deep and confusing but, as Fuller notes, “the Police Commandos were formed under the experienced tutelage and oversight of veteran US counterinsurgency fighters, and from the outset conducted joint-force operations with elite and highly secretive US special-forces units.” (Reuters, National Review Online)
Fuller says: “A key figure in the development of the Special Police Commandos was James Steele, a former US Army special forces operative who cut his teeth in Vietnam before moving on to direct the US military mission in El Salvador at the height of that country’s civil war… Another US contributor was the same Steven Casteel who as the most senior US advisor within the Interior Ministry brushed off serious and well-substantiated accusations of appalling human right violations as Œrumor and innuendo’…Casteel’s background is significant because this kind of intelligence-gathering support role and the production of death lists are characteristic of US involvement in counterinsurgency programs and constitute the underlying thread in what can appear to be random, disjointed killing sprees.”
Needless, to say, the CIA does not move major assets like Steele and Casteel into a prickly situation like Iraq to shuffle papers by a water-cooler. These are the main gears in the machinery of the Iraqi death squads; the movable parts in Washington’s apparatus of state terror. There is nothing either “random” or “disjointed” in the butchery produced by their labors.
Fuller adds: “The Police Commando headquarters has become the hub of a nationwide command, control, communications, computer and intelligence operations centre, courtesy of the US (Defend America).”
The administration has provided a “state of the art” communications network to “coordinate mass murder”.
“DeBaathification” is a sham. Many of the top-ranking officials in the Ministry are Sunnis, including “deputy Minister for Intelligence Affairs (also leader of the Interior Ministry’s spy service) currently held by General Hussain Kamel”.
So, too, the notion of rogue Iranian-supported militias carrying out random attacks on “alleged” Sunnis suspects is equally deceptive.
Nearly everything that appears in the corporate media has been intentionally misleading as part of the broader information war, to keep the American people from grasping the truth about the chief perpetrator of terrorism in Iraq today; the US intelligence agencies. As the Los Angeles Times notes, “The entire intelligence establishment is a creation of the Anglo-American secret services, which began building at least as early as the beginning of the occupation.”
You’ve been fooled; I’ve been fooled; and everything the Pentagon has said has been a lie. The fetid entrails of this terror-beast reside in Washington, not Baghdad or Tehran.
The recent revelations (carefully excluded from the American press) of two British commandos dressed in traditional Arab garb caught in Basra with a trunk-load full of explosives (William Bowles) has even cast doubt on the involvement of the intelligence agencies in the rash of terror bombings plaguing the country. Certainly, the ensuing anger generated from these attacks is more compatible with the administration’s goals of sectarian division than they are with the nebulous theories about the apocryphal al-Zarqawi.
Fuller says:
“What is possible is that both sides of the apparent sectarian violence are run as part of a huge CIA-lead intelligence operation designed to split Iraq at the seams. I tentatively suggest that the intelligence apparatus at the Interior Ministry is contriving attacks on Sunnis and that British and US Special Forces in conjunction with the intelligence apparatus at the Iraqi Defense Ministry are fabricating insurgent bombings of Shias. Overseeing the entire operation is the Œcream’ of CMAD under the direction of top-level US intelligence asset Mowaffak Rubaie, a man already experienced at participating in bombing campaigns, undoubtedly working hand in glove with the CIA and the National Security Council in the US.”
“a huge CIA-lead intelligence operation designed to split Iraq at the seams”.
Amen.
Given Fuller’s thesis, it’s likely that most of the alleged “suicide” bombings are nothing more than stationary vehicles set off by remote-control and reported as suicide attacks by the compliant media to perpetuate the racial stereotypes of crazed Muslim fanatics.
Fuller’s article is a difficult read with hefty documentation that tends to have a mind-numbing effect. Never the less, the ponderous emphasis on facts and actual news reports serve his greater purpose of proving a very tenuous and thorny theory, that the US is overseeing a humongous clandestine operation that has fractured the country and destabilized the region. As Fuller says, “(The) presence of Anglo-American forces in Iraq does not merely exacerbate the present violence; in Iraq we are the violence.”
The fictitious War on Terror
The war on terror is the underlying myth that animates the American war-machine and breathes life into the coercive apparatus of state terror. Fuller’s article uncovers a fissure in the block-wall of government secrecy and gives us a good look at the worm-infested core of imperial rule. Global terrorism flows from Washington like a toxic river that has breached its banks and threatens to flood everything in its path.
