pakistan
Who Is Responsible for Suicide-Bomber Academies?
Peter Chamberlin delves into one of the most troubling aspects of the U.S. perpetual wars … the creation of young suicide bombers to kill their own while never realizing whose interests they really serve.
It’s part of a sickening psyops to destroy countries from within.
In the following report, Yet Another Mosque Suicide-Bombed Near Peshawar, we read all that we can stand to read about the latest suicide-bomber to strike that embattled country. An interesting Pakistani website today asks the following question: who do you think is responsible for suicide bombings in Pakistan? It is vital to Pakistan’s survival as a self-governing state that it uncover the truth about the suicide-bomber trainers who bedevil the country.
Who really is behind the world epidemic of suicide-bombers that plague not only Pakistan, but much of the world? If it was true that the Pakistani Army was really responsible for most of the “Islamic” suicide-bombers as some people claim, then most of the bombings would not be happening there. Whoever perfected the art of suicide-bomber training transplanted the science to multiple countries from a central source.
The frequency of these attacks over the past two or three years has given the Pakistani Army ample opportunity to capture dispatched bombers before they could push their doorbell buttons to Nirvana. They recently captured a bomber training camp in Swat, giving them loads of evidence about the mind-control technicians who ran the camps and the methods that they were using to convince countless Pakistani boys to surrender their precious lives in acts of mass-murder against fellow Muslims. Such was the power of the mind-science being deployed against the boys and through them, against all of Pakistan.
To state the obvious at this point, all of the previous examples of suicide-bomber training took place in countries targeted by the United States. That is no coincidence, since it was the CIA which perfected the original “Islamist” indoctrination program which is at the core of all these brainwashing programs.
There is only one organization in the entire free world with the available money, the technical means and the millions of test subjects required and the expertise in “Islamist” indoctrination, to scientifically compile an information base for constructing a mind-control research program, and that is the Pentagon. The unpleasant and potentially harmful nature of some of the experimental procedures which needed to be tested on millions of subjects ensured that only an army could develop such a program.
The terrorist leaders have all had some type of formula for creating these “zombie killers” at will. They obviously have some hidden science or technique for turning otherwise normal children into suicidal killers with a cause to kill for, “jihad.” It is not simply a matter of persuasion which has turned countless innocent children into mass-murderers seemingly overnight. There is some secret method which has been made available to militant psywar operators, enabling them to suppress or erase childish thoughts and to replace them with the thoughts of psychopathic killers.
There are two streams of information which link the United States to the wave of suicide-bombing in Eurasia, the historical record of the creation of the International Islamist Front (otherwise known as “al-Qaeda”) and the clinical history of the American G.I. psychological reconditioning programs. Between these two resources, it can be proved beyond doubt that the US military has developed a very effective mind-control science program.
read the rest plus view some interesting videos that help to validate Peter’s thesis
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The created suicide bombers have plenty of help. So say some Pakistanis.
TTP’s second in Command Wali-ur-Rehman Mehsud said that Blackwater was behind most of the incidents wherein innocents were targeted. “Blackwater is doing its job of destabilizing Pakistan by targeting Masajids and killing innocent people and putting the blame on the shoulder of Taliban.” Wali also blamed media for its partial behavior. “Most of the calls of responsibility of the attacks were fake,” Wali said. He said through fake calls, Taliban were held responsible for certain attacks which have nothing to do with the objective of Taliban. {more}
WikiLeaks ‘partners’ NY Times and The Guardian point the finger at Pakistan
Could the leaks be used to expand the war in Pakistan? Another ‘never waste an opportunity’ moment? The MSM is playing up this point. Will the American people ever say ‘enough is enough?’
Afghanistan war logs: Clandestine aid for Taliban bears Pakistan’s fingerprints
Pakistan Aids Insurgency in Afghanistan, Reports Assert
The leaks portray Gen. Hamid Gul, former head of the ISI, as a major player in aiding the insurgency against the U.S. and NATO forces.
Gull on 9/11 …
Afghanistan The War Logs – Guardian
Explosive Leaks Provide Image of War from Those Fighting It – Der Spiegel
Obama and the Same Old Bush Lies, for the Same Reasons
By: Peter Chamberlin
The war in Afghanistan is being escalated on false pretenses. There is zero chance to “win” the war with the “new” (which is the same old failed) strategy and everybody involved with it knows it. When Obama and McChrystal use the words “win” and “victory,” they are not using the same dictionary used by the rest of the human race. “Victory” to them, means that the greater undefined mission can continue, not come to an end.
