American who killed two in Pakistan was CIA spy

In Karachi, scores of demonstrators call for the execution of Raymond Davis, the US consulate employee who has been jailed in Lahore for killing two Pakistanis Link to this video

The American who shot dead two men in Lahore, triggering a diplomatic crisis between Pakistan and the US, is a CIA agent who was on assignment at the time.

Raymond Davis has been the subject of widespread speculation since he opened fire with a semi-automatic Glock pistol on the two men who had pulled up in front of his car at a red light on 25 January.

Pakistani authorities charged him with murder, but the Obama administration has insisted he is an "administrative and technical official" attached to its Lahore consulate and has diplomatic immunity.

Based on interviews in the US and Pakistan, the Guardian can confirm that the 36-year-old former special forces soldier is employed by the CIA. "It's beyond a shadow of a doubt," said a senior Pakistani intelligence official. The revelation may complicate American efforts to free Davis, who insists he was acting in self-defence against a pair of suspected robbers, who were both carrying guns.

Pakistani prosecutors accuse the spy of excessive force, saying he fired 10 shots and got out of his car to shoot one man twice in the back as he fled. The man's body was found 30 feet from his motorbike.

"It went way beyond what we define as self-defence. It was not commensurate with the threat," a senior police official involved in the case told the Guardian.

The Pakistani government is aware of Davis's CIA status yet has kept quiet in the face of immense American pressure to free him under the Vienna convention. Last week President Barack Obama described Davis as "our diplomat" and dispatched his chief diplomatic troubleshooter, Senator John Kerry, to Islamabad. Kerry returned home empty-handed.

Many Pakistanis are outraged at the idea of an armed American rampaging through their second-largest city. Analysts have warned of Egyptian-style protests if Davis is released. The government, fearful of a backlash, says it needs until 14 March to decide whether Davis enjoys immunity.

A third man was crushed by an American vehicle as it rushed to Davis's aid. Pakistani officials believe its occupants were CIA because they came from the house where Davis lived and were armed.

The US refused Pakistani demands to interrogate the two men and on Sunday a senior Pakistani intelligence official said they had left the country. "They have flown the coop, they are already in America," he said.

ABC News reported that the men had the same diplomatic visas as Davis. It is not unusual for US intelligence officers, like their counterparts round the world, to carry diplomatic passports.

The US has accused Pakistan of illegally detaining him and riding roughshod over international treaties. Angry politicians have proposed slashing Islamabad's $1.5bn (£900m) annual aid.

But Washington's case is hobbled by its resounding silence on Davis's role. He served in the US special forces for 10 years before leaving in 2003 to become a security contractor. A senior Pakistani official said he believed Davis had worked with Xe, the firm formerly known as Blackwater.

Pakistani suspicions about Davis's role were stoked by the equipment police confiscated from his car: an unlicensed pistol, a long-range radio, a GPS device, an infrared torch and a camera with pictures of buildings around Lahore.

"This is not the work of a diplomat. He was doing espionage and surveillance activities," said the Punjab law minister, Rana Sanaullah, adding he had "confirmation" that Davis was a CIA employee.

A number of US media outlets learned about Davis's CIA role but have kept it under wraps at the request of the Obama administration. A Colorado television station, 9NEWS, made a connection after speaking to Davis's wife. She referred its inquiries to a number in Washington which turned out to be the CIA. The station removed the CIA reference from its website at the request of the US government.

Some reports, quoting Pakistani intelligence officials, have suggested that the men Davis killed, Faizan Haider, 21, and Muhammad Faheem, 19, were agents of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency (ISI) and had orders to shadow Davis because he crossed a "red line".

A senior police official confirmed US claims that the men were petty thieves – investigators found stolen mobiles, foreign currency and weapons on them – but did not rule out an intelligence link.

A senior ISI official denied the dead men worked for the spy agency but admitted the CIA relationship had been damaged. "We are a sovereign country and if they want to work with us, they need to develop a trusting relationship on the basis of equality. Being arrogant and demanding is not the way to do it," he said.

Tensions between the spy agencies have been growing. The CIA Islamabad station chief was forced to leave in December after being named in a civil lawsuit. The ISI was angered when its chief, General Shuja Pasha, was named in a New York lawsuit related to the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Although the two spy services co-operate in the CIA's drone campaign along the Afghan border, there has not been a drone strike since 23 January – the longest lull since June 2009. Experts are unsure whether both events are linked.

Davis awaits his fate in Kot Lakhpat jail in Lahore. Pakistani officials say they have taken exceptional measures to ensure his safety, including ringing the prison with paramilitary Punjab Rangers. The law minister, Sanaullah, said Davis was in a "high security zone" and was receiving food from visitors from the US consulate.

Sanaullah said 140 foreigners were in the facility, many on drug charges. Press reports have speculated that the authorities worry the US could try to spring Davis in a "Hollywood-style sting". "All measures for his security have been taken," said the ISI official. "He's as safe as can be." By Guardian

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Cultural plunder

By Peter Thonemann


ARE you keen to help finance the activities of warlords and insurgents across Afghanistan?
As I write, eBay is inviting bids on no fewer than 128 ancient Bactrian and Indo-Greek silver and bronze coins, from sellers in Pakistan, Singapore, Thailand and the United States.
Probably every one of them is the product of looting over the past 20 years. With luck, you might even pick up one of the tens of thousands of items plundered from the collections of the old National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul between 1992 and 2001.
For those with deep pockets, I can particularly recommend the eBay seller “The Precious Art from Past”, who is currently offering 289 looted AfPak objects for sale, including an extraordinary ancient Gandharan sculpture of a seated Heracles in near-perfect condition, yours for GBP18,950 plus postage and packing.
Such are the hazards of liv ing at a “crossroads of civilisations”. It must be said that this kind of briskly utilitarian attitude towards Afghanistan’s pre-Islamic heritage is nothing new. In 1999, the leader of the Taliban government, Mullah Omar, issued a decree forbidding any damage to the monumental Buddhas of Bamiyan, on the grounds that the Taliban considered the Bamiyan statues “as an example of a potential major source of income for Afghanistan from international visitors”.
Aside from their potential economic value, no obvious benefits derived from the existence of the Bamiyan Buddhas: as Omar rightly noted “In Afghanistan there are no Buddhists to worship the statues.” Why should a Pashtun Muslim feel any sense of responsibility for the culture of Gandharan Buddhists? Dozens of times over the past 3,000 years, the plains and valleys around the foothills of the Hindu Kush have changed hands between Iranians, Greeks, Chinese, Scythians, Turks and Indians. An oft-photographed plaque outside the National Museum in Kabul reads: “A Nation Stays Alive When Its Culture Stays Alive”. No one should be taken in by the bland phrasing — this is as provocative as it gets. Which culture? Whose nation?
In March 2001, Omar gave one answer, by revoking his decision of two years earlier and ordering the dynamiting of the Bamiyan Buddhas. Simultaneously, most of the few remaining pre-Islamic objects in the Kabul museum were also smashed or sold off. It would be quite wrong to see the events of March 2001 as merely an act of barbarous vandalism (though they certainly were that too).
They also represented a particular claim about which bits of Afghanistan’s history were worth preserving: for the Taliban, the only “national culture” that mattered was the one that began in AD622.
For an alternative account of Afghanistan’s bloody history — one, as it were, with the Buddhists left in — we can look to a spectacular exhibition which opens at the British Museum next month. Neil MacGregor, director of the museum, hopes to show that “We are at a historically anomalous moment when the country is seen as remote and isolated . . . Afghanistan’s relationships are long and deep.” At the heart of the exhibition is the miracle of Tillya Tepe, the “hill of gold”, a huge earthen barrow 80 miles west of Mazar-i-Sharif, between the Hindu Kush mountains and the streams of the Amu Darya. Some time in the mid-first century AD, this mound was chosen by a nomadic prince as his burial kurghan.
The prince himself was interred at the peak of the hill, and a horse was sacrificed and buried alongside him. In a ring around the prince’s tomb were the graves of five women, probably his five wives, all of them clad in gorgeous textiles and jewellery of extraordinary splendour. ¦ — The Guardian, London

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The speech he needs to make-Pakistan

Mr Qureshi has not spoken about the alternative to dependence on the US.

