In the last presidential race Mitt Romney was forced to drop out over his false claims and unjustified attacks, now attempting to set himself in motion for another bid, his false sense of memory is playing havoc with his image. Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney declared, last week, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Democrats the party of "No!" — no to balanced budgets, limits on lawsuits, tax cuts and tough interrogations of terror suspects.
Romney's assertions lacked context at best and at worst were flat-out false, a stronger comment is being withheld. While Romney and his fellow Republicans were filling the air with fabrications liberal Democratic activists were torturing the true facts online.
Why do we have to expect politicians and their allies to fudge facts?
Even President Obama embellishes the number of jobs created by last year's stimulus bill.
Such distortion and dishonesty cause Americans to be increasingly skeptical of, and even cynical about their political institutions and leaders. Once people lose faith in the political system, they're less likely to vote, less willing to pay taxes to support government-run programs, less motivated to run for office themselves and — sociologists say — they're even less likely to get involved in their own communities.
Romney was deceitful about almost every claim (i) Democrats are opposed to tax cuts. Obama’s stimulus bill included $288 billion in tax benefits, (ii) Democrats are against balanced budgets, A Democratic president, Bill Clinton, oversaw surpluses and the nation's debt skyrocketed under President Bush, a conservative Republican. (iii) Democrats are against "tort reform," or the limiting of lawsuits. Obama has put this idea on the table in an effort to get Republicans to address the troubled health care system.
We don’t need one more politician in Washington who doesn’t know the truth from a lie, Romney has shot himself in the foot, again!
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Exposing the supporters of “The Mount Vernon statement”: The Tea Party Manifesto
The entire crust of the Tea Party movement has been a right wing sham. It might have made sense if not for its supporters, primarily Former Reagan administration Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, who has become involved as a leader of sorts in the tea party movement. Meese who was forced to resign as attorney general in 1988 over his role in three scandals, the Wedtech scandal, the Hamilton Promise software scandal, and the Michael Reconisuito CIA Scandal, should have resigned himself to an early retirement, but instead he has aligned himself with an organization that has a strong potentials for another political scandal, “The Tea Party”. If not a further disgrace for the three men involved, Meese, Feulner, and Regnery.
Meese and his close associates, Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner Jr. which is financed by several far right leaning foundations such as: the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Foundations, the John M. Olin Foundation, Inc., Castle Rock Foundation, JM Foundation, Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. Many of these same foundations are involved in the “Project for a New American Century” (PNAC) which wrote the hand book for wars of choice in the Middle East, namely a pre emptive attack against IRAN, IRAQ, SERIA, and Saudi Arabia.
The PNAC attempted to advise President Clinton to strike IRAQ. He “intelligently” denied their request.
Heritage has received donations from the East Asian nations of South Korea and Taiwan; SourceWatch reports that in 1988 Korean intelligence discovered that Heritage received $2.2 million from the South Korean National Assembly during the 1980's. Although Heritage denies this claim, they do admit to receiving a $400,000 grant from the Korean conglomerate Samsung.
The Korea Foundation, a conduit of the Korean government, has also donated almost $1 million to Heritage in the past three years.
Another associate is American Spectator publisher Alfred Regnery, Regnery served in the Justice Department during the Reagan Administration under Meese he and Meese are involved together is some questionable financial dealings involving their management of donations to The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.
Meese and Regnery: The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.
The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund – is a right-wing Virginia non-profit organization overseen by Ed Meese, William Bradford Reynolds, and Al Regnery just what it does with the funds is a serious question? Most of the money collected has gone to collecting additional funds, salary for its leadership, and to prop up other right-wing organizations to which they have ties, like The American Spectator, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and the Federalist Society
Tens of thousands of Americans have contributed to the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund. But while those donations total millions every year, the fund spends only pennies on the dollar directly assisting officers facing criminal charges.
Over the past five years, the charity collected more than $13 million, primarily through direct-mail pitches. But most of that money — more than $9 million — went right back to the professional fundraisers hired by the nonprofit legal defense fund.
Last year, for example, the group spent 81 cents on fundraising for every dollar collected, according to federal tax forms. After other expenses, the defense fund last year devoted only about 8 cents on the dollar to charitable grants, its tax forms show.
That grant money — about $275,000 — was less than the group's co-founders paid themselves in salary and benefits for the year. David H. Martin, a Washington lawyer who serves as chairman, collected $156,000, while Alfred Regnery, publisher of The American Spectator Magazine, received $81,000 for the part-time job of secretary-treasurer. In addition, the charity paid $54,000 into retirement accounts for Martin and Regnery.
Administrative costs have soared, particularly for salaries and rent. For years, the legal defense fund was run out of Martin's law office. But the nonprofit now subleases space at Regnery's financially strapped American Spectator. The initial rent in 2003 was $9,000 a year, but the nonprofit agreed last year to increase its payments to $42,000 a year — about a third of the total rent for the American Spectator's space.
And even as the charity devoted only a small fraction of its budget to grants, not all of the money doled out went to help accused officers. Instead, the charity's executives have sent a sizable and growing amount of cash to a small number of universities and conservative policy groups not mentioned in their fundraising pitches.
The charity's biggest beneficiary last year, for example, was not a police officer, but the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a national campus-based think tank that promotes "limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, the rule of law, market economy, and moral norms."
The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund sent $75,000 to the institute last year, part of at least $360,000 the defense fund has pledged. Regnery, secretary-treasurer of the defense fund, is chairman of the institute's board of trustees. The charity has also given tens of thousands of dollars to the Federalist Society, described by The American Conservative magazine as a "training ground for young conservative lawyers"; to the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University in Virginia, a leading center of conservative and libertarian legal studies; and to a project at McDaniel College — Martin's alma mater.
Wake up and look at who is behind any movement.
Meese and his close associates, Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner Jr. which is financed by several far right leaning foundations such as: the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Foundations, the John M. Olin Foundation, Inc., Castle Rock Foundation, JM Foundation, Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. Many of these same foundations are involved in the “Project for a New American Century” (PNAC) which wrote the hand book for wars of choice in the Middle East, namely a pre emptive attack against IRAN, IRAQ, SERIA, and Saudi Arabia.
The PNAC attempted to advise President Clinton to strike IRAQ. He “intelligently” denied their request.
Heritage has received donations from the East Asian nations of South Korea and Taiwan; SourceWatch reports that in 1988 Korean intelligence discovered that Heritage received $2.2 million from the South Korean National Assembly during the 1980's. Although Heritage denies this claim, they do admit to receiving a $400,000 grant from the Korean conglomerate Samsung.
The Korea Foundation, a conduit of the Korean government, has also donated almost $1 million to Heritage in the past three years.
Another associate is American Spectator publisher Alfred Regnery, Regnery served in the Justice Department during the Reagan Administration under Meese he and Meese are involved together is some questionable financial dealings involving their management of donations to The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.
Meese and Regnery: The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.
The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund – is a right-wing Virginia non-profit organization overseen by Ed Meese, William Bradford Reynolds, and Al Regnery just what it does with the funds is a serious question? Most of the money collected has gone to collecting additional funds, salary for its leadership, and to prop up other right-wing organizations to which they have ties, like The American Spectator, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and the Federalist Society
Tens of thousands of Americans have contributed to the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund. But while those donations total millions every year, the fund spends only pennies on the dollar directly assisting officers facing criminal charges.