America’s Covert War in Iraq
by Mike Whitney
Max Fuller has written the most disturbing and thought provoking article of the year. In his “Crying Wolf: Media Disinformation and Death Squads in Occupied Iraq”, (Global Research) Fuller painstakingly lays out the details and documentation to prove that the United States intelligence agencies are behind the vast incidents of murder and torture being carried out in Iraq today. If Fuller’s thesis is correct, then the War on Terror, that mighty engine of imperial carnage, is nothing more than a public relations scam intended to enlist public support for an unpopular conflict
The war on terror is the “seminal lie” from which all the administration’s criminal excesses are mere tributaries. America’s unprovoked aggression in Iraq, as well as the appalling assault on civil liberties, has been carried out in the name of the war on terror. In fact, it has been used as to mask everything from police-state legislation at home to massive human rights violations abroad. The war on terror is an all-consuming fraud that poses the greatest threat to personal freedom and global security the world has ever seen. If unchallenged, the dictatorial-powers of the president will continue to increase and the world to be plunged into another century of war.
Fuller’s article sweeps away the illusions created by the war on terror. With laser-like intensity he focuses attention on the most expansive clandestine Intel-operation of all time; the terrorizing of an entire nation, pushing it inexorably towards civil war. The Interior Ministry is the epicenter of Iraq’s violent malaise. It is the headquarters for the Badr and Wolf Brigades; the American-trained death squads which are responsible for the massive assassination program directed at “alleged” Sunni resistance fighters. The torture chambers, death squads, and random bombings are not caused by foreign terrorists, nor are they the work of Iranian agents striving for a theocratic regime in Baghdad. They are, in fact, the nefarious activities of American puppet-masters, who matriculated in the terror wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Now, under Uncle Sam’s benign gaze, they are plying their trade in Iraq; wreaking havoc and spreading suffering on an unimaginable scale.
What does this mean?
It means that the “central front in the war on terror” is a phantom; a specter; a chimera that cloaks itself in the dull braying of plutocrats who promise democracy, but only deliver greater deprivation, sorrow and fear. It means that the ideological headwaters of global terrorism is Washington and that behind the scratchy façade of Al Qaida videos and dubious accounts of suicide bombers, the insidious fist of the imperial master continues to pound away at its victims. It means that, as Martin Luther King said, “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own country.”
The media has played a pivotal role in trying to obfuscate the details of America’s involvement in the terror-war. By characterizing the hundreds of murders of Sunni men as merely the unlucky victims of tit-for-tat sectarian violence or of rogue Shiite militias, the media has concealed the bloody fingerprints of the Central Intelligence Agency and their Iraqi consorts. But, as Fuller deftly demonstrates, the more likely explanation is that the Ministry is executing a clear strategy of terror devised and directed by American managers.
The media’s disinformation campaign is designed to shift blame from American Intelligence agencies to alleged sectarian rivals. This creates the rationale for civil war, which advances American policy objectives of Balkanizing the country to control its resources.
The one reporter who diverged from these fabrications was Yasser Salihee, reporter for Knight-Ridder news. Salihee had uncovered critical information about the weaponry, vehicles and origins of the death squads, and was expected to file reports on those topics. His coverage, however, was cut short when he was assassinated in a gangland style hit at a checkpoint outside Baghdad by an American sniper. With just one precision shot to the forehead, another unembedded journalist was removed from covering Bush’s folly.
Fuller’s research exposes the Interior Ministry as the hub of the clandestine death squad activity. The assumption that the ministry is manned exclusively by theocratic Shiites is just more misleading gibberish. In fact, one of the more brutal counterinsurgency groups, the Sunni-led Special Police Commandos, is headed by a former officer in Saddam’s Baath Party. (The Commandos were founded by the son of the former Iraqi Chief of Staff Falah al-Naqib, who many believed to be a CIA asset.) The connections of Interior Ministry chieftains to their CIA managers are deep and confusing but, as Fuller notes, “the Police Commandos were formed under the experienced tutelage and oversight of veteran US counterinsurgency fighters, and from the outset conducted joint-force operations with elite and highly secretive US special-forces units.” (Reuters, National Review Online)
Fuller says: “A key figure in the development of the Special Police Commandos was James Steele, a former US Army special forces operative who cut his teeth in Vietnam before moving on to direct the US military mission in El Salvador at the height of that country’s civil war… Another US contributor was the same Steven Casteel who as the most senior US advisor within the Interior Ministry brushed off serious and well-substantiated accusations of appalling human right violations as Œrumor and innuendo’…Casteel’s background is significant because this kind of intelligence-gathering support role and the production of death lists are characteristic of US involvement in counterinsurgency programs and constitute the underlying thread in what can appear to be random, disjointed killing sprees.”