Afghanistan, like Iraq, will never see the withdrawal of American/NATO forces; that’s why all the giant super-bases are needed in both countries. That also applies to the massive super-embassy being built in Islamabad. “Victory” is not winning, but is the point in the war when large numbers of troops fighting this war can be safely transferred to the next war. This is what we are seeing in the so-called withdrawal from Iraq and will probably see in the anticipated withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2011. There will never be a real American withdrawal from any of these countries, unless it is forced upon them by the people.
Just like Iraq, Afghanistan has been drawn-out until the start of the next war in Pakistan. This is done with the fraudulent war strategy of training replacement armies to fight the enemies which America’s superior forces could not defeat. Switching missions from an offensive war to a training mission merely gives the adversary time to reinforce. All the generals and strategists are aware of this; it is simply a part of the plan. The plan has nothing to do with defeating anyone, except maybe for eventually defeating the Russians. We might also fight for the sake of denying energy resources to our greater adversaries, the Chinese.
The “war on terror” is in reality, a war on mediocrity. We are waging this war in order to maintain our position as “Number One” boss of the world. Our leaders have determined that we cannot accept any other nation becoming our equal, meaning that they would have to share the power that they have accumulated unto themselves. The infamous document from the “neocon” Project for a New American Century, which clearly delineates this triumphal American ideology, is not an expression of a radical minority, but rather, a summation of the single American ideology which is common to both political parties. There are two neoconservative parties in America, masquerading as opposites.
The escalation in southern Afghanistan is embraced by both parties, as American and NATO forces move against local Taliban, hoping to push all the fighters into Balochistan, or back into South Waziristan. The entire war effort has consisted of herding the militants wherever central command planned to go next. This is the reason that many of the posts along the Durand Line were closed before Pakistan moved into S. Waziristan. Who ever heard of military planners opening the back door before coming in the front? How can pincer by itself perform a pincer movement?
As long as the American people are willing to wage war without defined missions, our so-called leaders will be able to play these dangerous games. One would think that the ever loyal American veterans would grow tired of watching their comrades and their own children die for wars based on nothing but lies. The dishonor they bring upon all servicemen, by not speaking-up for their own, will haunt them until the day they die. Soldiers who are martyred in the liberation of countries are rightly honored, but who will honor those who have given their lives in wars fought to enslave mankind?
The American people were enlisted in this war under the pretense of fighting against a malignant evil, only to see this war hijacked in the service of other causes. The fight against terrorists has become a war against nuclear proliferation, a war for Israel’s security, a war for oil, a war for any reason they dream-up.
What has become of the moral sense of the people of the United States? Has life for us become so hard and uncertain that we will support any effort to merely keep things from getting worse, even if that means turning every country, especially our own, into a police state? We surrender our rights to choose our own destinies when we submit to the extortion that to do otherwise will make things get a lot worse. Isn’t this the same threat that Prince Bandar allegedly made to the British Crown over ending pay-offs–that failing to comply with his demands would mean that the terror against Britain would get a lot worse?
If we don’t support Obama and McChrystal’s surge, then what will happen? They tell us that if we don’t let them have their way, then the terror in Afghanistan and Pakistan will only grow worse. I say that is a total lie. If they do escalate the Special Forces and Predator strikes into Pakistan, launching a powerful counter-insurgency campaign, then I guarantee that everywhere will become like Peshawar is today. Peshawar is bombed daily, because the armies of militants were driven to the city’s doorstep.
Apparently these assholes haven’t figured-out the formula for this war yet—the more innocent people you kill, the more young men will volunteer to fight against the Americans to avenge them. The anti-American terrorism that makes the whole world suffer is not a spontaneous phenomenon; it is a reaction against what we have been doing in that part of the world for a lot longer than this current war has been raging. They fight because we kill their friends and relatives, simple as that.
America’s military leaders act as if they make policy for the politicians, instead of the other way around. They make their plans and tell us that we must stick to them; else our “American way of life” will perish from the face of this earth. Well, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, after all. They don’t bother to own-up to the facts about our precious way of life, even though everything around us screams-out about the utter wrongness of our ways.
The continuing global economic collapse has been precipitated by American greed and profit-takers upsetting the balance of the international economic system. The low-level world war we see before us is a direct result of the many unnecessary low-level wars we have started, trying to preserve our inflated status. One day soon, the world will hold American leaders accountable for what they have done to the world in their greed. But in the end, it will be the American people, who will pay the price for the havoc that has been unleashed, in addition to the hundreds of millions globally who live in our chosen war zones. In the end, America as we know it will cease to exist within the global American empire, or in the catastrophic chaos that will result from failure of the empire. Either way, the America of our youth is no more.