Over the past five years, the charity collected more than $13 million, primarily through direct-mail pitches. But most of that money — more than $9 million — went right back to the professional fundraisers hired by the nonprofit legal defense fund.
Last year, for example, the group spent 81 cents on fundraising for every dollar collected, according to federal tax forms. After other expenses, the defense fund last year devoted only about 8 cents on the dollar to charitable grants, its tax forms show.
That grant money — about $275,000 — was less than the group's co-founders paid themselves in salary and benefits for the year. David H. Martin, a Washington lawyer who serves as chairman, collected $156,000, while Alfred Regnery, publisher of The American Spectator Magazine, received $81,000 for the part-time job of secretary-treasurer. In addition, the charity paid $54,000 into retirement accounts for Martin and Regnery.
Administrative costs have soared, particularly for salaries and rent. For years, the legal defense fund was run out of Martin's law office. But the nonprofit now subleases space at Regnery's financially strapped American Spectator. The initial rent in 2003 was $9,000 a year, but the nonprofit agreed last year to increase its payments to $42,000 a year — about a third of the total rent for the American Spectator's space.
And even as the charity devoted only a small fraction of its budget to grants, not all of the money doled out went to help accused officers. Instead, the charity's executives have sent a sizable and growing amount of cash to a small number of universities and conservative policy groups not mentioned in their fundraising pitches.
The charity's biggest beneficiary last year, for example, was not a police officer, but the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a national campus-based think tank that promotes "limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, the rule of law, market economy, and moral norms."
The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund sent $75,000 to the institute last year, part of at least $360,000 the defense fund has pledged. Regnery, secretary-treasurer of the defense fund, is chairman of the institute's board of trustees. The charity has also given tens of thousands of dollars to the Federalist Society, described by The American Conservative magazine as a "training ground for young conservative lawyers"; to the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University in Virginia, a leading center of conservative and libertarian legal studies; and to a project at McDaniel College — Martin's alma mater.
Wake up and look at who is behind any movement.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Lawyers, Americas Impaired Intellectuals
"It has long been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression,... that the germ of dissolution of our Federal Government is in the constitution of the Federal Judiciary — an irresponsible body, working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief over the field of jurisdiction until all shall be usurped from the States and the government be consolidated into one. To this I am opposed." Thomas Jefferson 1821
Since judges are drawn from the ranks of lawyers, about whom former Chief Justice Warren Burger, U.S. Supreme Court from 1969 to 1986, has stated: "75 to 90 percent of American trial lawyers are incompetent, dishonest, or both," the incompetence and dishonesty levels of judges is certain to be at least this high.
In any given year, 10 practicing “insured” lawyers out of every 100 see a malpractice claim. And there are others that aren’t insured at all. With most people unable to find a qualified attorney who will sue a brother in arms, or have been forced into bankruptcy by their lawyer’s incompetence level, attorneys have become a Bastian of greed and corruption and lawbreakers who steal then slither away in the darkness.
And yet incompetence is generally rewarded in Washington .
Take for example the competency level of BUSH justice department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee, each authorized the CIA to use torture methods of water-boarding and other extreme measures on captured suspects in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, the word here is suspects of which most were innocent!
Bush administration officials at the time were so worried about the prospect that CIA officers might be criminally prosecuted for torture that one senior official - Attorney General John Ashcroft - even suggested that President Bush issue "advance pardons" for those engaging in water-boarding, a proposal that he was quickly told was not possible. John Ashcroft was the top lawyer in the US and he failed to understand the Constitutions limitations.
The views of former Justice lawyer John Yoo were deemed to be so extreme and out of step with legal precedents that they prompted the Justice Department's internal watchdog office to conclude last year that he committed "intentional professional misconduct" Yoo’s, position was strongly backed by David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's legal counsel. What happened to them?
David S. Addington, who was a forceful voice in internal legal debates, as of March 2009 is said to still be looking for work.
As for Bybee and Yoo they were rewarded, Yoo, is now a Berkeley law professor, and his boss at the time, Jay Bybee, is now a federal judge, approved by congress!
Yoo was so out of step with his legal training that he either believed “Bush Could Order Civilians to Be 'Massacred' as he has stated, or so corrupt that his teaching at Berkley is a major concern for the future of this profession.
And as for Bybee, as a federal judge he wields a lot of power that directed against the constitution could endanger our remaining rights. And his appointment to the Supreme Court could mark the end of what remains of this tattered democracy.
Since judges are drawn from the ranks of lawyers, about whom former Chief Justice Warren Burger, U.S. Supreme Court from 1969 to 1986, has stated: "75 to 90 percent of American trial lawyers are incompetent, dishonest, or both," the incompetence and dishonesty levels of judges is certain to be at least this high.
In any given year, 10 practicing “insured” lawyers out of every 100 see a malpractice claim. And there are others that aren’t insured at all. With most people unable to find a qualified attorney who will sue a brother in arms, or have been forced into bankruptcy by their lawyer’s incompetence level, attorneys have become a Bastian of greed and corruption and lawbreakers who steal then slither away in the darkness.
And yet incompetence is generally rewarded in Washington .
Take for example the competency level of BUSH justice department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee, each authorized the CIA to use torture methods of water-boarding and other extreme measures on captured suspects in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, the word here is suspects of which most were innocent!
Bush administration officials at the time were so worried about the prospect that CIA officers might be criminally prosecuted for torture that one senior official - Attorney General John Ashcroft - even suggested that President Bush issue "advance pardons" for those engaging in water-boarding, a proposal that he was quickly told was not possible. John Ashcroft was the top lawyer in the US and he failed to understand the Constitutions limitations.
The views of former Justice lawyer John Yoo were deemed to be so extreme and out of step with legal precedents that they prompted the Justice Department's internal watchdog office to conclude last year that he committed "intentional professional misconduct" Yoo’s, position was strongly backed by David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's legal counsel. What happened to them?
David S. Addington, who was a forceful voice in internal legal debates, as of March 2009 is said to still be looking for work.
As for Bybee and Yoo they were rewarded, Yoo, is now a Berkeley law professor, and his boss at the time, Jay Bybee, is now a federal judge, approved by congress!
Yoo was so out of step with his legal training that he either believed “Bush Could Order Civilians to Be 'Massacred' as he has stated, or so corrupt that his teaching at Berkley is a major concern for the future of this profession.
And as for Bybee, as a federal judge he wields a lot of power that directed against the constitution could endanger our remaining rights. And his appointment to the Supreme Court could mark the end of what remains of this tattered democracy.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
False Prophets of War!
Were the Taliban an enemy of the US?
Was Bin Laden responsible for the 9/11 World Trade Center attack?
These are two questions that have daunted the American psyche since the US attacked Iraq under “knowingly” false pretenses. Allegations of weapons of mass destruction, the US government knew did not exists, were the cause that beat a war drum and marshaled the might of our military against a lesser army, in short we wanted Iraq’s Oil and we took it.
We also wanted the Unocal Pipeline across Afghanistan, and as discussions faltered we forced the Taliban out to put our own puppet in, now that Pipeline has been secured.