Needless, to say, the CIA does not move major assets like Steele and Casteel into a prickly situation like Iraq to shuffle papers by a water-cooler. These are the main gears in the machinery of the Iraqi death squads; the movable parts in Washington’s apparatus of state terror. There is nothing either “random” or “disjointed” in the butchery produced by their labors.
Fuller adds: “The Police Commando headquarters has become the hub of a nationwide command, control, communications, computer and intelligence operations centre, courtesy of the US (Defend America).”
The administration has provided a “state of the art” communications network to “coordinate mass murder”.
“DeBaathification” is a sham. Many of the top-ranking officials in the Ministry are Sunnis, including “deputy Minister for Intelligence Affairs (also leader of the Interior Ministry’s spy service) currently held by General Hussain Kamel”.
So, too, the notion of rogue Iranian-supported militias carrying out random attacks on “alleged” Sunnis suspects is equally deceptive.
Nearly everything that appears in the corporate media has been intentionally misleading as part of the broader information war, to keep the American people from grasping the truth about the chief perpetrator of terrorism in Iraq today; the US intelligence agencies. As the Los Angeles Times notes, “The entire intelligence establishment is a creation of the Anglo-American secret services, which began building at least as early as the beginning of the occupation.”
You’ve been fooled; I’ve been fooled; and everything the Pentagon has said has been a lie. The fetid entrails of this terror-beast reside in Washington, not Baghdad or Tehran.
The recent revelations (carefully excluded from the American press) of two British commandos dressed in traditional Arab garb caught in Basra with a trunk-load full of explosives (William Bowles) has even cast doubt on the involvement of the intelligence agencies in the rash of terror bombings plaguing the country. Certainly, the ensuing anger generated from these attacks is more compatible with the administration’s goals of sectarian division than they are with the nebulous theories about the apocryphal al-Zarqawi.
Fuller says:
“What is possible is that both sides of the apparent sectarian violence are run as part of a huge CIA-lead intelligence operation designed to split Iraq at the seams. I tentatively suggest that the intelligence apparatus at the Interior Ministry is contriving attacks on Sunnis and that British and US Special Forces in conjunction with the intelligence apparatus at the Iraqi Defense Ministry are fabricating insurgent bombings of Shias. Overseeing the entire operation is the Œcream’ of CMAD under the direction of top-level US intelligence asset Mowaffak Rubaie, a man already experienced at participating in bombing campaigns, undoubtedly working hand in glove with the CIA and the National Security Council in the US.”
“a huge CIA-lead intelligence operation designed to split Iraq at the seams”.
Amen.
Given Fuller’s thesis, it’s likely that most of the alleged “suicide” bombings are nothing more than stationary vehicles set off by remote-control and reported as suicide attacks by the compliant media to perpetuate the racial stereotypes of crazed Muslim fanatics.
Fuller’s article is a difficult read with hefty documentation that tends to have a mind-numbing effect. Never the less, the ponderous emphasis on facts and actual news reports serve his greater purpose of proving a very tenuous and thorny theory, that the US is overseeing a humongous clandestine operation that has fractured the country and destabilized the region. As Fuller says, “(The) presence of Anglo-American forces in Iraq does not merely exacerbate the present violence; in Iraq we are the violence.”
The fictitious War on Terror
The war on terror is the underlying myth that animates the American war-machine and breathes life into the coercive apparatus of state terror. Fuller’s article uncovers a fissure in the block-wall of government secrecy and gives us a good look at the worm-infested core of imperial rule. Global terrorism flows from Washington like a toxic river that has breached its banks and threatens to flood everything in its path.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
*Glenn Greenwald: What happened to the Padilla videos?
Thank goodness for blogs. Without them, such good ones like Glenn Greenwald's --whose blogs are among the most consistently good -- we'd have to take the word of the Times or the Washington Post for what's important.
Here Greenwald puts the missing Padilla interrogation video tapes in context. If the Times had given it the proper attention, there might have been more pressure to dismiss the US case, or non-case against Jose Padilla.
But there's another issue that the Padilla case raises that the relatively mainstream Greenwald won't touch and that's the issue of responsibilty for 9/11.
Has anyone noticed that the US has produced no examples of terror cells that were not cases of FBI entrapment of foolish and otherwise challenged individuals? In other words: NONE, not one. And when they were forced to put Padilla through the system they had to reduce charges. And that from the beginning, the Bush-Cheney clique have been fighting tooth and nail against habeas corpus, i.e., producing ANY evidence against those they torture and jail indefinitely.