It will only be through our own uprising and chaining these criminal psychopaths who run and ruin our Nation that the world will be spared what is barreling down the road at us. The war in Afghanistan is but an act of very desperate men.
peterchamberlin@naharnet.com
Source: There Are No Sunglasses
Post Fort Hood…Af-Pak Body Counts
(CNN) — Three Americans, including two from the International Security Assistance Force, have been killed in Afghanistan, the NATO-led force said Saturday.
NATO-led troops say woman killed in error
At least 13 Die in a Bombing in Pakistan
The 13 killed at Fort Hood are already eclipsed by deaths in the U.S. occupations. Most of these have been brown people so to many the body counts don’t count. The American count will soon increase. 13 dead in Texas is a small number compared to what is to come. Especially when Obama increases the troops. It means more targets…..
The US invasion/occupation of Pakistan has begun
Oh yeah, it’s just standard procedure for the war machine…expansion of the killings and occupations…while the American people turn away and hide from what Obama and the pentagon are doing…
US Hummers Enter Pakistan, Undercover American Soldiers Swarm Islamabad
AHMED QURAISHI
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Undercover armed Americans are swarming the Pakistani capital in the latest sign that the elected government has allowed Washington to dispatch what is believed to be a large number of American special operations agents and contractual security guards, including the infamous Blackwater private militia.
This comes at a time when whistleblowers within the government and the military are reporting the arrival of a large number of US Marines in Pakistan. Some reports put the figure at 1,000 US soldiers, much of whom are thought to be arriving as part of the massive expansion of the US Embassy and four consulates across the country. While the US embassy continues to deny this, new buildings are under construction to house security teams. The expanded US embassy is supposed to become the largest US embassy in the world.
Above is an exclusive picture taken by a source at the entrance of Port Qasim near Karachi, showing US Hummers being transported out of the facility. According to the source, the shipment was not destined for Afghanistan. The picture was taken on Aug. 19, 2009 and being released here for the first time.
The latest evidence of the growing American military presence in the Pakistani capital is the arrest of four Americans carrying automatic weapons in a part of the Pakistani capital that foreigners seldom visit.
The four were arrested in Sector G-9 of Islamabad in the evening of Saturday, Aug. 29.
A police picket stopped two cars carrying the four Americans who refused to explain why they were carrying sophisticated automatic weapons in the capital city. Diplomats are not supposed to carry weapons because their security is the responsibility of the host government, and security guards are not supposed to be carrying weapons outside the embassy except during official assignments. The four were taken to a police station for interrogation but were released when two retired Pakistani army officers showed up and threatened police officers of dire consequences.
The police established that the four Americans carried diplomatic status and were part of the US embassy staff.
When I called today US embassy spokesperson Richard Snelsire about the incident, he refused to comment and referred me to the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Pakistani police.
“Do US diplomats normally carry weapons?” I asked.
Mr. Snelsire’s reply was, “Only if they are permitted” to do so by the Pakistani government. But he avoided commenting on the incident or explaining whether the four were diplomats.
The spokesman’s reaction confirms suspicions that private US security guards are active in Pakistan. For obvious reasons these guards do not come under the cover of US Department of State employees in Pakistan. This could be one reason why US embassy spokesperson declined comment on the story since the presence and the activities of the four armed men might be beyond the purview of the US embassy in Islamabad.
There is strong evidence that the private US mercenary army, Blackwater, has also established office in the Pakistani capital. Authorities have received several complaints of ill mannered military-type westerners misbehaving or recklessly driving by.
The Pakistani capital was the scene of at least two incidents recently where armed American diplomats verbally and physically assaulted Pakistani police officers. In one case, newspapers called for expelling an armed US diplomat who cursed and swore at the host country. The Pakistani government, which is known to be pro-American, refused to take action.
The Americans appear to have recruited a large number of retired Pakistani army officers, in addition to quietly hiring Pakistani civil servants without making any of this public. A famous government university professor in Islamabad who is active in US media campaigns against Pakistan’s nuclear program has also been hired as a consultant. Government employees cannot offer their services to foreign governments but this is happening now under an increasingly weak Pakistani state and government.