Our latest focus, the Caspian Sea‘s rich oil resources, so Iran is another enemy that must be dealt with, allegations of uranium enrichment has become the drum beat and propaganda of this seemingly inevitable confrontation.
With war after war as our centerpiece, we have become bullies of the world, sacking the resources of nations at our will. As the early Roman warrior, and before them Alexander we seek global dominance. America does not free mankind through democracy it enslaves it through that illusion.
We have become that which we abhor most, terrorists, war mongers, and politically totalitarian. We are the American generation of imperialists who chant the illusion of democracy, while we torture our victims in the name of salvation.
Yet, just as war with Iran is not necessary, neither were Afghanistan or Iraq.
After almost 9 years of continuous war, documents have been declassified and released that establish, the US made a false case to attack not only the Taliban, and initiated a war of choice, but were actually the terrorists we seek to destroy.
Evidence is now available from multiple sources, including recently declassified U.S. State Department documents, which shows that the Taliban regime led by Mullah Mohammad Omar imposed strict isolation on Osama bin Laden after 1998 to prevent him from carrying out any plots against the United States.
The evidence contradicts claims by top Barack Obama administration officials that Mullah Omar was complicit in Osama bin Laden's involvement in the al Qaeda plot to carry out the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attack. It also bolsters the credibility of Taliban statements in recent months asserting that it has no interest in al Qaeda's global jihadist aims.
Mullah Omar's willingness to allow bin Laden to remain in Afghanistan was conditioned from the beginning, according to documents, on two prohibitions on his activities: bin Laden was forbidden to talk to the media without the consent of the Taliban regime or to make plans to attack U.S. targets.
In retaliation for the bombings of two U.S. Embassies in East Africa on Aug. 7, 1998 The US Government believing Bin Laden guilty, in August 1998 engaged in cruise missile strikes against bin Laden run training camps in Afghanistan. This attack by the US appears to have had a dramatic impact on Mullah Omar and the Taliban regime's policy toward bin Laden.
Two days after the strike, Omar unexpectedly entered into a phone conversation with a US State Department official and one of his aides, he told the U.S. official he was unaware of any evidence that bin Laden "had engaged in or planned terrorist acts while on Afghan soil". The Taliban leader said he was "open to dialogue" with the United States and asked for evidence of bin Laden's involvement, according to the State Department cable reporting the conversation.
Only three weeks after Omar asked for evidence against bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader sought to allay Taliban suspicions by appearing to accept the prohibition by Omar against planning any actions against the United States.
In an interview with al Jazeera, (The mid east version of CNN), bin Laden stated "There is an opinion among the Taliban that we should not move from within Afghanistan against any other state, he added "This was the decision of the Commander of the Faithful, as is known." Mullah Omar had taken the title "Commander of the Faithful"
During September and October 1998, the Taliban apparently sought to position itself to turn bin Laden over to the Saudi government by obtaining a ruling from the Afghan Supreme Court that bin Laden was guilty of the Embassy bombings.
In a conversation with the U.S. chargé in Islamabad on Nov. 28, 1998, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, Omar's spokesman and chief adviser on foreign affairs, referred to a previous Taliban request to the United States for evidence of bin Laden's guilt to be examined by the Afghan Supreme Court, (according to the U.S. diplomat's report to the State Department).
Accordingly with Omar’s request, the US failed to provide the Afghan Supreme Court such evidence supporting their claim that bin Laden was involved. The court thus ruled that no evidence had been presented warranted the conviction of bin Laden.
Muttawakil said the court trial approach had "not worked" but suggested that the Taliban regime was now carrying out a strategy to "restrict [bin Laden's] activities in such a way that he would decide to leave of his own volition."
Meanwhile, the US Media and public officials were blaming the Taliban of protecting bin Laden.
In the face of a new Taliban hostility, bin Laden sought to convince Mullah Omar that he had given his personal allegiance to Omar as a Muslim. In April 2001 bin Laden referred publicly to having sworn allegiance to Mullah Omar as the "Commander of the Faithful".
Even in summer 2001, as the Taliban regime became increasingly dependent on foreign jihadi troop contingents, including Arabs trained in bin Laden's camps, for its defense against the military advances of the Northern Alliance, Mullah Omar found yet another way to express his unhappiness with bin Laden's presence.
In Late January, Geoff Morrell, the spokesman for Defense Secretary Robert Gates, suggested that the United States could not negotiate with Mullah Omar, because he has "the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands," implying that he had knowingly allowed bin Laden's planning of the 9/11 attacks. Yet no such evidence exists to support the US storyline. In fact this story seems to be wholly inaccurate in face of what we now know.
It is more likely that the US wanted to attack and remove the Taliban, and after we succeeded, the Taliban now appear to be waging war in retribution.
Why did we really invade Afghanistan?
We knew that the Taliban were not protecting Bin Laden and we had no information that Bin Laden was behind the World Trade Center attack, but we do know this the hijackers were all Saudi Nationals, and we needed oil and lots of it
In 2001, the U.S imported 54% of the oil it required, importing 11-12 million barrels a day and producing about 8-9 million a day. The US was consuming about 20 million barrels of oil daily.
Of those imports, 48% came from the Western Hemisphere and 30% came from the Persian Gulf region, with the rest came from Africa and Europe.
The Persian Gulf Region contains 590 billion barrels of known reserves. Add Iran, Libya and Algeria and you have another 130 billion barrels. This enormous pool of oil that stretches from Algeria to Iran is estimated at 720 billion barrels. The reserves expected from the Caspian Sea in Central Asia will be added to this total shortly. Those reserves are estimated to be another 44 billion barrels of oil reserves and possibly more.
The Afghanistan war is about securing the territory through which the oil and gas pipelines will have to pass through in order to ensure Russia, China and Iran are out-maneuvered in the last great wars for the last of the global oil supplies on planet Earth. Iran and Russia within the past month have secured a cooperative agreement over the Caspian oil reserves and have possibly out maneuvered the US interests.
Unocal a company now owned by Chevron in 1995, entered the picture and began negotiations with the Taliban to construct an oil pipeline:
Unocal signed a tentative agreement with the Turkmenistan government to research the possibilities of constructing an oil pipeline to Pakistan by way of Afghanistan. As the project developed, Unocal began to seek an agreement with the Taliban, who had recently risen to power, to construct a pipeline across their country. On two separate occasions, in February and December 1997, Taliban officials were flown to the US to meet with, and be wined and dined by, Unocal executives. One of those executives was claimed to have been Hamid Karzai (Currently the US Installed President of Afghanistan) Although Karzai denies his involvement with Unocal, there is strong evidence to support his connections.
Background on Karzai, Bush and UNOCAL
This information is quoted from an article by the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), globalresearch.ca, January 23, 2002 (Reprinted here with fair use permission)
According to Afghan, Iranian, and Turkish government sources, Hamid Karzai, the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan, was a top adviser to the El Segundo, California-based UNOCAL Corporation which was negotiating with the Taliban to construct a Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan.
Karzai, the leader of the southern Afghan Pashtun Durrani tribe, was a member of the mujaheddin that fought the Soviets during the 1980s. He was a top contactor for the CIA and maintained close relations with CIA Director William Casey, and then Vice President George HW Bush, and the Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) Service. Later, Karzai and a number of his brothers moved to the United States under the auspices of the CIA.