By Syed Talat Hussain LAST week, former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi displayed a fine response to the call of his conscience. Speaking one’s mind is a rarity in a system that thrives on secrecy and subservience.Since then Mr Qureshi has reaped a rich harvest of public praise of the sort he was denied when he was in charge of the country’s foreign affairs. Then, despite having a massive PR machinery at his disposal and the ability to command the direction of the cameras, he was a marginal man in terms of public popularity on a national scale. Now parallels are being drawn between Mr Qureshi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the country’s late charismatic prime minister, whose sizzling rhetoric on foreign affairs was as popular as the commanding heights of his understanding of world politics. Mr Qureshi should find such comparisons flattering. But this is where the matter should end. One press conference, no matter how passionate and energising, does not make a national leader. Without taking anything away from Mr Qureshi, who so far has stayed clear of the pond of corruption that some of his colleagues have been happily diving in, he has not articulated a new vision for the country’s foreign policy, much less shown how to redefine Pakistan’s strategic ties with the US. The fantastic talk of national honour and walking with one’s head held high is heartwarming, but falls hopelessly short of a new world view. Let alone that, it does not even constitute an honest answer to the fundamental question as to where Pakistan has gone wrong in its engagement with Washington. The Raymond Davis case, on which Mr Qureshi has struck a politically suicidal but personally redeeming note, is symbolic of the broader context in which Pakistan has chosen to ally itself with Washington. Davis is not the problem, but a gross symptom of the problem that can be called harsh TORs (terms of reference) within which Islamabad finds itself in dealing with the US. These TORs, restrictive of the country’s sovereignty and debilitating for its dignity, are wrapped in secrecy and sealed with silence. No one dares to open up on them. They have spawned an underground of operators like Davis who have unfettered territory for murderous operations in Pakistan until such time, of course, when they blow their own cover and get caught, literally in his case, with a smoking gun. How exactly has this underworld come about and how vast and widespread it is are queries on which the out-ofcabinet, out-in-the-cold former foreign minister could have informed the people of Pakistan, but chose not to. In fact, all bets are that he would never do that. Haloed pirs never rock the boat. Unassuming fakirs do. Mr Qureshi is not going to upstage his goodwill with Washington’s powerbrokers by crossing the fine line that divides US friends from foes, which, these days, includes ev eryone who dares ask an even remotely probing question about the US role in Pakistan. Moreover, he himself has been an indefatigable defender of deepening the very type of ties with the US, whose one manifestation he now finds unbearable. (It is amazing that the procedural matter of disclosing Davis’s real status has become one that can both shape and destroy political careers. This can only happen in Pakistan.) Many of the challenges facing Pakistan in its relations with the US are mentioned in a detailed fashion in the Kerry Lugar Bill whose most energetic advocate was Mr Qureshi himself. When almost everyone expressed deep worries over the growing drone strikes and the unlimited access that US officials, from lowly counsellor to intelligence operatives, had to Pakistan’s entire leadership, Mr Qureshi did not raise the red flag. In fact on his watch Ms Hillary Clinton held a school headmistress-like briefing in the Foreign Office, complete with charts, chalk and coloured pencils on the great things that the US was doing for Pakistan. The visitor was allowed any number of opportunities to have dialogue with ‘the people of Pakistan’ — which comprised people the US embassy here handpicked — in what really was a brazen attempt at bypassing official channels to conduct US public diplomacy. These — there are many more — are concessions that Islamabad has made on every step of its way forward with the US in the last many years, and whose grimmest consequence is the present gridlock over Raymond Davis. Of course, in Mr Qureshi’s defence it can said that he was reflecting on a consensus that the Pakistani government had crafted on its dealings with the US and the policy that he endorsed was not reflective of his personal preferences. This would be largely true. However, in the absence of any re al information on what Mr Qureshi’s actual preferences are, one can be forgiven for believing that the margin of difference is rather slim in his personal and private choice of the type of relations Pakistan should have with the US. Mr Qureshi has spoken well, and with exquisite timing, which is ninth-tenth of politics. He has raised his profile and has added to his political stock. Now he needs to fill the gaping hole of information not about the status of Davis, but what in his view is the alternative to the present relationship of dependency Pakistan has developed with the US. Until we hear Mr Qureshi speak on that subject, his coronation as a possible king of hope in Pakistan must be held back. In a land of false messiahs and pretenders, such caution is called for. ¦ The writer is senior anchor at DawnNews.

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Anti-Americanism-Pakistan

“SHOCKING, unjustified anti-Americanism will not resolve [Pakistan’s] prob- lems,” said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in New York on Friday. The fact is, however, that antiAmericanism in Pakistan is not at all shocking, and much of it is not unjustified. Ms Clinton’s remarks came as two Pakistanis were gunned down in broad daylight in Lahore traffic by an American whose work here remains a mystery. A third man was run over in the ensuing chaos when he was caught in the path of a speeding American consulate vehicle. That driver has disappeared, and the US has insisted on blanket diplomatic immunity for the gunman. This has not gone down well in Pakistan for obvious reasons. Questions linger about Raymond Davis’s work here, exacerbated by suspicions about the presence of American security contractors in Pakistan and the reputation such individuals developed in Iraq. Even his exact diplomatic or consular status remains unclear. In this context, the US stance has come across as an arrogant defence of a suspected murderer simply because he is American, and although a US congressional delegation’s visit here after her speech has helped ease tension on the issue, Ms Clinton would have done well to take that into account.
But this incident is simply one example of the dou ble standards that inflame anti-American sentiment among liberals and the right wing alike. Drone strikes arguably violate America’s concern for human rights. Support for the Zia and Musharraf regimes and the blind eye turned to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s hanging violated its constant call for democracy. And while American officials have expressed regret over abandoning the region after the war against the Soviets in the 1980s, memories of the variable American policy here over the last three decades will not go away easily. While it may be justified for America to safeguard its own interests, it should not be surprised at the anger of those who bear the brunt of the fallout.
This is not to say that Pakistan has had no role to play in fuelling anti-American views. Some elements of the state have promoted these for their own benefit, and arguably are doing so today by delaying a verdict on the question of Mr Davis’s immunity. Politicians, too, have exploited the sentiment for popularity, with little concern for the fact that by doing so they are feeding extremist views and squeezing the space for moderate voices in Pakistan. But what would take the teeth out of such efforts is a consistent, long-term American policy towards the region, one in line with the values the US upholds for itself.

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For greater transparency-Pakistan

In the old days, one could have expected a quiet behind-the-scenes deal between Islamabad and Washington to secure Davis’s release. Today, the context is altogether different.