Who Is Inviting US Military
To Pakistan
There are indications that the PPP government and some other politicians, like Nawaz Sharif, are encouraging the Americans to get involved in domestic issues especially as a hedge against a powerful Pakistani military. Politicians are aware they have led the country to a national failure on all fronts since the general elections in February 2008. The public mood is gradually turning against them. This has stoked the rumor mill about disgruntlement within the Pakistani military regarding the failures of the politicians.
Washington is spending nearly one billion dollars to expand its Islamabad embassy. On completion, the US embassy in Islamabad will become the largest in the world. Interestingly, both the government, led by President Zardari, and the opposition, led by Nawaz Sharif, refuse to question why Washington has been granted exceptional concessions to construct an imperial-size embassy and how at least 18 acres of the most expensive real state in the capital has been handed over to the Americans for this purpose at throwaway prices.
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US Occupation of Pakistan: Phase one is complete
Pakistanis are watching it happen in the streets of Islamabad. The recurring nightmare has become a grim reality here that after watching last 8 years the horrors of the U.S. invasions and occupations of Iraq and neighbouring Afghanistan, the exterminators and executioners of “war on terror” have finally arrived in The Land of the Pure—-Pakistan. Obama is fulfilling his declared campaign promise to Pakistan. The sudden arrival of U.S. marines, U.S. military Hummers, the hired killers of Blackwater have all arrived in Islamabad to start with. The people in the streets are curious how the houses are being barricaded for U.S. personnel in Islamabad and the construction of the world’s largest U.S. “Embassy” are terrorizing this nation of 180 million people. The U.S. slaughter and destruction in Iraq and neighbouring Afghanistan for the last 8 years warns them of what may lie in store for them, for their families and their dream land-Pakistan.
Until this landing of U.S. forces, the nation’s spokesman for Foreign Affairs had been denying that 1000 U.S. marines were on their way to Islamabad. The thousand marines are now in the capital city of Islamabad. Some of them may be quietly slipping into Baluchistan where the presence of JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) has already been reported. But most are here; supposedly to defend what will be the largest U.S. embassy being turned into a fortress in the world—- now under construction and to spearhead the subsequent phases of invasion and occupation.
The Costs
US Ambassador in Pakistan Anne W. Patterson says; “The total cost for housing and general support for the marines alone will be US$112.5 million”. She said the money is allocated as follows: “$5 million was for Marine quarters, $53.5 for housing infrastructure, $18 million for improvement of general services office area, and $36 million for temporary duty quarters and community support facilities.”
In Patterson’s explanation of the massive expansion of the U.S. Embassy she talked about 4 Billion (that’s with a big “B”) dollars.“The embassy expansion, she said, was a reflection of the long-term commitment that the US intended to have with Pakistan. Moreover, she said, quadrupling of the social, economic and military assistance that would touch $4 billion a year over the next 18 months, has necessitated staff increase.”
Ambassador Patterson did not clarify whether the $4 Billion covers the construction which will make this embassy the largest in the world. When this construction is seen in context and coordination with the new level of U.S. occupation of Pakistan, it looks more like a permanent military base than an embassy for running military and covert operations not only in Pakistan but also in the region.Weapons and Hummers
Eye witnesses and informed journalists have been reporting sightings of U.S. personnel in Islamabad for the past week or so, but now they are seen moving freely throughout the capital. The law (Section 144) enforced provides that Pakistanis who own guns are not permitted to carry them in Islamabad. But U.S. personnel are showing Pakistanis that they are above the law as they openly brandish their weapons. It has also been confirmed that 3,000 U.S. military Hummers, locked and loaded are awaiting dispatch in Karachi’s Port Qasim. For millions of Pakistanis news of these Hummers conjures up images of U.S. troops charging through the streets of Iraqi cities, armed to the teeth, terrifying and often killing unarmed civilians.
On Feb. 23, 2009 the Pentagon revealed that over 70 U.S. military advisers had been secretly working in Pakistan.
Blackwater and the CIA
Pakistanis have known about the 300 U.S. military “advisers” lodged in Tarbela. But news of the arrival of the notorious Blackwater mercenaries in addition to the thousand U.S. marines is riveting their attention. In Pakistan, Blackwater is trading its tainted name for a telling name “Xe Worldwide”, – the name behind which these paid killers are now hiding at the moment.
Also, last week, Creative Associates International Inc (CAII), a CIA front, has been operating in Peshawar. They have now sealed off a road and set up shop near the houses of senior Pakistani officials in Islamabad, directly across from a school. Reportedly some 65 additional houses have been purchased in Peshawar.