According to Middle East and South Asian sources Karzai serve the agency's interests, as well as those of the Bush Family and their oil friends in negotiating the CentGas deal.
When one peers beyond all of the rhetoric of the White House and Pentagon concerning the Taliban, a clear pattern emerges showing that construction of the trans-Afghan pipeline was a top priority of the Bush administration from the outset, and why we invaded Afghanistan.
Although UNOCAL claims it abandoned the pipeline project in December 1998, the series of meetings held between U.S., Pakistani, and Taliban officials after 1998, indicates the project was never off the table.
Note: According to European intelligence sources; Meetings between the Taliban and the US Government over the pipe line are said to have continued even after the September 11, attack and the beginning of the war.
Governments lie, and we are the ultimate victims of their treachery.
Was Bin Laden responsible for the 9/11 World Trade Center attack?
These are two questions that have daunted the American psyche since the US attacked Iraq under “knowingly” false pretenses. Allegations of weapons of mass destruction, the US government knew did not exists, were the cause that beat a war drum and marshaled the might of our military against a lesser army, in short we wanted Iraq’s Oil and we took it.
We also wanted the Unocal Pipeline across Afghanistan, and as discussions faltered we forced the Taliban out to put our own puppet in, now that Pipeline has been secured.
Our latest focus, the Caspian Sea‘s rich oil resources, so Iran is another enemy that must be dealt with, allegations of uranium enrichment has become the drum beat and propaganda of this seemingly inevitable confrontation.
With war after war as our centerpiece, we have become bullies of the world, sacking the resources of nations at our will. As the early Roman warrior, and before them Alexander we seek global dominance. America does not free mankind through democracy it enslaves it through that illusion.
We have become that which we abhor most, terrorists, war mongers, and politically totalitarian. We are the American generation of imperialists who chant the illusion of democracy, while we torture our victims in the name of salvation.
Yet, just as war with Iran is not necessary, neither were Afghanistan or Iraq.
After almost 9 years of continuous war, documents have been declassified and released that establish, the US made a false case to attack not only the Taliban, and initiated a war of choice, but were actually the terrorists we seek to destroy.
Evidence is now available from multiple sources, including recently declassified U.S. State Department documents, which shows that the Taliban regime led by Mullah Mohammad Omar imposed strict isolation on Osama bin Laden after 1998 to prevent him from carrying out any plots against the United States.
The evidence contradicts claims by top Barack Obama administration officials that Mullah Omar was complicit in Osama bin Laden's involvement in the al Qaeda plot to carry out the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attack. It also bolsters the credibility of Taliban statements in recent months asserting that it has no interest in al Qaeda's global jihadist aims.
Mullah Omar's willingness to allow bin Laden to remain in Afghanistan was conditioned from the beginning, according to documents, on two prohibitions on his activities: bin Laden was forbidden to talk to the media without the consent of the Taliban regime or to make plans to attack U.S. targets.
In retaliation for the bombings of two U.S. Embassies in East Africa on Aug. 7, 1998 The US Government believing Bin Laden guilty, in August 1998 engaged in cruise missile strikes against bin Laden run training camps in Afghanistan. This attack by the US appears to have had a dramatic impact on Mullah Omar and the Taliban regime's policy toward bin Laden.
Two days after the strike, Omar unexpectedly entered into a phone conversation with a US State Department official and one of his aides, he told the U.S. official he was unaware of any evidence that bin Laden "had engaged in or planned terrorist acts while on Afghan soil". The Taliban leader said he was "open to dialogue" with the United States and asked for evidence of bin Laden's involvement, according to the State Department cable reporting the conversation.
Only three weeks after Omar asked for evidence against bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader sought to allay Taliban suspicions by appearing to accept the prohibition by Omar against planning any actions against the United States.
In an interview with al Jazeera, (The mid east version of CNN), bin Laden stated "There is an opinion among the Taliban that we should not move from within Afghanistan against any other state, he added "This was the decision of the Commander of the Faithful, as is known." Mullah Omar had taken the title "Commander of the Faithful"
During September and October 1998, the Taliban apparently sought to position itself to turn bin Laden over to the Saudi government by obtaining a ruling from the Afghan Supreme Court that bin Laden was guilty of the Embassy bombings.
In a conversation with the U.S. chargé in Islamabad on Nov. 28, 1998, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, Omar's spokesman and chief adviser on foreign affairs, referred to a previous Taliban request to the United States for evidence of bin Laden's guilt to be examined by the Afghan Supreme Court, (according to the U.S. diplomat's report to the State Department).
Accordingly with Omar’s request, the US failed to provide the Afghan Supreme Court such evidence supporting their claim that bin Laden was involved. The court thus ruled that no evidence had been presented warranted the conviction of bin Laden.
Muttawakil said the court trial approach had "not worked" but suggested that the Taliban regime was now carrying out a strategy to "restrict [bin Laden's] activities in such a way that he would decide to leave of his own volition."
Meanwhile, the US Media and public officials were blaming the Taliban of protecting bin Laden.
In the face of a new Taliban hostility, bin Laden sought to convince Mullah Omar that he had given his personal allegiance to Omar as a Muslim. In April 2001 bin Laden referred publicly to having sworn allegiance to Mullah Omar as the "Commander of the Faithful".
Even in summer 2001, as the Taliban regime became increasingly dependent on foreign jihadi troop contingents, including Arabs trained in bin Laden's camps, for its defense against the military advances of the Northern Alliance, Mullah Omar found yet another way to express his unhappiness with bin Laden's presence.
In Late January, Geoff Morrell, the spokesman for Defense Secretary Robert Gates, suggested that the United States could not negotiate with Mullah Omar, because he has "the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands," implying that he had knowingly allowed bin Laden's planning of the 9/11 attacks. Yet no such evidence exists to support the US storyline. In fact this story seems to be wholly inaccurate in face of what we now know.
It is more likely that the US wanted to attack and remove the Taliban, and after we succeeded, the Taliban now appear to be waging war in retribution.
Why did we really invade Afghanistan?
We knew that the Taliban were not protecting Bin Laden and we had no information that Bin Laden was behind the World Trade Center attack, but we do know this the hijackers were all Saudi Nationals, and we needed oil and lots of it
In 2001, the U.S imported 54% of the oil it required, importing 11-12 million barrels a day and producing about 8-9 million a day. The US was consuming about 20 million barrels of oil daily.
Of those imports, 48% came from the Western Hemisphere and 30% came from the Persian Gulf region, with the rest came from Africa and Europe.
The Persian Gulf Region contains 590 billion barrels of known reserves. Add Iran, Libya and Algeria and you have another 130 billion barrels. This enormous pool of oil that stretches from Algeria to Iran is estimated at 720 billion barrels. The reserves expected from the Caspian Sea in Central Asia will be added to this total shortly. Those reserves are estimated to be another 44 billion barrels of oil reserves and possibly more.
The Afghanistan war is about securing the territory through which the oil and gas pipelines will have to pass through in order to ensure Russia, China and Iran are out-maneuvered in the last great wars for the last of the global oil supplies on planet Earth. Iran and Russia within the past month have secured a cooperative agreement over the Caspian oil reserves and have possibly out maneuvered the US interests.