By Moeed Yusuf-Dawn News


IN previous columns on Pakistan-US relations, I have often stressed the need for greater transparency in the partnership. Since 9/11, ties have been characterised by an active government-to-government relationship; very little of what happens behind closed doors is willingly brought out in the public domain.
The Raymond Davis episode is an interesting case study. It challenges the efficacy of how the two sides have chosen to conduct business.
The basis for the Pakistani and American governments choosing to keep this relationship opaque — the formulation, a deliberate one, lingers from the Musharraf-Bush era — was the belief that as long as the two governments continued to cooperate as agreed, they could achieve their objectives irrespective of the sentiment on the street. Taking the people on board was deemed unnecessary.
The Davis episode drives home the point that the formulation has outlived its utility. The framework has been upended by two developments: (i) the enhanced capacity and boldness of the Pakistani media to debate controversial issues, especially since their successful role in the lawyers’ movement; and (ii) the fact that Pakistan is now in a phase of messy coalitional politics.
In the old formulation, one could have expected a quiet behind-the-scenes deal between Islamabad and Washington to secure Davis’s release. Today, the context is altogether different. Within minutes of the shooting episode involving Davis, the media had picked up the story. All sorts of rumours about what had happened were being flashed. And before we knew it, the whole nature of the bilateral relationship had gotten tangled in the debate. The absence of credible information meant that even the most nefarious conclusions went unchallenged. Bottom line: within hours of the development, the opportunity for a quiet, tactical government-to-government deal had gone.
What has followed since is even more interesting.
The Pakistani media and street put forth a number of compelling questions. Given that officialdom is so used to opacity and providing piecemeal, inconse quential information, it continued to selfcontradict, without producing too many credible answers. The primary public conclusions are: Davis is a spook; if he is not a diplomat, he does not enjoy immunity and should be taken to task; and if he is a diplomat, this proves the already pervasive sense that many Americans in Pakistan are clandestine operatives. A disaster all round from the perspective of a sustained partnership! How does transparency fit in?
At the tactical level, if Davis has immunity, the paperwork should be produced in the open and the matter laid to rest. And if he does not, then in the interest of sustaining credible ties, both sides should answer the many questions floating around in Pakistan about why Davis was there, who authorised it, who did he actually shoot? And even more important would be transparency at the policy level: is Davis representative of American presence in Pakistan (as conspiracy theo ries claim); how many American diplomats are in Pakistan; what are the facts about private contractor presence; what other concessions have been accorded (e.g. drones); what is the rationale for all decisions/concessions?
Only by coming clean on these broad policy questions can the two governments hope to begin challenging popular misconceptions. And yes, this may mean some embarrassment in the short run but that would be a function of their past attempts at holding back information. Going ahead, as long as the two governments can explain the rationale of their decisions to their people and show how, in their view, it is in the national interest, over time, citizens will begin to realise the compulsions of the two governments and the need for them to continue working together. Lack of information produces the opposite result; everything becomes a conspiracy theory.
The second dimension to the episode is political. As soon as the news broke, coalitional politics was in play — to Davis’s detriment. The PML-N sensed an opportunity to create a hype about the issue and got the street to amplify its populist stance, i.e. Davis’ fate should be decided by the courts in Pakistan. The right-wing parties soon chimed in. Left on its own, between a rock and a hard place, was the PPP government. Otherwise probably happy to let Raymond Davis go to appease the US, it quickly realised that doing so would be politically suicidal. This, and not Musharraf’s arbitrary decisions, however bold and efficient, is what the two sides will have to deal with in the times ahead.
Finally, the episode suggests just how ill-prepared the two governments are in conducting diplomacy if behind-thescenes dealing fails on an issue.
Diplomacy around Raymond Davis has descended into an open arm-twisting exercise. Washington upped the ante by demanding Davis’s immediate release and suggested that Pakistan was violating its international obligations. Important dialogues/meetings were cancelled.
The approach reflects a fundamental lack of understanding on how to work the Pakistani street — rule number one is that you never want to be seen as a bully by Pakistanis; the more the pressure, the less likely a favourable outcome.
The PPP government, on the other hand, is guilty of its customary mismanagement. Contradictory signals have emanated throughout, both for the Pakistani people and the US. To the people, the government wanted to test the waters by hinting that Davis may be granted immunity. The media never took the bait to begin with and then the strategy died a natural death when deposed foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi spilled the beans. To Washington, some ministers communicated that the job will be done while others requested that the government be given time. There was no answer to the counter-question from Washington: time for what?
To be sure, the Obama-Zardari context is fundamentally different than the BushMusharraf one. For this relationship to have any chance of long-term sustainability, policy decisions and mutually agreed choices will have to be much more transparent and better explained. Else, both sides would be better off giving up the pretence of trying to sustain ties over the long run — it simply won’t work. ¦ The writer is South Asia adviser at the US Institute of Peace, Washington, D.C.

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Obama Administration Supports Israeli Crimes in Occupied Territories

Obama’s First UN Veto: US to Stop Security Council Calling Israeli Settlements ‘Illegal’

Jason Ditz,
February 16, 2011
Antiwar Forum 

The Obama Administration is threatening to use its first ever UN Security Council veto this week when the Palestinian Authority moves forward with a non-binding resolution referring to the settlement construction in the Occupied Territories as “illegal.” 

The case for the illegality of conquering territory, depopulating it, and building government subsidized, religiously exclusive cities over the ruins does not appear to be in serious doubt over much of the world, but of course it is a topic of debate in Israel, and like any good topic of debate in Israel the most ignorant and hawkish position has become law of the land in the US, to the point that suggestions to the contrary are considered outrageous. 

Which has left the administration offering to support a watered-down draft calling the settlements “not legitimate” instead, but skirting the question of legality.

Of course neither resolution means much of anything in the long run,settlements will still be built and the US will still throw money at Israel as fast as the Federal Reserve can print it. The fact that the Obama Administration is willing to throw its “first veto” at something as frivolous as a dispute of the Geneva Conventions’ ban on settlements, however, seems troubling.

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Obama Warned Palestinians Of Repercussions if Abbas Goes to UN

By AFP

February 18, 2011 "AFP" -- RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories --- US President Barack Obama warned the Palestinians of "repercussions" if they pushed for a UN Security Council vote against Jewish settlements, an official said on Friday.

"President Obama threatened on Thursday night to take measures against the Palestinian Authority if it insists on going to the Security Council to condemn Israeli settlement activity, and demand that it be stopped," a senior Palestinian official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Obama's remarks came during an hour-long telephone conversation between the two late on Thursday, in which the US leader tried to dissuade Abbas from supporting a UN Security Council vote due to take place later on Friday.

During the call, Obama told Abbas: "There will be repercussions for Palestinian-American relations if you continue your attempts to go to the Security Council and ignore our requests in this matter, especially as we suggested other alternatives."

He was referring to a package of incentives laid out earlier this week aimed at enticing the Palestinians to withdraw their support for the draft resolution on settlements which is being put before the Security Council.

After the Palestinians had rejected the initial offer, Obama rang Abbas late on Thursday to suggest that the Security Council issue a non-binding statement calling on Israel to implement a settlement freeze.

During the conversation, Abbas had rejected the offer, saying: "Stopping settlement activity is a Palestinian demand that will not be taken back because it was the reason the peace process fell apart," the official quoted him as saying.

"It was a decision taken by the Palestinian leadership and the Palestinian people are sticking to this demand."

It was not immediately clear at what stage in the phone call Obama had warned Abbas against rejecting the US overtures.

US-brokered peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians stalled in late 2010 after the expiry of a temporary freeze on Jewish settlement building in the West Bank.

Efforts by Washington to coax Israel into reimposing a freeze collapsed in December, and the Palestinians are refusing to continue negotiating while Israel builds on land they want for their promised state.

The United States, which regularly uses its Security Council veto power to stop anti-Israeli initiatives, is very keen to avoid the vote because it does not want to be forced to cast a veto.