Some Pakistani right wing analysts speak about the new arrival of U.S. forces in Pakistan and fear that the US marines; “Will some of these go to the Pentagon’s assassination squads, who may take up residence in some of the barricaded Islamabad houses and with whom the present US commander in Afghanistan was directly associated? Ordinary officials at Pakistani airports have also been muttering their concerns over chartered flights flying in Americans whose entry is not recorded – even the flight crews are not checked for visas and so there is now no record-keeping of exactly how many Americans are coming into or going out of Pakistan. Incidentally the CAII’s (CIA/Blackwater) Craig Davis who was deported has now returned to Peshawar! And let us not be fooled by the cry that numbers reflect friendship since we know— what numbers meant earlier to Soviet satellites.”
more – The Pakistani Spectator
Obama promises VFW more blood
The warmonger tour stops in Phoenix.
Open carry in Phoenix outside Obama’s speech to the VFW conference.
Patriot or provocateur?
Yep, it was staged… more & more
Same old tune…Obama Blaming 9/11 on Al-Qaeda Again
Same lies as Bush and Cheney. Some things never change.
Obama pledges intensified war in Afghanistan and Pakistan
By Tom Eley at wsws
In a speech delivered Monday to the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) in Arizona, President Barack Obama promised to intensify the US military engagement in Afghanistan and Pakistan
The speech’s central purpose was to prepare public opinion for an escalation and prolongation of the US war in Afghanistan and its further expansion into neighboring Pakistan.
The president warned that the war in Afghanistan would be long and bloody, predicting “more difficult days ahead.”
“The insurgency in Afghanistan didn’t just happen overnight,” Obama said. “And we won’t defeat it overnight. This will not be quick. This will not be easy.”
Obama said that diminution of the conflict in Iraq would allow the US “to refocus on the war against Al Qaida and its extremist allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” In other words, there will be no lessening of US military violence. Whatever can be freed up from Iraq will simply be transferred to the “Af-Pak” theater.
“That’s why I announced a new, comprehensive strategy in March, a strategy that recognizes that Al Qaida and its allies had moved their base from the remote tribal areas—to the remote tribal areas of Pakistan,” Obama continued. This casual declaration demonstrates Obama’s indifference toward international law and the US constitution. Pakistan is technically a sovereign state, and no formal declaration of war has ever been made against it.
To defend the intensification of the war in Afghanistan, Obama used fear-mongering language that could just as easily have been uttered by his predecessor, George W. Bush. “[W]e must never forget,” Obama declared, “This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaida would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting; this is a—this is fundamental to the defense of our people.”
The 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US—for which no credible official explanation has ever been given—provided the pretext for the US invasion of Afghanistan, which corresponded to longstanding US geo-strategic aims that held Afghanistan as critical for its proximity to essential oil and gas resources and for its key central position in the Eurasian land mass.
The choice of the VFW convention to signal an escalation of the Afghanistan war provided another echo of the Bush administration. Using much the same rhetoric, Vice President Dick Cheney used the same venue to deliver a speech in August 2002 that inaugurated the campaign that led to the invasion of Iraq, also under false pretexts, in March 2003.
Obama’s campaign to intensify the US military intervention in Central Asia comes under conditions in which the populations in the US, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are increasingly opposed to the war.
A recent poll by CNN/Opinion Research Corp of the US populations found that 54 percent of respondents are now opposed to the war in Afghanistan, with only 41 percent in favor, a dramatic reversal from May when 50 percent expressed support for the war. In Pakistan, a new Pew Global Attitudes survey found that about two thirds of the population, 64 per cent, view the US as “an enemy,” with only 9 percent describing it as a “partner.” And in Afghanistan, it is anticipated that national elections to be held Thursday will lack credibility due to fraud and voter abstentionism. There is a widespread understanding in the population that the election results will not end the US occupation.
In early October the war in Afghanistan will have entered its ninth year, making it the second-longest continuous military action in US history after the Vietnam War. At least 1,316 coalition soldiers have been killed, but the pace of the violence has steadily quickened, with July the bloodiest month for coalition forces since the war began. Beginning in 2005, each new year has outstripped the last as the war’s deadliest, with 2008 setting a record of 294 coalition deaths. The current year will far surpass that total, with 271 deaths having already taken place.
On Sunday and Monday, three British and two US soldiers, as well as an American civilian, died in gun battles and bombings in Afghanistan.
The war has killed tens of thousands in Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan, although no accurate count is available. The vast majority of these have been innocent civilians, with a far larger proportion than in Iraq slain in US aerial bombardments or through attacks from the unmanned Predator drones that terrorize the region’s villages on a daily basis.