Unocal a company now owned by Chevron in 1995, entered the picture and began negotiations with the Taliban to construct an oil pipeline:
Unocal signed a tentative agreement with the Turkmenistan government to research the possibilities of constructing an oil pipeline to Pakistan by way of Afghanistan. As the project developed, Unocal began to seek an agreement with the Taliban, who had recently risen to power, to construct a pipeline across their country. On two separate occasions, in February and December 1997, Taliban officials were flown to the US to meet with, and be wined and dined by, Unocal executives. One of those executives was claimed to have been Hamid Karzai (Currently the US Installed President of Afghanistan) Although Karzai denies his involvement with Unocal, there is strong evidence to support his connections.
Background on Karzai, Bush and UNOCAL
This information is quoted from an article by the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), globalresearch.ca, January 23, 2002 (Reprinted here with fair use permission)
According to Afghan, Iranian, and Turkish government sources, Hamid Karzai, the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan, was a top adviser to the El Segundo, California-based UNOCAL Corporation which was negotiating with the Taliban to construct a Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan.
Karzai, the leader of the southern Afghan Pashtun Durrani tribe, was a member of the mujaheddin that fought the Soviets during the 1980s. He was a top contactor for the CIA and maintained close relations with CIA Director William Casey, and then Vice President George HW Bush, and the Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) Service. Later, Karzai and a number of his brothers moved to the United States under the auspices of the CIA.
According to Middle East and South Asian sources Karzai serve the agency's interests, as well as those of the Bush Family and their oil friends in negotiating the CentGas deal.
When one peers beyond all of the rhetoric of the White House and Pentagon concerning the Taliban, a clear pattern emerges showing that construction of the trans-Afghan pipeline was a top priority of the Bush administration from the outset, and why we invaded Afghanistan.
Although UNOCAL claims it abandoned the pipeline project in December 1998, the series of meetings held between U.S., Pakistani, and Taliban officials after 1998, indicates the project was never off the table.
Note: According to European intelligence sources; Meetings between the Taliban and the US Government over the pipe line are said to have continued even after the September 11, attack and the beginning of the war.
Governments lie, and we are the ultimate victims of their treachery.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Obama tied to FDIC, Wall Street Scam
It all started in June 2008, when the FDIC took control of Indymac Bank, that of itself wasn’t strange as many large banks would collapse over the type of loans and the creative insurance programs these banks invested in.
But what occurred in March 2009 will make your hair stand on edge. It displays the open corruption between the White House, The Banks, and those so well connected to the current administration and Washington insiders.
In March 2009 Indymac Bank was sold to One West Bank, the sale was for 70% of the face value of the mortgages and the HELOC’S at 58%
But the government guaranteed 80% to 95% of the original loan amount, for a short sale or a foreclosure.
Example:
Loan Amount $ 478,000
Add six months interest for failed payments
$ 485,000
One West Bank paid FDIC $ 334,600
Short sale amount $ 241,000
FDIC Guarantee $ 388,000
FDIC paid One West Bank $ 147,000
One West Bank received for the short sale a total of:
$ 241,000
$ 147,000
__________
$ 388,000 a $53,400 windfall plus
The Bank on a short sale took a note from the seller for the shortfall in the amount of $90,000 for a profit of= $143,400
One West Bank made a hefty profit from the taxpayers on this one transaction and it worked the same way on a foreclosure
Now we can see why it benefits the banks to Foreclose or complete a short sale. But wait!
The owners of One West Bank are none other than:
1. George Soros - Obama’s main contributor whom he has already paid back with a 2bn dollar Grant to one of his corporations for off shore oil drilling, and the US has no benefit in the oil:
2. John Paulson - A relative of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs.
And a former Goldman Sachs VP
Obama Takes good care of his financial supporters and often it’s with our money!
But what occurred in March 2009 will make your hair stand on edge. It displays the open corruption between the White House, The Banks, and those so well connected to the current administration and Washington insiders.
In March 2009 Indymac Bank was sold to One West Bank, the sale was for 70% of the face value of the mortgages and the HELOC’S at 58%
But the government guaranteed 80% to 95% of the original loan amount, for a short sale or a foreclosure.
Example:
Loan Amount $ 478,000
Add six months interest for failed payments
$ 485,000
One West Bank paid FDIC $ 334,600
Short sale amount $ 241,000
FDIC Guarantee $ 388,000
FDIC paid One West Bank $ 147,000
One West Bank received for the short sale a total of:
$ 241,000
$ 147,000
__________
$ 388,000 a $53,400 windfall plus
The Bank on a short sale took a note from the seller for the shortfall in the amount of $90,000 for a profit of= $143,400
One West Bank made a hefty profit from the taxpayers on this one transaction and it worked the same way on a foreclosure
Now we can see why it benefits the banks to Foreclose or complete a short sale. But wait!
The owners of One West Bank are none other than:
1. George Soros - Obama’s main contributor whom he has already paid back with a 2bn dollar Grant to one of his corporations for off shore oil drilling, and the US has no benefit in the oil:
2. John Paulson - A relative of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs.
And a former Goldman Sachs VP
Obama Takes good care of his financial supporters and often it’s with our money!
Friday, February 5, 2010
What The US Media is hiding: Blackwater’s role In Pakistan
Two Pakistani employees of an American defense contractor engaged by the US Embassy in Islamabad have been linked to two attacks on Pakistani military and the assassination of a Brigadier general. If this is not alarming, then consider that US Ambassador Anne Patterson’s name has come up in an investigation where thousands of dollars were paid in bribes to Interior Ministry to smuggle illegal weapons into Pakistan.
Not to mention how Washington is empowering India in Afghanistan at Pakistan’s cost.
When Pakistan takes countermeasures the US officials like Mr. Gates and Mr. Holbrooke accuse Pakistan of ‘anti-Americanism’ and harassing US diplomats. A ploy often invoked by the former US President George Bush, you are either with us or against us!
It’s time for some straight talk.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted during an interview with a Pakistani TV station that Blackwater [now ‘Xe International’] and DynCorp are operating in Pakistan.
Immediately after that statement, The Pentagon attempted to put a spin on his words.
The US has posted private defense contractors under diplomatic cover at the US embassy. Some of these Americans have been caught disguised as Taliban in the heart of Islamabad. In recent months, several Pakistani citizens have even been manhandled by these American militiamen. These US covert operators were arrested.
The mainstream media in the US continues to keep the American people and the world in the dark. But this is probably one of the biggest untold stories in America’s war on terror.
This is about United States trying to put boots on the ground inside Pakistan through the help of a pro-US government in Islamabad that shares [or at least key figures in it] the US objective of containing and limiting the ability of Pakistan’s military to influence the country’s foreign policy. This is about Pakistan wanting to keep an independent foreign policy versus Pakistan blindly serving US policy on Afghanistan, India and China.
Mr. Gates tried to put a gloss on this US covert operations when he said, ‘Well, they’re [Blackwater and DynCorp] operating as individual companies here in Pakistan, in Afghanistan and in Iraq.’
Not true.
The truth is that the issue is so serious that, according to Pakistani investigators, US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson is a suspect in a case of bribes amounting to little over US $ 270,000 paid by DynCorp in 2009 to senior officials at the federal Interior Ministry in Pakistan.