Should it do so, it would be the first time the United States has used its veto power since Obama took office in January 2009.

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U.S. veto thwarts UN resolution condemning settlements 


Palestinian Authority leadership brought draft resolution against Israeli settlements to the UN security council, despite pressure from the U.S. to withdraw it.

By Shlomo Shamir, Natasha Mozgovaya, Barak Ravid

Haaretz 
Latest update 23:19 18.02.11

The United States on Friday voted against a United Nations Security Council draft resolution that would have condemned Israeli settlements as illegal. The veto by the U.S., a permanent council member, prevented the resolution from being adopted. (Editor: Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law and are patently immoral. It is outrageous that the United States stands alone in supporting Israel's crimes, a testiment to the power of the Zionist Lobby in America)

The other 14 Security Council members voted in favor of the draft resolution. But the U.S., as one of five permanent council members with the power to block any action by the Security Council, struck it down.

The resolution had nearly 120 co-sponsors, exclusively Arab and other non-aligned nations.

The Obama administration's veto is certain to anger Arab countries and Palestinian supporters around the world.

The U.S. opposes new Israeli settlements but says taking the issue to the UN will only complicate efforts to resume stalled negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on a two-state solution.

Palestinians say continued settlement building flouts the internationally-backed peace plan that will permit them to create a viable, contiguous state on the land after a treaty with Israel to end its occupation and 62 years of conflict.

Israel says this is an excuse for avoiding peace talks and a precondition never demanded before during 17 years of negotiation, which has so far produced no agreement.

Hundreds of Palestinian protesters rallied in support of the UN vote on Friday near Ramallah displaying banners demanding: "Veto settlements. Vote justice".

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Petition seeks ISI probe against Davis-Pakistan

An application filed in a Pakistani court has sought a probe by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency against US official Raymond Davis, arrested last month for shooting and killing two men. The application filed in the Lahore High Court on Saturday by lawyer Rana Ilamuddin Ghazi was clubbed with a petition asking the court to direct authorities to submit all records related to Davis.

Ghazi also claimed that Davis was spending his days in detention as a "guest" because two barracks equipped with special facilities had been set aside for him in Kot Lakhpat Jail.

He claimed the prison was located far from Lahore and this could help Davis in "fleeing from the jail".

He alleged that the US wanted his early release as it feared he would reveal secrets about their missions in Pakistan and drone attacks.

Ghazi further claimed that the US could launch an operation to release Davis as there were several instances when America took such action against the "sovereignty of different countries".

The US could try to forcefully get him released or kill him.

He contended that it was necessary to hand over Davis to the ISI so that no one could kidnap him.

He also asked the court to pass orders to shift Davis from Kot Lakhpat Jail to Lahore Fort.

Another application filed in the Lahore High Court asked it to direct authorities to submit all certified copies of diplomatic records regarding Davis.

The application was filed by lawyer Iqbal Jafree in a pending case asking the court to direct the government not to hand over Davis to the US.

Though the High Court had restrained the government from shifting Davis out of its jurisdiction, efforts were underway to "frustrate the order of the court by manipulation and tampering of records," Jafree claimed.
By Hindustan times

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`Complicated` ties-Pakistan

THE testimony of two American security chiefs before a Senate committee epitomises the `complicated relationship` that characterises Islamabad`s ties with Washington. While they admitted that, thanks to Pakistan, Al Qaeda was at its weakest since 9/11, both CIA chief Leon Panetta and counter-terrorism chairman Michael Leiter orchestrated the decade-old `do more` mantra but admitted that Pakistan had its way of looking at things. Said Mr Panetta: “They look at issues related to their national interest and take steps that complicate the relationship.” What else does the CIA chief expect Pakistan to do except to look at all issues from the point of view of its own interests? Surely America too looks — as it must — at all international questions from its own perspective. That`s why governments interact to decide whether or not there is a commonality of interest to bring them together.

There is a lot at stake for both Pakistan and America in whatever has been going on in the region and beyond since 9/11. One fact should overshadow all other considerations: no country has suffered more civilian and military casualties than Pakistan at the hands of a common enemy — terrorists of all hues. The sites bombed by the Taliban grouping include not only Pakistani mosques and shrines but also premises universally regarded as sacrosanct — hospitals and schools. Some American diplomats — among them the late Richard Holbrooke — never hesitated to admit the trauma Pakistan has suffered because of its commitment to the war on terror.
The two security chiefs` comments and Senator Dianne Feinstein`s bit about “both sides of the street” come four months ahead of the beginning of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some concerns are valid because of Pakistan`s reluctance to go for an all-out military operation in North Waziristan seen as one of the biggest havens for local and foreign militants. However, surely, the Obama administration`s Afghan policy has more than America`s national interests dear to it. With voters having already handed over the lower house to the Republicans in the mid-term election, the least the Democratic Party can do for the 2012 presidential election is to minimise casualties, regional states` interest being of less consequence. Besides, while America sees reluctance on Islamabad`s part to `do more`, it has entered into a dialogue with militant groups to cover its retreat. If common interests brought Pakistan and America together, let Washington ensure that the long-term ties it has pledged do not fall victim to passing irritants as the Raymond Davis affair or its view of the ISI`s purported walk on “both sides”. The hazards of the future should serve to cement their relationship.
By Dawn News

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Political `patch-up`-Pakistan

IN the hurly-burly of Pakistani politics, anything is possible. Perhaps that is why the smiles, rousing slogans and pledges of cooperation witnessed at the MQM`s headquarters on Friday to mark the visit of a high-powered PPP delegation did not surprise many. It was as though the acrimoniousness that has marked relations between the two parties over the past few months — which at times translated into street violence — was merely a misunderstanding. The Sindh chief minister, accompanied by the federal interior minister, led the PPP side in the visit to Nine Zero, as the MQM headquarters are known. Yet it was Sindh Home Minister Dr Zulfikar Mirza`s presence in the delegation that caught many political observers by surprise. He is not exactly known for couching criticism of coalition partners in diplomatic language, and his statements in the past have elicited equally vitriolic responses from the MQM.

It is not clear what has brought about the rapprochement between the estranged allies. The more cynical amongst us would say that it is part of the same political gamesmanship witnessed countless times before, necessitated by self-preservation. More optimistic observers would suggest that it is a sign of maturity and political pragmatism. Dialogue is always better than the politics of the gun and Karachi has witnessed too much violence over the past few months for the city`s political stakeholders to continue harbouring grudges. Along with being a harbinger of peace in the city, the thaw in relations should also hopefully lead to better governance in Sindh and perhaps even the MQM`s return to the federal cabinet. Let us also hope this new understanding is not at the cost of the PPP-PML-N negotiations to evolve consensus on economic issues.
Though officially there is no word on what really brought the two parties together, some reports in the media suggest disturbingly that the patch-up is the result of a `secret agreement` between the PPP and MQM to not prosecute suspects with political links in anti-terrorism courts. If this is the case and an agreement has been reached just to save supporters from prosecution, it is indefensible. Political parties should help strengthen the rule of law by allowing those suspected of being involved in `targeted killings` and other acts of violence to clear their names in court without applying pressure or entering underhanded deals. Targeted killings have claimed far too many victims in the metropolis and those involved in these brutal acts must be brought to justice. We must hope that this is not the case and both parties have reached a genuine agreement to bury the hatchet and work for better governance. That would deserve welcome as it would help bring peace to Karachi and strengthen the democratic process.