As for Iraq, Obama asserted he would “remove all our troops from Iraq by the end of 2011,” a promise that has already been nullified by both the US military command and the Iraqi regime.
After six years and four months of war, there remain 130,000 American soldiers in Iraq. In the interim, more than one million Iraqis have been killed as a result of the invasion, according to the most credible estimate. About a fifth of the population, nearly five million people, have been displaced—two million as refugees in neighboring countries. Iraq has been destroyed as a functioning society; unemployment is widespread and basic social services, including education, transportation, water, sewerage, and electricity, are decimated. Oil production has scarcely reached pre-invasion levels.
Over 4,331 US soldiers have been killed in the conflict, and over 31,100 have been wounded. The cost of the Iraq war will surpass the US war in Vietnam, adjusted for inflation, by the year’s end, when it will reach nearly $700 billion.
Nonetheless, politicians of both parties have joined hands with the media to celebrate the supposed success of the Bush administration’s “surge” in Iraq, whose strategy combined overwhelming violence, assassinations, bribery, and the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad and other areas that previously contained mixed Shiite and Sunni populations.
This barbaric policy has temporarily diminished attacks on US soldiers. But hundreds of Iraqis continue to die every month through bombings and assassinations, and the nation remains a tinderbox, with tense ethnic, religious, and regional tensions set to reignite.
Further undermining Obama’s claim of an imminent withdrawal, the top US commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, on Monday said that he would request more US forces be stationed in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region, where ethnic violence among Arabs and Kurds has intensified in recent weeks.
Obama’s claims that he intends to “wind down” the military involvement in Iraq notwithstanding, it is an article of faith in Washington as well as Baghdad that a large-scale military presence must and will remain. The US has announced its real intentions through the construction of a series of “enduring” military bases and what will be the largest US embassy in the world in Baghdad’s Green Zone. There is agreement within the US ruling elite that the US must dominate Iraq and its oil wealth, the world’s second largest proven reserves.
Yet there is a growing consensus in the ruling class that Afghanistan is even more crucial to long-term US interests. This perspective last year coalesced behind the Obama campaign, and his ultimate ascension to the presidency represented, in no small measure, its triumph.
In his speech to the VFW, the president joined his bellicose statements on Afghanistan and Pakistan with a promise to maintain increased military spending and revamp the US military.
Obama boasted that his administration intends to increase the cost, size, and global superiority of the military, in spite of the economic crisis. “We need to keep our military the best trained, the best led, the best equipped fighting force in the world,” Obama said. “And that’s why, even with our current economic challenges, my budget increases defense spending …why we’ve increased the size of the Army and the Marines Corps two years ahead of schedule and have approved another temporary increase in the Army.”
Obama offered a vision of a new military that could respond to multiple conflicts simultaneously, suggesting the armed forces have “yet to fully adapt to the post-Cold War world, with doctrine and weapons better suited to fight the Soviets on the plains of Europe than insurgents in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan.”
This would entail, the president said, “an Army that’s more mobile and expeditionary and missile defenses that protect our troops in the field; a Navy that not only projects power across the oceans, but operates nimbly in shallow, coastal waters; an Air Force that dominates the airspace with next-generation aircraft, both manned and unmanned; [and] a Marine Corps that can move ashore more rapidly in more places.”***
Obama’s proposals for a lighter and more high-tech army ready to deploy quickly all over the world are entirely in line with the views of Bush administration holdover Defense Secretary Gates, and, for that matter, his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld. {source -wsws}
***Obama left out ‘a military deployed on U.S. soil that will crush you if you don’t obey.’
Don’t think that can happen? We’ll see.
Hamid Gul interview with Foreign Policy Journal
August 12, 2009
by Jeremy R. Hammond
Then Maj. Gen. Hamid Gul, Director General of the ISI (far left), with William Webster, Director of Central Intelligence, Clair George, Deputy Director for Operations, and Milt Bearden, CIA station chief, at a training camp for the mujahedeen in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province in 1987 (RAWA.org)
In an exclusive interview with Foreign Policy Journal, retired Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul responds to charges that he supports terrorism, discusses 9/11 and ulterior motives for the war on Afghanistan, claims that the U.S., Israel, and India are behind efforts to destabilize Pakistan, and charges the U.S. and its allies with responsibility for the lucrative Afghan drug trade.
Retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul was the Director General of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) from 1987 to 1989, during which time he worked closely with the CIA to provide support for the mujahedeen fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Though once deemed a close ally of the United States, in more recent years his name has been the subject of considerable controversy. He has been outspoken with the claim that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were an “inside job”. He has been called “the most dangerous man in Pakistan”, and the U.S. government has accused him of supporting the Taliban, even recommending him to the United Nations Security Council for inclusion on the list of international terrorists.
In an exclusive interview with Foreign Policy Journal, I asked the former ISI chief what his response was to these allegations. He replied, “Well, it’s laughable I would say, because I’ve worked with the CIA and I know they were never so bad as they are now.” He said this was “a pity for the American people” since the CIA is supposed to act “as the eyes and ears” of the country. As for the charge of him supporting the Taliban, “it is utterly baseless. I have no contact with the Taliban, nor with Osama bin Laden and his colleagues.” He added, “I have no means, I have no way that I could support them, that I could help them.”
After the Clinton administration’s failed attempt to assassinate Osama bin Laden in 1998, some U.S. officials alleged that bin Laden had been tipped off by someone in Pakistan to the fact that the U.S. was able to track his movements through his satellite phone. Counter-terrorism advisor to the National Security Council Richard Clarke said, “I have reason to believe that a retired head of the ISI was able to pass information along to Al Qaeda that the attack was coming.” And some have speculated that this “retired head of the ISI” was none other than Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul.
When I put this charge to him, General Gul pointed out to me that he had retired from the ISI on June 1, 1989, and from the army in January, 1992. “Did you share this information with the ISI?” he asked. “And why haven’t you taken the ISI to task for parting this information to its ex-head?” The U.S. had not informed the Pakistan army chief, Jehangir Karamat, of its intentions, he said. So how could he have learned of the plan to be able to warn bin Laden? “Do I have a mole in the CIA? If that is the case, then they should look into the CIA to carry out a probe, find out the mole, rather than trying to charge me. I think these are all baseless charges, and there’s no truth in it…. And if they feel that their failures are to be rubbed off on somebody else, then I think they’re the ones who are guilty, not me.”
General Gul turned our conversation to the subject of 9/11 and the war on Afghanistan. “You know, my position is very clear,” he said. “It’s a moral position that I have taken. And I say that America has launched this aggression without sufficient reasons. They haven’t even proved the case that 9/11 was done by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.” He argued that “There are many unanswered questions about 9/11,” citing examples such as the failure to intercept any of the four planes after it had become clear that they had been hijacked. He questioned how Mohammed Atta, “who had had training on a light aircraft in Miami for six months” could have maneuvered a jumbo jet “so accurately” to hit his target (Atta was reportedly the hijacker in control of American Airlines Flight 11, which was the first plane to hit its target, striking the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 am). And he made reference to the flight that hit the Pentagon and the maneuver its pilot had performed, dropping thousands of feet while doing a near 360 degree turn before plowing into its target. “And then, above all,” he added, “why have no heads been rolled? The FBI, the CIA, the air traffic control — why have they not been put to question, put to task?” Describing the 9/11 Commission as a “cover up”, the general added, “I think the American people have been made fools of. I have my sympathies with them. I like Americans. I like America. I appreciate them. I’ve gone there several times.”
At this point in our discussion, General Gul explained how both the U.S. and United Kingdom stopped granting him an entry visa. He said after he was banned from the U.K., “I wrote a letter to the British government, through the High Commissioner here in Islamabad, asking ‘Why do you think that — if I’m a security risk, then it is paradoxical that you should exclude me from your jurisdiction. You should rather nab me, interrogate me, haul me up, take me to the court, whatever you like. I mean, why are you excluding me from the U.K., it’s not understandable.’ I did not receive a reply to that.” He says he sent a second letter inviting the U.K. to send someone to question him in Pakistan, if they had questions about him they wanted to know. If the U.S. wants to include him on the list of international terrorists, Gul reasons, “I am still prepared to let them grant me the visa. And I will go…. If they think that there is something very seriously wrong with me, why don’t you give me the visa and catch me then?”
‘They lack character’
I turned to the war in Afghanistan, observing that the ostensible purpose for the war was to bring the accused mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, to justice. And yet there were plans to overthrow the Taliban regime that predated 9/11. The FBI does not include the 9/11 attacks among the crimes for which bin Laden is wanted. After the war began, General Tommy Franks responded to a question about capturing him by saying, “We have not said that Osama bin Laden is a target of this effort.” The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers, similarly said afterward, “Our goal has never been to get bin Laden.” And President George W. Bush himself said, “I truly am not that concerned about him.” These are self-serving statements, obviously, considering the failure to capture bin Laden. But what, I asked General Gul, in his view, were the true reasons for the invasion of Afghanistan, and why the U.S. is still there?