The money was paid in exchange for allowing illegal weapons to be delivered to Pakistan to be used by private US defense contractors without informing the country’s security departments and intelligence agencies.
Ms. Patterson personally lobbied Pakistani officials for this concession to DynCorp. She even wrote a letter to Pakistani officials, followed by a letter by her Deputy Mr. Gerald Feierstein, asking Pakistani Interior Ministry officials to issue permits for weapons to be used by DynCorp in the ‘entire territory of Pakistan.’
The US ambassador is directly linked to the probe, which has resulted in the arrest of a key aide to Pakistan’s Minister of State for the Interior. But the government of President Zardari will not dare allow Pakistani investigators to pursue the US Ambassador’s role in the scandal.
A key question in the probe is how the US Embassy and DynCorp allowed the cargo of illegal weapons into Pakistan. According to one lead, a huge cache of weapons reached a Pakistani tribal leader on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, who in turn wrote to the Interior Ministry announcing he was ‘gifting’ the weapons to a Pakistani subcontractor of DynCorp.
Incidents like this and others raised alarm inside Pakistani security departments and the intelligence community. In effect, key figures in President Zardari’s government were found to have given approval for the entry of a large number of US citizens into Pakistan for ‘official US government business’ without explaining what that is.
When Pakistani authorities tried to get to the bottom of how private US defense contractors ended up inside Pakistan in large numbers and what they were doing there, US officials and media launched what appeared to be a media trial of Pakistan, accusing the country of ‘harassing’ US diplomats and denying visas to them because of alleged anti-Americanism.
The unwillingness of the Zardari government to confront Washington and Pakistan’s generally weak media outreach skills allowed Washington to proffer this as a case of anti-Americanism fueled by war on terror.
‘Conspiracy theory’ is another label that US officials and their media ally have used as a cover to hide these serious violations of diplomatic sovereignty.
The Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdock, and known for fabricating the news, tried to delegitimize Pakistan’s serious concerns which were “raised” during Mr. Gates’ visit. In a report filed from Islamabad the opening line read as follows, “U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is overseeing wars with Sunni militants in Iraq and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, he’s facing a different foe: the pervasive conspiracy theories that fuel widespread anti-American feelings here.”
The truth is that there are no conspiracy theories but real events, reported and documented, that raise questions over US political, diplomatic, and covert operations inside Pakistan. Here is a list:
1. NUCLEAR ESPIONAGE: In July 2009, four US ‘diplomats’ were arrested inside the maximum security perimeter around Pakistan’s nuclear facility at Kahuta. They failed to tell Pakistani investigators what they were doing there and how they managed to slip through the security checkpoints in the area. The US Embassy intervened to rescue the four ‘diplomats’ after almost three hours in detention, citing diplomatic immunity. President Zardari’s government refused to let Pakistani security authorities press charges.
2. SUSPICIOUS CONDUCT: On Oct. 6, 2009, Pakistani police arrested two Dutch diplomats roaming the streets of Islamabad without a number plate carrying advanced weapons. Pakistani police were surprised when security personnel from the US Embassy reached the scene to rescue the Dutch. The Americans used their contacts within the Zardari government to get everyone released. Later, Pakistan Foreign Office summoned US and Dutch diplomats for a private meeting over the incident. But the Pakistani government refused to demand a public explanation from the US and Dutch diplomats despite recommendations from the police and security officials.
3. FACILITATING INDIAN ACTIVITIES: In this high profile case in May 2009, a US diplomat arranged a small meeting between an Indian diplomat and several senior Pakistani federal government officials at a private house. The invited Pakistanis worked in civilian positions, including one with access to Prime Minister’s Office. It appeared that the US diplomat was basically facilitating the Indian to meet senior officials who otherwise would be inaccessible for him. Pakistan Foreign Office took serious exception to the meeting, publicly reprimanded the Pakistani officials who attended the meeting but stopped short of seeking explanation from the US embassy. According to Pakistani investigators, for a US diplomat to indulge in facilitating possible espionage linked to an Indian diplomat was a matter of grave concern. It also fitted with the US policy of exercising tremendous pressure on the pro-US government in Islamabad to give concessions to India at the expense of Pakistani strategic interests.
4. COVERT US MILITIAS IN THE HEART OF PAKISTAN: In September 2009, undercover US agents were found to have recruited a total of 100 former elite Pakistani military commandos to create rapid-intervention teams for unknown purposes. A 100 more were under training at a secret facility camouflaged as a workshop on the outskirts of the Pakistani capital when it was raided by Pakistani police. It turned out that DynCorp was training the men. US Ambassador Anne W. Patterson brought DynCorp to Pakistan by telling Pakistani officials that the private defense contractor would provide security to embassy buildings. But she never explained why DynCorp was secretly raising private militias on Pakistani soil without informing the Pakistani government or military or the intelligence agencies. Some of those who were under training at the time of the raid said that DynCorp focused on recruiting retired officers who had links and contacts within the Pakistani military and could glean information from their sources.
5. Attempt to Control Pakistan’s Media: The US Embassy in Islamabad has made it its business to mount pressure on owners of Pakistani newspapers to curtail or expel columnists and commentators critical of US policy. Of special target are those who expose how US Embassy is meddling in Pakistani affairs and expanding the US footprint inside Pakistan. Last year, Ambassador Patterson sent a letter to one of the largest Pakistani media groups accusing a columnist of endangering American lives and succeeded in pushing her out. The US Embassy is also recruiting opinion makers within the Pakistani media, academia and military in order to promote the US agenda even at the cost of Pakistani interests, dismissing critics as ‘conspiracy theorists’ and accusing them of anti-Americanism. A senior Pakistani journalist Syed Talat Hussain exposed US activities in the following words, “Pro-American lobby in Pakistan is growing in direct proportion to the scaling up of suspicions about the US. The main task of this lobby is to reduce the complexity of the US’s objectives towards Pakistan to romantic levels of trust (…) A motley crew of former diplomats, retired generals, socialites, slick civil society begums, self-styled analysts, businessmen, journalists, and now also lawyers — they are the darlings of the US embassy staff. They are the instruments of positive outreach and public diplomacy that US diplomats are so keen to expand in Pakistan.”
6. HARASSING PAKISTANIS: Private US security contractors, or militiamen, have been involved in at least three incidents registered by the Pakistani police where armed Americans physically assaulted unarmed ordinary Pakistanis in public places. In one case, the nephew of a senior member of President Zardari’s own government was manhandled and locked up in the toilet of a gas station by men described as armed military-looking civilian Americans.
7. RESISTING POLICE CHECKS: In at least five incidents, US ‘diplomats’ disguised as Taliban, complete with beards and Pashto language skills, were stopped at several police checkpoints in Islamabad and Peshawar. In some cases, these American ‘diplomats’ tried to speed through police barriers. In one recent case, this resulted in a brief police chase, where a Pakistani officer dragged the US ‘diplomats’ back to the police picket and forced the Americans to apologize to Pakistani police officers. Again, no charges were pressed because these private US agents carried diplomatic passports.