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Obama’s FY 2012 Budget Is A Tool Of Class War-World

By: Paul Craig Roberts

February 18, 2011 "Information Clearing House" ---- Obama’s new budget is a continuation of Wall Street’s class war against the poor and middle class. Wall Street wasn’t through with us when the banksters sold their fraudulent derivatives into our pension funds, wrecked Americans’ job prospects and retirement plans, secured a $700 billion bailout at taxpayers’ expense while foreclosing on the homes of millions of Americans, and loaded up the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet with several trillion dollars of junk financial paper in exchange for newly created money to shore up the banks’ balance sheets. The effect of the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” on inflation, interest rates, and the dollar’s foreign exchange value are yet to hit. When they do, Americans will get a lesson in poverty.

Now the ruling oligarchies have struck again, this time through the federal budget. The U.S. government has a huge military/security budget. It is as large as the budgets of the rest of the world combined.The Pentagon, CIA, and Homeland Security budgets account for the $1.1 trillion federal deficit that the Obama administration forecasts for fiscal year 2012. This massive deficit spending serves only one purpose--the enrichment of the private companies that serve the military/security complex. These companies, along with those on Wall Street, are who elect the U.S. government.

The U.S. has no enemies except those that the U.S. creates by bombing and invading other countries and by overthrowing foreign leaders and installing American puppets in their place.

China does not conduct naval exercises off the California coast, but the U.S. conducts war games in the China Sea off China’s coast. Russia does not mass troops on Europe’s borders, but the U.S. places missiles on Russia’s borders. The U.S. is determined to create as many enemies as possible in order to continue its bleeding of the American population to feed the ravenous military/security complex.

The U.S. government actually spends $56 billion a year, that is, $56,000 million, in order that American air travelers can be porno-scanned and sexually groped so that firms represented by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff can make large profits selling the scanning equipment.

With a perpetual budget deficit driven by the military/security complex’s desire for profits, the real cause of America’s enormous budget deficit is off-limits for discussion. The U.S. Secretary of War-Mongering, Robert Gates, declared: “We shrink from our global security responsibilities at our peril.” The military brass warns of cutting any of the billions of aid to Israel and Egypt, two functionaries for its Middle East “policy.”

But what are “our” global security responsibilities? Where did they come from? Why would America be at peril if America stopped bombing and invading other countries and interfering in their internal affairs? The perils America faces are all self-created.

The answer to this question used to be that otherwise we would be murdered in our beds by “the worldwide communist conspiracy.” Today the answer is that we will be murdered in our airplanes, train stations, and shopping centers by “Muslim terrorists” and by a newly created imaginary threat--”domestic extremists,” that is, war protesters and environmentalists.

The U.S. military/security complex is capable of creating any number of false flag events in order to make these threats seem real to a public whose intelligence is limited to TV, shopping mall experiences, and football games.

So Americans are stuck with enormous budget deficits that the Federal Reserve must finance by printing new money, money that sooner or later will destroy the purchasing power of the dollar and its role as world reserve currency. When the dollar goes, American power goes. 

For the ruling oligarchies, the question is: how to save their power.


Their answer is: make the people pay.

And that is what their latest puppet, President Obama, is doing.

With the U.S. in the worst recession since the Great Depression, a great recession that John Williams and Gerald Celente, along with myself, have said is deepening, the “Obama budget” takes aim at support programs for the poor and out-of-work. The American elites are transforming themselves into idiots as they seek to replicate in America the conditions that have led to the overthrows of similarly corrupt elites in Tunisia and Egypt and mounting challenges to U.S. puppet governments elsewhere.
All we need is a few million more Americans with nothing to lose in order to bring the disturbances in the Middle East home to America.

With the U.S. military bogged down in wars abroad, an American revolution would have the best chance of success.

American politicians have to fund Israel as the money returns in campaign contributions. The U.S. government must fund the Egyptian military if there is to be any hope of turning the next Egyptian government into another American puppet that will serve Israel by continuing the blockade of the Palestinians herded into the Gaza ghetto.

These goals are far more important to the American elite than Pell Grants that enable poor Americans to obtain an education, or clean water, or community block grants, or the low income energy assistance program (cut by the amount that U.S. taxpayers are forced to give to Israel).

There are also $7,700 million of cuts in Medicaid and other health programs over the next five years.

Given the magnitude of the U.S. budget deficit, these sums are a pittance. The cuts will have no effect on U.S. Treasury financing needs. They will put no brakes on the Federal Reserve’s need to print money in order to keep the U.S. government in operation.

These cuts serve one purpose: to further the Republican Party’s myth that America is in economic trouble because of the poor: The poor are shiftless. They won’t work. The only reason unemployment is high is that the poor would rather be on welfare.

A new addition to the welfare myth is that recent middle class college graduates won’t take the jobs offered them, because their parents have too much money, and the kids like living at home without having to do anything. A spoiled generation, they come out of university refusing any job that doesn’t start out as CEO of a Fortune 500 company. The reason that engineering graduates do not get job interviews is that they do not want them.

What all this leads to is an assault on “entitlements”, which means Social Security and Medicare. The elites have programmed, through their control of the media, a large part of the population, especially those who think of themselves as conservatives, to conflate “entitlements” with welfare. America is going to hell not because of foreign wars that serve no American purpose, but because people, who have paid 15% of their payroll all their lives for old age pensions and medical care, want “handouts” in their retirement years. Why do these selfish people think that working Americans should be forced through payroll taxes to pay for the pensions and medical care of the retirees? Why didn’t the retirees consume less and prepare for their own retirement?

The elite’s line, and that of their hired spokespersons in “think tanks” and universities, is that America is in trouble because of its retirees.

Too many Americans have been brainwashed to believe that America is in trouble because of its poor and its retirees. America is in trouble because it coerces a dwindling number of taxpayers to support the military/security complex’s enormous profits, American puppet governments abroad, and Israel.

The American elite’s solution for America’s problems is not merely to foreclose on the homes of Americans whose jobs were sent offshore, but to add to the numbers of distressed Americans with nothing to lose, the sick and the dispossessed retirees, and the university graduates who cannot find jobs that have been sent to Chine and India.

Of all the countries in the world, none need a revolution as bad as the United States, a country ruled by a handful of selfish oligarchs who have more income and wealth than can be spent in a lifetime.

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The Davis debate

THE stakes in the Raymond Davis saga are getting higher with each passing day. The US president has now himself claimed publicly that Mr Davis has immunity, and sent over Senator John Kerry to assert the same. This question is, however, far from clear-cut. For one, the actual role of Mr Davis here still remains murky. Even if one assumes he was performing consular
or diplomatic duties, the Vienna Convention provides different levels of immunity to various foreign representatives. According to the State Department’s own guidelines for American law-enforcement personnel, consular employees, for example, have more limited protection than embassy staff. This becomes doubly important when one considers the seriousness of the crime: Mr Davis killed two men in a gruesome act of murder, and, according to the police, not in self-defence. Given all these complexities, the US administration may be going too far in
its insistence that he has blanket immunity.
On the other hand, the Pakistani government has stated no clear view on the topic more than 20 days after the incident, and in the Lahore High Court on Thursday sought another three weeks to determine its stance. Given what is at stake in terms of US-Pakistan relations, and the opportunity that time will provide to conservative elements to fan anti-American sentiment, more urgency is needed. The PPP information
secretary added to the drama by claiming that Mr Davis had immunity and later stating that the view was her own, not that of the party.
Meanwhile, the former foreign minister and unnamed officials have claimed the government has already determined that Raymond Davis does not have blanket immunity. Mr Qureshi also said that a ‘third institution’ was present in the meeting where this finding was supposedly discussed, leading to speculation about the involvement of state institutions that should not normally be a part of such decisions. With all its claims and counterclaims, the Davis case has become an embarrassing example of delayed government action, irresponsible statements by current and
former government officials and speculation about the government’s
independence.
A more sensible handling of the problem is urgently needed from all parties. The US must ease pressure on the Pakistani government and judicial system as they determine the question of Mr Davis’s immunity. The Foreign Office and the law ministry should speed up this process to limit the drama being played out on the world stage and the possibility of right-wing elements exploiting it. Meanwhile, current and former government officials — as well as sections of the media — need to avoid fanning the flames of speculation that result from irresponsible statements and complicate the situation even further.


by Down news paper

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US Predator Drone Strikes Violate Just War Doctrinal Principles

Editor's NOTE:

Predator Drone remote controlled missile attacks are inherently immoral. Their use violates the Just War Doctrinal Corpus in multiple ways. For example;  a war is always unjust if there is an obvious lack of proportionality either because the "means" employed are grossly unsuited (read overkill here) to the "end" desired and or where the means selected or the risks taken-on by one side are clearly unmatched by the other.

