There are a number of points that don't ring true…….but before we look at these, one must identify who the “Taliban” Gates is talking about are….there is one Afghan Taliban (Mullah Omar), there is the Haqqani Network, there is the HIG (Hekmatyar), and now the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU)is active in Northern Afghanistan. This is a loose confederation that will support one another when it is beneficial and bear arms against one another when necessary. The issues are: (1) abandon ties to Al Qeada……it is known that there is no strong linkage between the two at this point in time. The Taliban are not looking to exert control over any territory larger than current Afghanistan (and the Pashtun belt of Pakistan). (2) I am not aware of any pressure being put on by Coalition Forces that will induce the Taliban to the Peace Table. Statistics do not bear out any of the spin emanating from ISAF about the Taliban being ineffective. They are somewhat stagnant, however, they are demonstrating the ability to infiltrate into the heart of the Afghan military/government. They are very active in the areas Karzai has declared as secure enough to allow the nascent Afghan National Army to exercise control. The most interesting part: As wars conclude, Gates noted, it is inevitable that “peace is made between people who have been killing each other.” The Taliban, he added, is “part of the fabric” of Afghan politics. This suggests that this administration will declare victory and go home, only to aid the electoral process…..
LIBYA: Cynthia McKinney & Independent Journalists
02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Government, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Media, Military, Peace IntelligenceMcKinney Leads DIGNITY Delegation of Independent Journalists to Libya on Fact-Finding Mission
1 June 2011
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – Today, independent journalists from across the United States departed on a truth-telling, fact-finding mission to Libya. This coincides with what was supposed to have been a debate in Congress on U.S. involvement in the war against Libya, but the debate got sidelined due to the fact that the legislation requiring a pullout by the U.S. could actually have passed. Both Democratic and Republican leadership are responsible for pulling the bill at the last minute.
Al Jazeera film footage shows that Western soldiers have their “boots on the ground” in Libya overstepping authority granted by the United Nations Security Council for action in Libya. Every day that President Obama contributes to the military action against Libya, he tests the United States Congress and defies the United States Constitution and the War Powers Act which limit Presidential acts of war, subject to authorization by the U.S. Congress.
Incredibly, in what yet may prove to be another act beyond the mandate of the United Nations Security Council Resolution, NATO extended its operations in Libya for another 90 days.
Because the public has become increasingly unable to rely on embedded media to tell the American people the “whole truth and nothing but the truth,” the DIGNITY Delegation will shed rare light on NATO's actions inside that country.
According to some estimates, the American people and the global community were lied to 935 times by Administration officials and the media in the lead-up to the Iraq War. As Aeschylus said, “In war, truth is the first casualty.” The DIGNITY Delegation is expected to make daily reports while on the ground of the ongoing NATO actions in the country.
For more information please contact: dondebar@optonline.net
General Hamid Gul, PK ISI Former Chief on the Record
04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, IO Sense-Making, Military, Officers Call, Peace IntelligenceGeneral Hamid Gul, former chief of the Pakistani intelligence service–11:50 tour of the horizon from death of Bin Laden to future of Afghanistan to what World War III might look like if US military-industrial complex is allowed to open a Pakistani front.
YouTube Russian Television Interview Hamid Gul
Phi Beta Iota: Worth listening to every second. BBC (itself a virtual subsidiary of CIA under the US-UK “special relationship”) is rapidly being over-shadowed by Russian TV, Al-Jazeera, and Ha'aretz as sourced of useful open information in English.
Why the U.S. Should ‘Give’ Af-Pak to China
02 China, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Military, Peace Intelligence, StrategyWorth a look — even if only the first paragraph.
The New Rules: Why the U.S. Should ‘Give' Af-Pak to China
Thomas P.M. Barnett | Bio | 30 May 2011
Column
Nuclear Pakistan, we are often told, is the Islamic-state equivalent of a Wall Street firm: In geostrategic terms, it is too big to fail. That explains why, even as the Obama administration begins preparing for modest troop withdrawals from Afghanistan this July, it dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Islamabad last week to smooth over bilateral relations with Pakistan's paranoid regime, which were strained even before the killing of Osama bin Laden. But Clinton's trip and the Obama administration's instinctive embrace of Islamabad is a fool's errand, doomed by history, geography and globalization itself.
In fact, the U.S. should drop the entire Afghanistan-Pakistan mess in China's lap now, while the getting is good, and here are the reasons why: …
Phi Beta Iota: World Politics Review has not figured out the new world of information quite yet, and we have no desire to copy their entire article. Suffice to say that Barnett, who has gotten much more coherent since his first book, is on target here, but add to that that the US Government's foreign policy is both ideological and idiotic — apart from the huge error by Zbigniew Brzezinski giving Pakistan the nuclear bomb in the first place, the US has no business in Central Asia that is of benefit to the American people, only to the American carpet-baggers that feed at the public treasury (now much depleted and greatly in debt) while looting foreign countries.
Robert Gates: Spendthrift Ace of Double-Speak
03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Policy, Waste (materials, food, etc)Robert Gates: Pitchman for a Declining Empire
By Werther*
Robert M. Gates is one of those people the Beltway Consensus refers to as a “serious adult”: not overtly partisan, measured in his pronouncements, possessed of actual knowledge about the job he has been charged to do. The adulation he has received is certainly understandable if we grade on a curve; his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, established an Olympic record for petty vanity, nasty abrasiveness, and disastrous professional judgment. Such a collective sigh of relief greeted Rumsfeld's departure that his successor was bound to shine in comparison.
But what of Gates's record on his own merits? He is given to making such comments as, “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the President to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it.” A normal person would infer that he is opposed to the types of military intervention that have contributed significantly to a near-bankruptcy of the country. Yet in practice he has taken concrete measures to protract the very problem he professes to deplore.
Continue reading “Robert Gates: Spendthrift Ace of Double-Speak”
Looting Libya: Insider View of Reasons for War….
03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Energy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government, IO Sense-Making, Military, Peace IntelligenceThe Libyan War, American Power and the Decline of the Petrodollar System
by Prof. Peter Dale Scott
Centre for Research on Globalization, 29 April 2011
EXTRACT:
As Ellen Brown has pointed out, first Iraq and then Libya decided to challenge the petrodollar system and stop selling all their oil for dollars, shortly before each country was attacked.
Continue reading “Looting Libya: Insider View of Reasons for War….”
US JSOG 3000 Night Missions to Kill–Who? Why?
04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Military, Peace IntelligenceU.S. seems to be getting good at killing Taliban, but why?
Friday, May 20, 2011 03:07 AM
BY GEORGIE ANNE GEYER
Columbus Dispatch
While the United States keeps trying to forget about Afghanistan, a new secret program in Afghanistan is quietly boasting of bringing about an end to the decade-long war.
The program is “kill/capture,” and it has been waged by the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, for the past year, with, according to PBS’s excellent Frontline, 3,000 operations in only the past 90 days.
Essentially, it sends special forces out in the dark of night into slumbering Afghan villages to force Taliban leaders out of their hiding places and then shoot them or capture them.
There is only one major problem: It appears rather too often that the American intelligence planners are not certain that the men they are killing or capturing are really Taliban. There is, of course, a larger question: Why are we killing and capturing Taliban when this war was supposed to be about al-Qaida?