Iraq Invasion Whoppers

Posted: February 15, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Central Intelligence Agency, Diplomacy Nightmares, Federal Budget, Foreign Affairs, Gitmo, Human Rights, Iran, Iraq, Media, Psychopaths in charge, Republican presidential politics, right wing hate grouups, Surreality, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, Voter Ignorance, WE TOLD THEM SO | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 25 Comments

Oops, there goes another rationale for the Iraq Invasion

Any number of us that closely followed the trumped-up case for the Iraq invasion figured that most of the evidence was shoddy if not based on out-and-out lies. I seriously wanted to throw up every time I heard some Bush official equivocate smoking guns and smoking mushroom clouds.  The most disheartening thing was the number of people that believed them.  The entire Iraq Invasion run-up  just showed how vulnerable the American public is to propaganda and jingoism.  You could hardly hold a civil conversation with so much hysteria-based flag waving going on.

So, it’s another one of those moments where you learn exactly how duped the entire country was by a set of people just itching to scratch that NeoCon rash.  The UK Guardian reports that the “man codenamed Curveball ‘invented’ tales of bioweapons”.  Colin Powell’s judgment looked bad then, it looks nonexistent now.   Remember, he was considered the moderate voice of reason.  You can watch the video and hear the words of Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi: ‘I had the chance to fabricate something …’  I’m sure they begged him to do it.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.

“Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right,” he said. “They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy.”

The admission comes just after the eighth anniversary of Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations in which the then-US secretary of state relied heavily on lies that Janabi had told the German secret service, the BND. It also follows the release of former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s memoirs, in which he admitted Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction programme.

The careers of both men were seriously damaged by their use of Janabi’s claims, which he now says could have been – and were – discredited well before Powell’s landmark speech to the UN on 5 February 2003.

The former CIA chief in Europe Tyler Drumheller describes Janabi’s admission as “fascinating”, and said the emergence of the truth “makes me feel better”. “I think there are still a number of people who still thought there was something in that. Even now,” said Drumheller.

It was no secret that most of the advisers surrounding Dubya Bush were the same ones disappointed in Poppy’s decision to stop the first Gulf War with Saddam still in power.  There were many good reasons to leave Saddam in power including the geopolitical stalemate created by tensions between the Sunni Saddam and the Shia Clerics in Iran that frequently burst into horrible wars.  We shifted the balance of power in the area to Iran and have undoubtedly created a long term mess in Iraq itself. It’s cost us lives and money.  It’s cost the Iraqis untold horrors.  We continue to learn it was based on nothing but a pack of lies.  This mea culpa is just the latest.

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Total Information Awareness* is Here

Posted: February 2, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Central Intelligence Agency, Egypt, Foreign Affairs, Middle East, Patriot Act, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Yesterday Joseph Cannon put up a disturbing post about the American company that made it possible for Hosni Mubarak’s authoritarian government to shut down the internet in Egypt, making it much more difficult for Egyptians to communicate over social media like Twitter and Facebook. Be sure to read Cannon’s post and watch the Democracy Now video that he included.

The company is Narus, located in Sunnyvale, CA. The company was purchased by Boeing last summer.

I was intrigued enough to do a little more reading about Narus, and thought I’d add a bit to what Cannon had to say.

According to Wikipedia, Narus (emphasis added)

is notable for being the creator of NarusInsight, a supercomputer system which is allegedly used by the NSA and other bodies to perform mass surveillance and monitoring of citizens’ and corporations’ Internet communications in real-time, and whose installation in AT&T’s San Francisco Internet backbone gave rise to a 2006 class action lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T, Hepting v. AT&T.

That’s the NSA spying program that supposedly targeted only foreign communications, but actually spied on all of us.

At the Electronic Frontier Foundation site, I found this report by Brian Reid, who is described as a “telecommunications expert.” He is also a former electrical engineer professor at Stanford and computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University West. Reid was asked by the EFF to examine the technology used by AT&T in the spying program. Here’s a bit of what he had to say:

NSA Headquarters, Fort Meade, MD

This infrastructure is capable of monitoring all traffic passing through the AT&T facility (some of it not even from AT&T customers), whether voice or data or fax, international or domestic. The most likely use of this infrastructure is wholesale, untargeted surveillance of ordinary Americans at the behest of the NSA. NSA involvement undermines arguments that the facility is intended for use by AT&T in protecting its own network operations.

This infrastructure is not limited to, nor would it be especially efficient for, targeted surveillance, or even untargeted surveillance aimed at communications where one of the ends is located outside the United States. It is also not reasonably aimed at supporting AT&T operations and security procedures.

Reid explains that the equipment he examined “is far more powerful and expensive than that needed to do targeted surveillance or surveillance aimed only at international or one-end foreign communications.” Furthermore:

The documents describe a secret, private backbone network separate from the public network where normal AT&T customer traffic is carried transmitted. A separate backbone network would not be required for transmission of the smaller amounts of data captured via targeted surveillance. You don’t need that magnitude of transport capacity if you are doing targeted surveillance.

The bottom line is that the equipment used to provide data to the NSA for Bush’s spying program was designed to spy on ordinary American citizens–not foreign terrorists.