8. ENGINEERING DOMESTIC POLITICS: As recently as December 2009, US ambassador in Islamabad was found meeting senior Pakistani politicians at private homes of mutual friends in unannounced meetings restricted to 3 to 4 persons. The ambassador asked her guests to publicly support the embattled pro-US President Zardari. US diplomats in Islamabad and officials in Washington have been blatantly interfering in Pakistani politics. In addition to helping form the incumbent coalition government in Islamabad, made up of pro-US parties, US officials have been busy trying to save both Mr. Zardari and his key political adviser and ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani. US officials in Washington have been briefing sympathetic US journalists about this. In one case, columnist Trudy Rubin had this to say while discussing Pakistan in an article published last month: “Here is the first piece of good news: Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari seems to have weathered a campaign by opponents, including the military, to force him out of office. Zardari has deep flaws, but his ouster would have hampered efforts to fight the jihadis. So would the removal, now averted, of Pakistan’s effective ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, whom the Pakistani military had unfairly blamed for conditions that Congress imposed on aid to Pakistan.”
9. BRIBES AND ILLEGAL WEAPONS: This case is stunning because of the direct involvement of US Ambassador Anne W. Patterson in lobbying for DynCorp. The company ended up bribing Interior Ministry officials to smuggle banned weapons into Pakistan and then went on to raise private militias and hire retired Pakistani military officers to run rapid deployment teams and possibly even spy on the Pakistani military.
10. DEMONIZATION OF PAKISTAN: Since 2007, US officials and US media has systematically demonized Pakistan worldwide, creating false alarm over Pakistan’s strategic arsenal. US officials and media have also pushed to bracket Pakistan along with Iraq and Afghanistan in order to justify a possible military intervention. When Pakistan resisted US meddling recently, US media again went on rampage, accusing Pakistan of ‘anti-Americanism’ and harassment of US diplomats. Additionally, there has been a marked increase of lectures and studies by US think-tanks inviting unknown separatist individuals and groups to speak and fan ethnic separatism inside Pakistan and theorize on the breakup of the country.
11. ABETTING TERROR INSIDE PAKISTAN: The suspicions about why DynCorp was secretly raising private militias inside the Pakistani capital almost turned real when a suspect in the attack on the Pakistani military headquarters in October 2009 was allegedly found to have been recruited by DynCorp. In a second case, another suspected DynCorp recruit was found involved in assassinating a senior Pakistani military officer as he drove to work. In other words, two Pakistani employees of a US defense contractor engaged by the US embassy have been linked to two terrorist attacks on the Pakistani military. Add to this that Pakistan’s military and intelligence are a favorite punching bag for the United States and its allies, like India and Britain, and the picture of what the US is doing in Pakistan becomes even more disturbing.
These points explain how ill-motivated the US complaints about delaying visas and alleged anti-Americanism in Pakistan are. This is what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Mr. Holbrooke and Mr. Gates are loath to share with the American people and the world public opinion.
These shocking revelations by Pakistan officials make us wonder, it we are fighting a real enemy or our own byproduct to profit our own military complex, and Wall Street?
Not to mention how Washington is empowering India in Afghanistan at Pakistan’s cost.
When Pakistan takes countermeasures the US officials like Mr. Gates and Mr. Holbrooke accuse Pakistan of ‘anti-Americanism’ and harassing US diplomats. A ploy often invoked by the former US President George Bush, you are either with us or against us!
It’s time for some straight talk.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted during an interview with a Pakistani TV station that Blackwater [now ‘Xe International’] and DynCorp are operating in Pakistan.
Immediately after that statement, The Pentagon attempted to put a spin on his words.
The US has posted private defense contractors under diplomatic cover at the US embassy. Some of these Americans have been caught disguised as Taliban in the heart of Islamabad. In recent months, several Pakistani citizens have even been manhandled by these American militiamen. These US covert operators were arrested.
The mainstream media in the US continues to keep the American people and the world in the dark. But this is probably one of the biggest untold stories in America’s war on terror.
This is about United States trying to put boots on the ground inside Pakistan through the help of a pro-US government in Islamabad that shares [or at least key figures in it] the US objective of containing and limiting the ability of Pakistan’s military to influence the country’s foreign policy. This is about Pakistan wanting to keep an independent foreign policy versus Pakistan blindly serving US policy on Afghanistan, India and China.
Mr. Gates tried to put a gloss on this US covert operations when he said, ‘Well, they’re [Blackwater and DynCorp] operating as individual companies here in Pakistan, in Afghanistan and in Iraq.’
Not true.
The truth is that the issue is so serious that, according to Pakistani investigators, US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson is a suspect in a case of bribes amounting to little over US $ 270,000 paid by DynCorp in 2009 to senior officials at the federal Interior Ministry in Pakistan.
The money was paid in exchange for allowing illegal weapons to be delivered to Pakistan to be used by private US defense contractors without informing the country’s security departments and intelligence agencies.
Ms. Patterson personally lobbied Pakistani officials for this concession to DynCorp. She even wrote a letter to Pakistani officials, followed by a letter by her Deputy Mr. Gerald Feierstein, asking Pakistani Interior Ministry officials to issue permits for weapons to be used by DynCorp in the ‘entire territory of Pakistan.’
The US ambassador is directly linked to the probe, which has resulted in the arrest of a key aide to Pakistan’s Minister of State for the Interior. But the government of President Zardari will not dare allow Pakistani investigators to pursue the US Ambassador’s role in the scandal.
A key question in the probe is how the US Embassy and DynCorp allowed the cargo of illegal weapons into Pakistan. According to one lead, a huge cache of weapons reached a Pakistani tribal leader on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, who in turn wrote to the Interior Ministry announcing he was ‘gifting’ the weapons to a Pakistani subcontractor of DynCorp.
Incidents like this and others raised alarm inside Pakistani security departments and the intelligence community. In effect, key figures in President Zardari’s government were found to have given approval for the entry of a large number of US citizens into Pakistan for ‘official US government business’ without explaining what that is.
When Pakistani authorities tried to get to the bottom of how private US defense contractors ended up inside Pakistan in large numbers and what they were doing there, US officials and media launched what appeared to be a media trial of Pakistan, accusing the country of ‘harassing’ US diplomats and denying visas to them because of alleged anti-Americanism.
The unwillingness of the Zardari government to confront Washington and Pakistan’s generally weak media outreach skills allowed Washington to proffer this as a case of anti-Americanism fueled by war on terror.
‘Conspiracy theory’ is another label that US officials and their media ally have used as a cover to hide these serious violations of diplomatic sovereignty.
The Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdock, and known for fabricating the news, tried to delegitimize Pakistan’s serious concerns which were “raised” during Mr. Gates’ visit. In a report filed from Islamabad the opening line read as follows, “U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is overseeing wars with Sunni militants in Iraq and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, he’s facing a different foe: the pervasive conspiracy theories that fuel widespread anti-American feelings here.”
The truth is that there are no conspiracy theories but real events, reported and documented, that raise questions over US political, diplomatic, and covert operations inside Pakistan. Here is a list:
1. NUCLEAR ESPIONAGE: In July 2009, four US ‘diplomats’ were arrested inside the maximum security perimeter around Pakistan’s nuclear facility at Kahuta. They failed to tell Pakistani investigators what they were doing there and how they managed to slip through the security checkpoints in the area. The US Embassy intervened to rescue the four ‘diplomats’ after almost three hours in detention, citing diplomatic immunity. President Zardari’s government refused to let Pakistani security authorities press charges.