Why this reluctance to produce evidence, to place their evidence before even the compromised judges in our system? Could it be that there is no evidence to produce? That there is no terror outside of the terror that is produced by the US and other states and their respective intelligence and security services -- the secret government.
Many people agree that the war on terror is bogus. But how many have thought through what this really means? How many care to look at the terror of 9/11 with eyes open to the possibility that there were NO Islamic terrorists involved? How many would make the connection between the Bush-Cheney insistence on not having to produce evidence with the lack of the slightest shred of independently verified evidence that any hijackings took place on 9/11.
Hopefully, as the direct and indirect evidence continues to mount, more will start connecting the dots.
Ronald
http://desip.igc.org
Saturday March 10, 2007
What happened to the Padilla interrogation videos?
by Glenn Greenwald
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
This is an infinitely bigger story than the media, thus far, seems to realize. In the Jose Padilla criminal trial, the judge -- Bush-appointee and former federal prosecutor Marcia Cooke, who has a reputation for extreme objectivity -- has ordered the Bush administration to turn over all tapes made of its interrogations of Padilla, as part of Padilla's motion to dismiss the indictment on the ground that he was, in essence, tortured while being held incommunicado for 3 1/2 years. In particular, Padilla's lawyers are most interested in the last interrogation session to which he was subjected -- in March, 2004 -- while still held as an "enemy combatant."
Ten days ago, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball reported that the administration had produced all of the DVDs it claimed it possessed, but the March, 2004 interrogation video was not among them. The government began claiming that the video "mysteriously disappeared." Bush administration lawyers simply insist that they are "no longer able to locate the DVD."
Associated Press now furthers the story by reporting that Bush lawyers seem to have committed themselves to the position that the video will not be found: "'I don't know what happened to it,' Pentagon attorney James Schmidli said during a recent court hearing." Judge Cooke is reacting exactly how she should -- with utter disbelief in the veracity of this claim:
U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke was incredulous that anything connected to such a high-profile defendant could be lost.
"Do you understand how it might be difficult for me to understand that a tape related to this particular individual just got mislaid?" Cooke told prosecutors at a hearing last month.
It is difficult to put into words how extraordinary this is. As the Newsweek article reported:
The disclosure that the Pentagon had lost a potentially important piece of evidence in one of the U.S. government's highest-profile terrorism cases was met with claims of incredulity by some defense lawyers and human-rights groups monitoring the case.
"This is the kind of thing you hear when you're litigating cases in Egypt or Morocco or Karachi," said John Sifton, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch, one of a number of groups that has criticized the U.S. government's treatment of Padilla. "It is simply not credible that they would have lost this tape. The administration has shown repeatedly they are more interested in covering up abuses than getting to the bottom of whether people were abused."
Then again, credible claims by a citizen that he was tortured while held for years without charges by his own government also used to be the kind of thing "you hear when you're litigating cases in Egypt or Morocco or Karachi," but is now what characterizes the United States.
The March, 2004 video is unlikely the only evidence which the Bush administration is concealing despite being ordered to produce. As the Associated Press reported:
But [Padilla lawyer Anthony] Natale said there may be more tapes missing and other interrogations that were not recorded.
Defense lawyers say brig logs indicate that there were 72 hours of Padilla interviews that either were not taped or for which tapes may be missing. Natale said it seems unlikely that any interrogation session with Padilla was not videotaped "when he was videoed taking showers."
Of course, even if administration's patently unbelievable claim were true -- namely, that it did "lose" the video of its interrogation of this Extremely Dangerous International Terrorist -- that would, by itself, evidence a reckless ineptitude with American national security so grave that it ought to be a scandal by itself. But the likelihood that the key interrogation video with regard to Padilla's torture claims was simply "lost" is virtually non-existent. Destruction of relevant evidence in any litigation is grounds for dismissal of the case (or defense) of the party engaged in that behavior.
But where, as here, the issues extend far beyond the singular proceeding itself -- we are talking about claims by a U.S. citizen that he was tortured by his own government -- destruction of evidence of this sort would be obstruction of justice of the most serious magnitude. This merits much, much more attention.
-- Glenn Greenwald
Here Greenwald puts the missing Padilla interrogation video tapes in context. If the Times had given it the proper attention, there might have been more pressure to dismiss the US case, or non-case against Jose Padilla.
But there's another issue that the Padilla case raises that the relatively mainstream Greenwald won't touch and that's the issue of responsibilty for 9/11.