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Tuesday Reads

Posted: February 1, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Central Intelligence Agency, Egypt, Foreign Affairs, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 33 Comments

Oh no! Not another giant snowstorm!

Good Morning!!

Have you heard about the gigantic winter storm that is affecting 29 states?

From the Washington Post:

National Weather Service advisories and warnings are in effect in more than 20 states as a powerful storm gets organized in the Midwest. A blizzard warning is in effect for Chicago, where 12 to 20 inches of snow is possible. Other cities which may experience blizzard conditions include Tulsa, Wichita, Kansas City, and Detroit. Snow is expected to begin tonight and tomorrow from southwest to northeast and continue into early Wednesday.

The Chicago Tribune’s Weather Center cautions: “Snowfall totals in excess of 12 inches coupled with winds of 25 to 40 mph will make long distance travel extremely dangerous if not impossible.”

Wednesday morning into Thursday, the heavy snow moves through central New York, northern Massachusetts,southern Vermont, New Hampshire and southeast Maine.

Weather.com says the storm may be historic, due to the areal coverage of snow forecast – with upwards of 1 foot likely across a “2100-mile long swath from the Southern Plains to coastal New England.”

We’re supposed to get 18 inches in the Boston area, plus it will be mixed with ice pellets on Wednesday. I can’t take it anymore!!!!! All this snow is really getting to me.

In other news, the Republicans are all a-twitter over some guy named Jon Huntsman who is probably going to run for President. I admit I never heard of him and couldn’t care less what he does, but it seems to be the talk of the Village. To top it off, this guy has been working for Obama. Does he have any Democrats working for him?

Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the U.S. ambassador to China, sent a resignation letter to President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House said. Huntsman now is likely to explore a Republican presidential bid, according to supporters.

In a letter hand-delivered to the White House, the former Utah governor said that he wants to return to the United States by May. The letter thanks Obama for the opportunity to serve the country and praises the U.S. embassy staff in Beijing.

If Huntsman won the GOP nomination, he would be challenging the reelection of his former boss. White House officials are furious at what they consider an audacious betrayal, but know that any public criticism would be likely to benefit Huntsman if he enters the primaries.

Huntsman boasts the most foreign policy experience of any of the likely GOP candidates, and would be a formidable entry to the unformed GOP field. He had a fiscally conservative record as governor, opposes abortion and is a strong supporter of gun owners’ rights.

Yep, sounds like Obama’s type.

If you haven’t read Joseph Cannon’s latest, you should rush right over and do so. He has a fascinating, well-researched post up about Ali Abdul Saoud, a.k.a. Ali A. Mohammed, a muslim double agent who worked for both the CIA and al Qaeda and may have been involved (along with Omar Suleiman?) in the assassination of Anwar Sadat.

It’s a fascinating read, and I’m not just saying that because Cannon linked to my post on Suleiman.

This is a frightening story out of Egypt: Google Executive Missing in Wake of Egypt Protests.

An executive for Google Inc. is missing in the wake of Egypt’s tumultuous protests, according to his brother. Wael Ghonim, whose LinkedIn profile says he is head of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa at Google, hasn’t been heard from since Friday at 6 p.m., his brother Hazem said.

[….]

Wael Ghonim’s web postings suggest a deepening engagement with politics. His Facebook page lists opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei as a person he admires, along with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Steve Jobs. In mid-January he tweeted that he was traveling to Qatar to participate at an Internet freedom forum hosted by network Al Jazeera.

Later, he sent a tweet that said he was going to join the Egyptian protests despite “all the warnings I got from my relative and friends.”

[….]

On Friday, he tweeted: “Very worried as it seems that government is planning a war crime tomorrow against people. We are all ready to die.”

I think a lot more people are probably dead and missing in Egypt than we are being told. I hope Ghonim will be found.

The Christian Science Monitor asks, “Did Jimmy Carter just throw Obama under the bus?”

Commenting on the week’s tumultuous events in Egypt from the Maranatha Baptist Church near his home in Plains, Ga., the former president who brokered the 1979 peace accord between Egypt and Israel gave a candid personal assessment of Egypt’s embattled leader and said his “guess is Mubarak will have to go.”

President Mubarak has “become more politically corrupt” in recent years and has “perpetuated himself in office,” he told a Sunday school class of 300, according to the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. Assessing the popular uprisings sweeping across the region, he said: “This is the most profound situation in the Middle East since I left office” more than 30 years ago.

I sure hope it’s a different bus than the one we’re under, because I don’t want Obama down here with us.

Speaking of throwing people under the bus, Tom Brokaw made a critical reference to Keith Olbermann in an interview with the Chicago Tribune. Here’s Huffpo’s gossipy take on it.

He told the Tribune’s Phil Rosenthal that NBC was better placed than its rivals because of MSNBC.

“Where it got sticky is when our commentators were anchoring political coverage,” he said, in a clear reference to Olbermann. Brokaw was widely known to have complained about Olbermann’s anchoring of campaign coverage during the 2008 race. “Those are, in some ways, incompatible roles,” Brokaw continued. “We worked our way through that.”