2. SUSPICIOUS CONDUCT: On Oct. 6, 2009, Pakistani police arrested two Dutch diplomats roaming the streets of Islamabad without a number plate carrying advanced weapons. Pakistani police were surprised when security personnel from the US Embassy reached the scene to rescue the Dutch. The Americans used their contacts within the Zardari government to get everyone released. Later, Pakistan Foreign Office summoned US and Dutch diplomats for a private meeting over the incident. But the Pakistani government refused to demand a public explanation from the US and Dutch diplomats despite recommendations from the police and security officials.
3. FACILITATING INDIAN ACTIVITIES: In this high profile case in May 2009, a US diplomat arranged a small meeting between an Indian diplomat and several senior Pakistani federal government officials at a private house. The invited Pakistanis worked in civilian positions, including one with access to Prime Minister’s Office. It appeared that the US diplomat was basically facilitating the Indian to meet senior officials who otherwise would be inaccessible for him. Pakistan Foreign Office took serious exception to the meeting, publicly reprimanded the Pakistani officials who attended the meeting but stopped short of seeking explanation from the US embassy. According to Pakistani investigators, for a US diplomat to indulge in facilitating possible espionage linked to an Indian diplomat was a matter of grave concern. It also fitted with the US policy of exercising tremendous pressure on the pro-US government in Islamabad to give concessions to India at the expense of Pakistani strategic interests.
4. COVERT US MILITIAS IN THE HEART OF PAKISTAN: In September 2009, undercover US agents were found to have recruited a total of 100 former elite Pakistani military commandos to create rapid-intervention teams for unknown purposes. A 100 more were under training at a secret facility camouflaged as a workshop on the outskirts of the Pakistani capital when it was raided by Pakistani police. It turned out that DynCorp was training the men. US Ambassador Anne W. Patterson brought DynCorp to Pakistan by telling Pakistani officials that the private defense contractor would provide security to embassy buildings. But she never explained why DynCorp was secretly raising private militias on Pakistani soil without informing the Pakistani government or military or the intelligence agencies. Some of those who were under training at the time of the raid said that DynCorp focused on recruiting retired officers who had links and contacts within the Pakistani military and could glean information from their sources.
5. Attempt to Control Pakistan’s Media: The US Embassy in Islamabad has made it its business to mount pressure on owners of Pakistani newspapers to curtail or expel columnists and commentators critical of US policy. Of special target are those who expose how US Embassy is meddling in Pakistani affairs and expanding the US footprint inside Pakistan. Last year, Ambassador Patterson sent a letter to one of the largest Pakistani media groups accusing a columnist of endangering American lives and succeeded in pushing her out. The US Embassy is also recruiting opinion makers within the Pakistani media, academia and military in order to promote the US agenda even at the cost of Pakistani interests, dismissing critics as ‘conspiracy theorists’ and accusing them of anti-Americanism. A senior Pakistani journalist Syed Talat Hussain exposed US activities in the following words, “Pro-American lobby in Pakistan is growing in direct proportion to the scaling up of suspicions about the US. The main task of this lobby is to reduce the complexity of the US’s objectives towards Pakistan to romantic levels of trust (…) A motley crew of former diplomats, retired generals, socialites, slick civil society begums, self-styled analysts, businessmen, journalists, and now also lawyers — they are the darlings of the US embassy staff. They are the instruments of positive outreach and public diplomacy that US diplomats are so keen to expand in Pakistan.”
6. HARASSING PAKISTANIS: Private US security contractors, or militiamen, have been involved in at least three incidents registered by the Pakistani police where armed Americans physically assaulted unarmed ordinary Pakistanis in public places. In one case, the nephew of a senior member of President Zardari’s own government was manhandled and locked up in the toilet of a gas station by men described as armed military-looking civilian Americans.
7. RESISTING POLICE CHECKS: In at least five incidents, US ‘diplomats’ disguised as Taliban, complete with beards and Pashto language skills, were stopped at several police checkpoints in Islamabad and Peshawar. In some cases, these American ‘diplomats’ tried to speed through police barriers. In one recent case, this resulted in a brief police chase, where a Pakistani officer dragged the US ‘diplomats’ back to the police picket and forced the Americans to apologize to Pakistani police officers. Again, no charges were pressed because these private US agents carried diplomatic passports.
8. ENGINEERING DOMESTIC POLITICS: As recently as December 2009, US ambassador in Islamabad was found meeting senior Pakistani politicians at private homes of mutual friends in unannounced meetings restricted to 3 to 4 persons. The ambassador asked her guests to publicly support the embattled pro-US President Zardari. US diplomats in Islamabad and officials in Washington have been blatantly interfering in Pakistani politics. In addition to helping form the incumbent coalition government in Islamabad, made up of pro-US parties, US officials have been busy trying to save both Mr. Zardari and his key political adviser and ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani. US officials in Washington have been briefing sympathetic US journalists about this. In one case, columnist Trudy Rubin had this to say while discussing Pakistan in an article published last month: “Here is the first piece of good news: Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari seems to have weathered a campaign by opponents, including the military, to force him out of office. Zardari has deep flaws, but his ouster would have hampered efforts to fight the jihadis. So would the removal, now averted, of Pakistan’s effective ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, whom the Pakistani military had unfairly blamed for conditions that Congress imposed on aid to Pakistan.”
9. BRIBES AND ILLEGAL WEAPONS: This case is stunning because of the direct involvement of US Ambassador Anne W. Patterson in lobbying for DynCorp. The company ended up bribing Interior Ministry officials to smuggle banned weapons into Pakistan and then went on to raise private militias and hire retired Pakistani military officers to run rapid deployment teams and possibly even spy on the Pakistani military.
10. DEMONIZATION OF PAKISTAN: Since 2007, US officials and US media has systematically demonized Pakistan worldwide, creating false alarm over Pakistan’s strategic arsenal. US officials and media have also pushed to bracket Pakistan along with Iraq and Afghanistan in order to justify a possible military intervention. When Pakistan resisted US meddling recently, US media again went on rampage, accusing Pakistan of ‘anti-Americanism’ and harassment of US diplomats. Additionally, there has been a marked increase of lectures and studies by US think-tanks inviting unknown separatist individuals and groups to speak and fan ethnic separatism inside Pakistan and theorize on the breakup of the country.
11. ABETTING TERROR INSIDE PAKISTAN: The suspicions about why DynCorp was secretly raising private militias inside the Pakistani capital almost turned real when a suspect in the attack on the Pakistani military headquarters in October 2009 was allegedly found to have been recruited by DynCorp. In a second case, another suspected DynCorp recruit was found involved in assassinating a senior Pakistani military officer as he drove to work. In other words, two Pakistani employees of a US defense contractor engaged by the US embassy have been linked to two terrorist attacks on the Pakistani military. Add to this that Pakistan’s military and intelligence are a favorite punching bag for the United States and its allies, like India and Britain, and the picture of what the US is doing in Pakistan becomes even more disturbing.
These points explain how ill-motivated the US complaints about delaying visas and alleged anti-Americanism in Pakistan are. This is what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Mr. Holbrooke and Mr. Gates are loath to share with the American people and the world public opinion.
These shocking revelations by Pakistan officials make us wonder, it we are fighting a real enemy or our own byproduct to profit our own military complex, and Wall Street?
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