Has anyone noticed that the US has produced no examples of terror cells that were not cases of FBI entrapment of foolish and otherwise challenged individuals? In other words: NONE, not one. And when they were forced to put Padilla through the system they had to reduce charges. And that from the beginning, the Bush-Cheney clique have been fighting tooth and nail against habeas corpus, i.e., producing ANY evidence against those they torture and jail indefinitely.
Why this reluctance to produce evidence, to place their evidence before even the compromised judges in our system? Could it be that there is no evidence to produce? That there is no terror outside of the terror that is produced by the US and other states and their respective intelligence and security services -- the secret government.
Many people agree that the war on terror is bogus. But how many have thought through what this really means? How many care to look at the terror of 9/11 with eyes open to the possibility that there were NO Islamic terrorists involved? How many would make the connection between the Bush-Cheney insistence on not having to produce evidence with the lack of the slightest shred of independently verified evidence that any hijackings took place on 9/11.
Hopefully, as the direct and indirect evidence continues to mount, more will start connecting the dots.
Ronald
http://desip.igc.org
Saturday March 10, 2007
What happened to the Padilla interrogation videos?
by Glenn Greenwald
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
This is an infinitely bigger story than the media, thus far, seems to realize. In the Jose Padilla criminal trial, the judge -- Bush-appointee and former federal prosecutor Marcia Cooke, who has a reputation for extreme objectivity -- has ordered the Bush administration to turn over all tapes made of its interrogations of Padilla, as part of Padilla's motion to dismiss the indictment on the ground that he was, in essence, tortured while being held incommunicado for 3 1/2 years. In particular, Padilla's lawyers are most interested in the last interrogation session to which he was subjected -- in March, 2004 -- while still held as an "enemy combatant."
Ten days ago, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball reported that the administration had produced all of the DVDs it claimed it possessed, but the March, 2004 interrogation video was not among them. The government began claiming that the video "mysteriously disappeared." Bush administration lawyers simply insist that they are "no longer able to locate the DVD."
Associated Press now furthers the story by reporting that Bush lawyers seem to have committed themselves to the position that the video will not be found: "'I don't know what happened to it,' Pentagon attorney James Schmidli said during a recent court hearing." Judge Cooke is reacting exactly how she should -- with utter disbelief in the veracity of this claim:
U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke was incredulous that anything connected to such a high-profile defendant could be lost.
"Do you understand how it might be difficult for me to understand that a tape related to this particular individual just got mislaid?" Cooke told prosecutors at a hearing last month.
It is difficult to put into words how extraordinary this is. As the Newsweek article reported:
The disclosure that the Pentagon had lost a potentially important piece of evidence in one of the U.S. government's highest-profile terrorism cases was met with claims of incredulity by some defense lawyers and human-rights groups monitoring the case.
"This is the kind of thing you hear when you're litigating cases in Egypt or Morocco or Karachi," said John Sifton, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch, one of a number of groups that has criticized the U.S. government's treatment of Padilla. "It is simply not credible that they would have lost this tape. The administration has shown repeatedly they are more interested in covering up abuses than getting to the bottom of whether people were abused."
Then again, credible claims by a citizen that he was tortured while held for years without charges by his own government also used to be the kind of thing "you hear when you're litigating cases in Egypt or Morocco or Karachi," but is now what characterizes the United States.
The March, 2004 video is unlikely the only evidence which the Bush administration is concealing despite being ordered to produce. As the Associated Press reported:
But [Padilla lawyer Anthony] Natale said there may be more tapes missing and other interrogations that were not recorded.
Defense lawyers say brig logs indicate that there were 72 hours of Padilla interviews that either were not taped or for which tapes may be missing. Natale said it seems unlikely that any interrogation session with Padilla was not videotaped "when he was videoed taking showers."
Of course, even if administration's patently unbelievable claim were true -- namely, that it did "lose" the video of its interrogation of this Extremely Dangerous International Terrorist -- that would, by itself, evidence a reckless ineptitude with American national security so grave that it ought to be a scandal by itself. But the likelihood that the key interrogation video with regard to Padilla's torture claims was simply "lost" is virtually non-existent. Destruction of relevant evidence in any litigation is grounds for dismissal of the case (or defense) of the party engaged in that behavior.
But where, as here, the issues extend far beyond the singular proceeding itself -- we are talking about claims by a U.S. citizen that he was tortured by his own government -- destruction of evidence of this sort would be obstruction of justice of the most serious magnitude. This merits much, much more attention.
-- Glenn Greenwald
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