The pilot of a remote controlled Drone capable of directing guided missiles against a presumed enemy faces no bodily harm in carrying out an attack, that is to say has nothing to lose due to his/her remote location. Moreover, there is no way to be confident to a moral degree of certainty that the target is in fact an enemy combatant. In many cases, innocent civilians have been killed or seriously injured. This is foreseeable, quite predictable and therefore immoral.

The United States at a minimum should discontinue the use of Predator Drone offensive attacks on the grounds that they are inherently immoral that is, morally repugnant in principle not to mention likely to create more enemies than could ever be neutralized by their use.

--Dr. J. P. Hubert


Inside the Killing Machine

President Obama is ordering a record number of Predator strikes. An exclusive interview with a man who approved ‘lethal operations.’

By Tara Mckelvey



February 15, 2011 "Newsweek" - -- It was an ordinary-looking room located in an office building in northern Virginia. The place was filled with computer monitors, keyboards, and maps. Someone sat at a desk with his hand on a joystick. John A. Rizzo, who was serving as the CIA’s acting general counsel, hovered nearby, along with other people from the agency. Together they watched images on a screen that showed a man and his family traveling down a road thousands of miles away. The vehicle slowed down, and the man climbed out.

A moment later, an explosion filled the screen, and the man was dead. “It was very businesslike,” says Rizzo. An aerial drone had killed the man, a high-level terrorism suspect, after he had gotten out of the vehicle, while members of his family were spared. “The agency was very punctilious about this,” Rizzo says. “They tried to minimize collateral damage, especially women and children.”

The broad outlines of the CIA’s operations to kill suspected terrorists have been known to the public for some time—including how the United States kills Qaeda and Taliban militants by drone aircraft in Pakistan. But the formal process of determining who should be hunted down and “blown to bits,” as Rizzo puts it, has not been previously reported. A look at the bureaucracy behind the operations reveals that it is multilayered and methodical, run by a corps of civil servants who carry out their duties in a professional manner. Still, the fact that Rizzo was involved in “murder,” as he sometimes puts it, and that operations are planned in advance in a legalistic fashion, raises questions.

More than a year after leaving the government, Rizzo, a bearded, elegant 63-year-old who wears cuff links and pale yellow ties, discussed his role in the CIA’s “lethal operations” with me over Côtes du Rhone and steak in a Washington restaurant. At times, Rizzo sounded cavalier. “It’s basically a hit list,” he said. Then he pointed a finger at my forehead and pretended to pull a trigger. “The Predator is the weapon of choice, but it could also be someone putting a bullet in your head.”

The number of such killings, carried out mostly by Predators in Pakistan, has increased dramatically during the Obama administration, and these covert actions have become an integral part of U.S. counterterrorism strategy.

How CIA staffers determine whether to target someone for lethal operations is a relatively straightforward, and yet largely unknown, story. The president does not review the individual names of people; Rizzo explains that he was the one who signed off. People in Washington talk about a “target list,” as former undersecretary of state Richard Armitage described the process at a recent event in Washington. In truth, there is probably no official CIA roster of those who are slated to die. “I never saw a list,” says a State Department official who has been involved in discussions about lethal operations, speaking without attribution because of the nature of the subject. Officials at the CIA select targets for “neutralization,” he explains. “There were individuals we were searching for, and we thought, it’s better now to neutralize that threat,” he says.

The military and the CIA often pursue the same targets—Osama bin Laden, for example—but handle different regions of the world. Sometimes they team up—or even exchange jobs. When former CIA officer Henry A. Crumpton was in Afghanistan after 9/11, he and Gen. Stanley McChrystal—the former head of Joint Special Operations Command, a secretive military unit—worked closely together, and so did their subordinates. “Some of the people I knew and who worked for me went to work for him—and vice versa,” recalls Crumpton.

Some counterterrorism experts say that President Obama and his advisers favor a more aggressive approach because it seems more practical—thatadministration officials prefer to eliminate terrorism suspects rather than detain them. “Since the U.S. political and legal situation has made aggressive interrogation a questionable activity anyway, there is less reason to seek to capture rather than kill,” wrote American University’s Kenneth Anderson, author of an essay on the subject that was read widely by Obama White House officials. “And if one intends to kill, the incentive is to do so from a standoff position because it removes potentially messy questions of surrender.”

In defense of a hard-nosed approach, administration officials say the aerial-drone strikes are wiping out al Qaeda militants and reducing the chances of another terrorist attack. They have also been careful to reassure the public that the killings are legal. When NEWSWEEK asked the administration for comment, a U.S. official who declined to be identified addressing such a sensitive subject said: “These CT [counterterrorism] operations are conducted in strict accordance with American law and are governed by legal guidance provided by the Department of Justice.”

Explains Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer, “We’re not in kindergarten on this anymore: we’ve been doing this since 2001, and there’s a well-established protocol.”

A Los Angeles Times article once described John Rizzo as “the most influential career lawyer in CIA history,” and he arguably knows more than anyone else in the government about the legal aspects of the CIA’s targeted killings. But he stumbled into the world of espionage almost by accident. He graduated from George Washington University Law School and was living in D.C. in the 1970s when the Church committee released its report on the CIA’s attempts to assassinate foreign leaders. Rizzo sensed an opportunity: “With all that going on, they’d need lawyers.” He got a CIA job soon afterward.

Decades later, as the CIA’s interrogations and lethal operations were ramped up after 9/11, Rizzo found himself at the center of controversy. He was, as he puts it, “up to my eyeballs” in President Bush’s program of enhanced interrogations in the so-called black sites, or secret prisons, located in Afghanistan and in other countries. Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo wrote the infamous “torture memo” of August 2002 because Rizzo had asked for clarification about techniques that could be used on detainees. Rizzo had once hoped to become the CIA’s general counsel, but members of the Senate intelligence committee balked because of the role he played in authorizing the interrogations. Rizzo retired in 2009.

Today, Rizzo can sometimes sound boastful. “How many law professors have signed off on a death warrant?” he asks. He is quick to emphasize that the groundwork was prepared in a judicious manner, and felt it important that he observe the killing of some of the high-level terrorism suspects via live footage shown in CIA offices. “I was concerned that it be done in the cleanest possible way,” he explains.

Clean, but always morally complex. Rizzo would sometimes find himself sitting in his office on the seventh floor of the CIA building with a cable about a terrorism suspect in front of him, and he would wonder how his Irish-Italian parents would feel about his newly assigned duties.