Rosenthal then asked Brokaw what he thought of Olbermann’s exit. “You’re not going to get me to go there,” Brokaw said. But when pushed, he said that MSNBC will weather the storm.

He went there.

Did you hear that Mayor Bloomberg arranged for an undercover investigation of the recent Arizona gun show? The New York Times has the skinny.

The investigation, part of an effort by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration to crack down on illegal gun sales nationwide, took place Jan. 23 at the Crossroads of the West Gun Show in Phoenix, officials said.

“The background check system failed in Arizona, it failed in Virginia and it fails in states around the country,” said John Feinblatt, an adviser to Mr. Bloomberg. “If we don’t fix it now, the question is not whether another massacre will occur, but when.”

Private, unlicensed sellers are not required to run federal background checks, but it is a violation of federal law to sell guns to people if sellers suspect they are felons or mentally ill or are otherwise prohibited from buying. In the case of Jared L. Loughner, who is accused of opening fire on the crowd in Tucson on Jan. 8, the gun used in the shootings was bought at a licensed gun dealer, and he passed a background check, the authorities said.

In two instances, the New York undercover officers specifically said before buying a gun, “I probably couldn’t pass a background check,” but were still sold guns, city officials said.

Finally, here’s a fluffy story to go along with the white stuff that a lot of us will be seeing outside our windows today and tomorrow: How Meditation May Change the Brain

…researchers report that those who meditated for about 30 minutes a day for eight weeks had measurable changes in gray-matter density in parts of the brain associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress. The findings will appear in the Jan. 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging.

M.R.I. brain scans taken before and after the participants’ meditation regimen found increased gray matter in the hippocampus, an area important for learning and memory. The images also showed a reduction of gray matter in the amygdala, a region connected to anxiety and stress. A control group that did not practice meditation showed no such changes.

I’m not particularly surprised, but the woman who wrote the article is. Check it out.

Sooooo…. What are you reading and blogging about this morning? Please share!

Pakistan May Have Outed Chief of CIA’s Islamibad Station

Posted: December 17, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Central Intelligence Agency, Foreign Affairs, Pakistan | Tags: , , , , , | 12 Comments

Things seem to be getting pretty dicey for the U.S. in Pakistan. The Guardian UK reports that:

The CIA has pulled its station chief from Islamabad, one of America’s most important spy posts, after his cover was blown in a legal action brought by victims of US drone strikes in the tribal belt.

The officer, named in Pakistan as Jonathan Banks, left the country yesterday, after a tribesman publicly accused him of being responsible for the death of his brother and son in a CIA drone strike in December 2009. Karim Khan, a journalist from North Waziristan, called for Banks to be charged with murder and executed.

In a rare move, the CIA called Banks home yesterday, citing “security concerns” and saying he had received death threats, Washington officials told Associated Press. Khan’s lawyer said he was fleeing the possibility of prosecution.

Banks may have only a business visa, and so wouldn’t have diplomatic immunity if he were required to testify in the trial. According to the article, recalling a station chief is extremely rare. Although the Pakistani government supposedly supports U.S. drone strikes, many Pakistanis are understandably outraged by them.

The recall comes at a sensitive moment for Washington. This week’s Afghanistan policy review brought fresh focus on Taliban safe havens in Pakistan’s tribal belt. Meanwhile CIA drone attacks – which are co-ordinated from the Islamabad embassy – have reached a new peak. Three drones struck targets in Khyber, a previously untouched tribal agency, on Friday, reportedly killing 24 people and signalling a widening of the CIA covert campaign….There have been over 100 strikes so this year, twice as many as in 2009.

The Guardian says there are rumors that Banks may have been outed by someone in the Pakistani intelligence agency (the ISI), because “several senior ISI officials were named in a New York legal action brought by relatives of the 2008 Mumbai attacks.”

The New York Times also has posted an article about this.

On Thursday and Friday, the United States appeared to make good on promises to expand its own efforts to attack the militants, with drone strikes for the first time hitting Khyber agency in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas. Most drone strikes this year have targeted North Waziristan. Pakistani government officials said at least 26 militants were killed in the most recent attacks.

The outing of the C.I.A. station chief is tied to the spy agency’s campaign of drone strikes, which are very unpopular in Pakistan, although the government has given its tacit approval for them.

Gee, no kidding. I mean who wants to have their house blown up unexpectedly by agents of a foreign power? Interestingly, the Times avoided telling its readers the outed agent’s name, even though the Guardian had already published it. The Times is truly the Obama administration’s house organ. According article,

The intensifying mistrust between the C.I.A. and I.S.I., two uneasy but co-dependent allies, could hardly come at a worse time. The Obama administration relies on Pakistan’s support for the armed drone program, which this year has launched a record number of strikes in North Waziristan against terror suspects.

“We will continue to help strengthen Pakistani capacity to root out terrorists,” President Obama said on Thursday. “Nevertheless, progress has not come fast enough. So we will continue to insist to Pakistani leaders that terrorist safe havens within their borders must be dealt with.”

Not being an expert on foreign affairs, I’m not sure if this statement triggered anger in Pakistan or not. Maybe President Obama should leave diplomacy to his Secretary of State.

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