After President Bush authorized the CIA to hunt down al Qaeda fighters in the wake of 9/11, “the attorneys were always involved, but they were very good—very aggressive and helpful, in fact,” says Crumpton. “They would help us understand international law and cross-border issues, and they would interpret specific language of the presidential directive.”

Under another Bush order, signed several years later, a variety of people who worked in terrorist camps could be targeted, and not just named terrorism suspects; at that point, the pool of potential candidates reviewed by CIA lawyers became much larger. Despite the secrecy surrounding these orders, their scope has become clear. “The authority given in these presidential findings is surely the most sweeping and most lethal since the founding of the CIA,” William C. Banks, director of Syracuse University’s Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism, told a House committee.

The hub of activity for the targeted killings is the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, where lawyers—there are roughly 10 of them, says Rizzo—write a cable asserting that an individual poses a grave threat to the United States. The CIA cables are legalistic and carefully argued, often running up to five pages. Michael Scheuer, who used to be in charge of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit, describes “a dossier,” or a “two-page document,” along with “an appendix with supporting information, if anybody wanted to read all of it.” The dossier, he says, “would go to the lawyers, and they would decide. They were very picky.” Sometimes, Scheuer says, the hurdles may have been too high. “Very often this caused a missed opportunity. The whole idea that people got shot because someone has a hunch—I only wish that was true. If it were, there would be a lot more bad guys dead.”

Sometimes, as Rizzo recalls, the evidence against an individual would be thin, and high-level lawyers would tell their subordinates, “You guys did not make a case.” “Sometimes the justification would be that the person was thought to be at a meeting,” Rizzo explains. “It was too squishy.” The memo would get kicked back downstairs.

The cables that were “ready for prime time,” as Rizzo puts it, concluded with the following words: “Therefore we request approval for targeting for lethal operation.” There was a space provided for the signature of the general counsel, along with the word “concurred.” Rizzo says he saw about one cable each month, and at any given time there were roughly 30 individuals who were targeted. Many of them ended up dead, but not all: “No. 1 and No. 2 on the hit parade are still out there,” Rizzo says, referring to “you-know-who and [Ayman al-] Zawahiri,” a top Qaeda leader.

As administration critics have pointed out, government officials have to go through a more extensive process in order to obtain permission to wiretap someone in this country than to make someone the target of a lethal operation overseas.

Rizzo seems bitter that he and other CIA officials have been criticized for authorizing harsh interrogations under Bush, and yet there has been little outcry over the faster pace of lethal operations under Obama. (From 2004 to 2008, Bush authorized 42 drone strikes, according to the New America Foundation. The number has more than quadrupled under President Obama—to 180 at last count.)

The detainees, by and large, survived, Rizzo observes; today, high-level terrorism suspects often do not.

And for all the bureaucratic review, it’s not always precise in the real world. In December people took to the streets of Islamabad to protest the strikes and to show support for a Waziristan resident, Karim Khan, whose son and brother were killed in a strike in 2009 and has filed a lawsuit against the U.S., charging a CIA official for their deaths.

Administration officials insist that the targeted killings rest on a solid legal foundation, but many scholars disagree. Georgetown University’s Gary Solis, the author of The Law of Armed Conflict, says people at the CIA who pilot unmanned aerial vehicles are civilians directly engaged in hostilities, an act that makes them “unlawful combatants” and possibly subject to prosecution.

These days, Rizzo is working on a memoir. He does not talk about the morality of what he did—he is not that kind of guy—but lately has been trying to come to terms with the implications of the deadly task he performed, and which others are now performing in that office building in Virginia.

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Is The Army Tightening Its Grip On Egypt?

By Robert Fisk

February 14, 2011 "The Independent" - -Two days after millions of Egyptians won their revolution against the regime of Hosni Mubarak, the country's army – led by Mubarak's lifelong friend, General Mohamed el-Tantawi – further consolidated its power over Egypt yesterday, dissolving parliament and suspending the constitution. As they did so, the prime minister appointed by Mubarak, ex-General Ahmed Shafiq, told Egyptians that his first priorities were "peace and security" to prevent "chaos and disorder" – the very slogan uttered so often by the despised ex-president. Plus ça change?

In their desperation to honour the 'military council's' promise of Cairo-back-to-normal, hundreds of Egyptian troops – many unarmed – appeared in Tahrir Square to urge the remaining protesters to leave the encampment they had occupied for 20 days. At first the crowd greeted them as friends, offering them food and water. Military policemen in red berets, again without weapons, emerged to control traffic. But then a young officer began lashing demonstrators with a cane – old habits die hard in young men wearing uniforms – and for a moment there was a miniature replay of the fury visited upon the state security police here on 28 January.

It reflected a growing concern among those who overthrew Mubarak that the fruits of their victory may be gobbled up by an army largely composed of generals who achieved their power and privilege under Mubarak himself. No-one objects to the dissolution of parliament since Mubarak's assembly elections last year – and all other years -- were so transparently fraudulent. But the 'military council' gave no indication of the date for the free and fair elections which Egyptians believed they had been promised. The suspension of the constitution – a document which the millions of demonstrators anyway regarded as a laissez-passer for presidential dictatorship – left most Egyptians unmoved. And the army, having received the fulsome thanks of Israel for promising to honour the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, announced that it would hold power for only six months; no word, though, on whether they could renew their military rule after that date.

But a clear divergence is emerging between the demands of the young men and women who brought down the Mubarak regime and the concessions – if that is what they are – that the army appears willing to grant them. A small rally at the side of Tahrir Square yesterday held up a series of demands which included the suspension of Mubarak's old emergency law and freedom for political prisoners. The army has promised to drop the emergency legislation "at the right opportunity", but as long as it remains in force, it gives the military as much power to ban all protests and demonstrations as Mubarak possessed; which is one reason why those little battles broke out between the army and the people in the square yesterday.

As for the freeing of political prisoners, the military has remained suspiciously silent. Is this because there are prisoners who know too much about the army's involvement in the previous regime? Or because escaped and newly liberated prisoners are returning to Cairo and Alexandria from desert camps with terrible stories of torture and executions by – so they say – military personnel. An Egyptian army officer known to 'The Independent' insisted yesterday that the desert prisons were run by military intelligence units who worked for the interior ministry – not for the ministry of defence.

As for the top echelons of the state security police who ordered their men – and their faithful 'baltagi' plain-clothes thugs -- to attack peaceful demonstrators during the first week of the revolution, they appear to have taken the usual flight to freedom in the Arab Gulf. According to an officer in the Cairo police criminal investigation department whom I spoke to yesterday, all the officers responsible for the violence which left well over 300 Egyptians dead have fled Egypt with their families for the emirate of Abu Dhabi. The criminals who were paid by the cops to beat the protesters have gone to ground – who knows when their services might next be required? – while the middle-ranking police officers wait for justice to take its course against them. If indeed it does.

All this, of course, depends on the size of the archives left behind by the regime and the degree to which the authorities, currently the army, are prepared to make these papers available to a new and reformed judiciary. As for the city police, who hid in their police stations before they were burned down on 28th January, they turned up at the interior ministry in Cairo yesterday to demand better pay. That the police should now become protesters themselves – they are indeed to receive pay rises – was one of the more imperishable moments of post-revolutionary Egypt.

Now, of course, it is Egypt's turn to watch the effects of its own revolution on its neighbours. Scarcely a family in Egypt was unaware yesterday of the third day of protests against the president in Yemen and the police violence which accompanied them. And it is remarkable that just as Arab protesters mimic their successful counterparts in Egypt, the state security apparatus of each Arab regime faithfully follows the failed tactics of Mubarak's thugs (Editor's bold emphasis throughout).


Another irony has dawned on Egyptians. Those Arab dictators which claim to represent their people – Algeria comes to mind, and Libya, and Morocco – have signally failed to represent their people by not congratulating Egypt on its successful democratic revolution. To do so, needless to say, would be to saw off the legs of their own thrones.

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The Shame Of Being An American...

By Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research
February 15, 2011 

The United States government has overestimated the amount of shame that it and American citizens can live down. On February 15 “the indispensable people” had to suffer the hypocrisy of the U.S. Secretary of State delivering a speech about America’s commitment to Internet freedom while the U.S. Department of Justice (sic) brought unconstitutional action against Twitter to reveal any connection between WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning, the American hero who, in keeping with the U.S. Military Code, exposed U.S. government war crimes and who is being held in punishing conditions not permitted by the U.S. Constitution. The corrupt U.S. government is trying to create a “conspiracy” case against Julian Assange in order to punish him for revealing U.S. government documents that prove beyond every doubt the mendacity of the U.S. government.

This is pretty bad, but it pales in comparison to the implications revealed on February 15 in the British newspaper, The Guardian. The Guardianobtained an interview with “Curveball,” the source for Colin Powell’s speech of total lies to the United Nations about Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Colin Powell’s speech created the stage for the illegal American invasion of Iraq. The Guardian describes “Curveball” as “the man who pulled off one of the greatest confidence tricks in the history of modern intelligence.” As The Guardian puts it, “Curveball” “manufactured a tale of dread.”

U.S. “intelligence” never interviewed “Curveball.” The Americans started a war based on second-hand information given to them by incompetent German intelligence, which fell for “Curveball’s” lies that today German intelligence disbelieves.

As the world now knows, Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The Bush/Cheney Regime, of course, knew this, but “Curveball’s” lies were useful to their undeclared agenda. In his interview with The Guardian, “Curveball,” Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, admitted that he made the whole story up. He wanted to do in Saddam Hussein and told whatever fantasy lie he could make up that would serve his purpose.

If the Bush/Cheney Regime had really believed that Saddam Hussein had world-threatening weapons of mass destruction, it would have been a criminal act to concentrate America’s invading force in a small area of Kuwait where a few WMD could have wiped out the entire U.S. invasion force, thus ending the war before it began.

Some Americans are so thoughtless that they would say that Saddam Hussein would never have used the weapons, because we would have done this and that to Iraq, even nuking Baghdad. But why would Saddam Hussein care if he and his regime were already marked for death? Why would a doomed man desist from inflicting an extraordinary defeat on the American Superpower, thus encouraging Arabs everywhere?

Moreover, if Saddam Hussein was unwilling to use his WMD against an invading force, when would he ever use them? It was completely obvious to the U.S. government that no such weapons existed. The weapons inspectors made that completely clear to the Bush/Cheney Regime. There were no Iraqi WMD, and everyone in the U.S. government was apprised of that fact.

Why was there no wonder or comment in the “free” media that the White House accused Iraq of possession of terrible weapons of mass destruction, but nevertheless concentrated its invasion force in such a small area that such weapons could easily have wiped out the invading force?

Does democracy really exist in a land where the media is incompetent and the government is unaccountable and lies through its teeth every time if opens its mouth?

“Curveball” represents a new level of immorality. Rafid al-Janabi shares responsibility for one million dead Iraqis, 4 million displaced Iraqis, a destroyed country, 4,754 dead American troops, 40,000 wounded and maimed American troops, $3 trillion of wasted US resources, every dollar of which is a debt burden to the American population and a threat to the dollar as reserve currency, ten years of propaganda and lies about terrorism and al Qaeda connections, an American "war on terror" that is destroying countless lives in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and which has targeted Iran, and which has destroyed the Bill of Rights, the US Constitution, and the civil liberties that they guarantee. And the piece of lying excrement, Rafid al-Janabi, is proud that he brought Saddam Hussein's downfall at such enormous expense.

Now that Rafid al-Janabi is revealed in The Guardian interview, how safe is he? There are millions of Iraqis capable of exterminating him for their suffering, and tens of thousands of Americans whose lives have been ruined by Rafid al-Janabi’s lies.

Why does the U.S. government pursue Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for telling the truth when “Curveball,” whose lies wiped out huge numbers of people along with America’s reputation, thinks he can start a political party in Iraq?  (Editor's bold emphasis throughout) If the piece of excrement, Rafid al-Janabi, is not killed the minute he appears in Iraq, it will be a miracle.

So we are left to contemplate that a totally incompetent American government has bought enormous instability to its puppet states in the Middle East, because it desperately wanted to believe faulty “intelligence” from Germany that an immoralist provided evidence that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction.

And America is a superpower, an indispensable nation.

What a total joke!

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'I lied about WMD to topple Saddam'

The defector who convinced the White House that Iraq had a secret biological weapons programme has admitted for the first time that he lied about his story, then watched in shock as it was used to justify the war.

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.

In the only other at length interview Janabi has given he denied all knowledge of his supposed role in helping the US build a case for invading Saddam's Iraq.

In a series of meetings with the Guardian in Germany where he has been granted asylum, he said he had told a German official, who he identified as Dr Paul, about mobile bioweapons trucks throughout 2000. He said the BND had identified him as a Baghdad-trained chemical engineer and approached him shortly after 13 March of that year, looking for inside information about Saddam's Iraq.

"I had a problem with the Saddam regime," he said. "I wanted to get rid of him and now I had this chance."

He portrays the BND as gullible and so eager to tease details from him that they gave him a Perry's Chemical Engineering Handbook to help communicate. He still has the book in his small, rented flat in Karlsruhe, south-west Germany.

"They were asking me about pumps for filtration, how to make detergent after the reaction," he said. "Any engineer who studied in this field can explain or answer any question they asked."

Janabi claimed he was first exposed as a liar as early as mid-2000, when the BND travelled to a Gulf city, believed to be Dubai, to speak with his former boss at the Military Industries Commission in Iraq, Dr Bassil Latif.

The Guardian has learned separately that British intelligence officials were at that meeting, investigating a claim made by Janabi that Latif's son, who was studying in Britain, was procuring weapons for Saddam.

That claim was proven false, and Latif strongly denied Janabi's claim of mobile bioweapons trucks and another allegation that 12 people had died during an accident at a secret bioweapons facility in south-east Baghdad.

The German officials returned to confront him with Latif's version. "He says, 'There are no trucks,' and I say, 'OK, when [Latif says] there no trucks then [there are none],'" Janabi recalled.

He said the BND did not contact him again until the end of May 2002. But he said it soon became clear that he was still being taken seriously.

He claimed the officials gave him an incentive to speak by implying that his then pregnant Moroccan-born wife may not be able to travel from Spain to join him in Germany if he did not co-operate with them. "He says, you work with us or your wife and child go to Morocco."

The meetings continued throughout 2002 and it became apparent to Janabi that a case for war was being constructed. He said he was not asked again about the bioweapons trucks until a month before Powell's speech.

After the speech, Janabi said he called his handler at the BND and accused the secret service of breaking an agreement that they would not share anything he had told them with another country. He said he was told not to speak and placed in confinement for around 90 days.

With the US now leaving Iraq, Janabi said he was comfortable with what he did, despite the chaos of the past eight years and the civilian death toll in Iraq, which stands at more than 100,000.

"I tell you something when I hear anybody – not just in Iraq but in any war – [is] killed, I am very sad. But give me another solution. Can you give me another solution?

"Believe me, there was no other way to bring about freedom to Iraq. There were no other possibilities."


By: The Guardian

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