“A very good question,” he responded. “I think you have reached the point precisely.” It is a “principle of war,” he said, “that you never mix objectives. Because when you mix objectives then you end up with egg on your face. You face defeat. And here was a case where the objectives were mixed up. Ostensibly, it was to disperse al Qaeda, to get Osama bin Laden. But latently, the reasons for the offensive, for the attack on Afghanistan, were quite different.”
First, he says, the U.S. wanted to “reach out to the Central Asian oilfields” and “open the door there”, which “was a requirement of corporate America, because the Taliban had not complied with their desire to allow an oil and gas pipeline to pass through Afghanistan. UNOCAL is a case in point. They wanted to keep the Chinese out. They wanted to give a wider security shield to the state of Israel, and they wanted to include this region into that shield. And that’s why they were talking at that time very hotly about ‘greater Middle East’. They were redrawing the map.”
Second, the war “was to undo the Taliban regime because they had enforced Shariah”, or Islamic law, which, “in the spirit of that system, if it is implemented anywhere, would mean an alternative socio-monetary system. And that they would never approve.”
Third, it was “to go for Pakistan’s nuclear capability”, something that used to be talked about “under their lip”, “but now they are openly talking about”. This was the reason the U.S. “signed this strategic deal with India, and this was brokered by Israel. So there is a nexus now between Washington, Tel Aviv, and New Delhi.”
While achieving some of these aims, “there are many things which are still left undone,” he continued, “because they are not winning on the battlefield. And no matter what maps you draw in your mind, no matter what plans you make, if you cannot win on the battlefield, then it comes to naught. And that is what is happening to America.”
“Besides, the American generals, I have a professional cudgel with them,” Gul added. “They lack character. They know that a job cannot be done, because they know —I cannot believe that they didn’t realize that the objectives are being mixed up here — they could not stand up to men like Rumsfeld and to Dick Cheney. They could not tell them. I think they cheated the American nation, the American people. This is where I have a problem with the American generals, because a general must show character. He must say that his job cannot be done. He must stand up to the politicians. But these generals did not stand up to them.”
As a further example of the lack of character in the U.S. military leadership, the General Gul cited the “victory” in Iraq. “George Bush said that it was a victory. That means the generals must have told him ‘We have won!’ They had never won. This was all bunkum, this was all bullshit.”
Segueing back to Afghanistan, he continued: “And if they are now saying that with 17,000 more troops they can win in Afghanistan — or even double that figure if you like — they cannot. Now this is a professional opinion I am giving. And I will give this sound opinion for the good of the American people, because I am a friend of the American people and that is why I always say that your policies are flawed. This is not the way to go.” Furthermore, the war is “widely perceived as a war against Islam. And George Bush even used the word ‘Crusade.’” This is an incorrect view, he insisted. “You talk about clash of civilizations. We say the civilizations should meet.”
Alluding once more to the U.S. charges against him, he added, “And if they think that my criticism is tantamount to opposition to America, this is totally wrong, because there are lots of Americans themselves who are not in line with the American policies.” He had warned early on, he informed me, including in an interview with Rod Nordland in Newsweek immediately following the 9/11 attacks, that the U.S. would be making a mistake to go to war. “So, if you tell somebody, ‘Don’t jump into the well!’ and that somebody thinks you are his enemy, then what is it that you can say about him?”
‘This state of anger is being fueled’
I turned the conversation towards the consequences of the war in Afghanistan on Pakistan, and the increased extremist militant activities within his own country’s borders, where the Pakistani government has been at war with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, or Pakistan Taliban). I observed that the TTP seemed well funded and supplied and asked Gul how the group obtains financing and arms.
He responded without hesitation. “Yeah, of course they are getting it from across the Durand line, from Afghanistan. And the Mossad is sitting there, RAW is sitting there — the Indian intelligence agency — they have the umbrella of the U.S. And now they have created another organization which is called RAMA. It may be news to you that very soon this intelligence agency — of course, they have decided to keep it covert — but it is Research and Analysis Milli Afghanistan. That’s the name. The Indians have helped create this organization, and its job is mainly to destabilize Pakistan.”
General Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, former Deputy Minister of Defense of the Northern Alliance under Ahmad Shah Massoud and the Chief of Staff of the Afghan National Army since 2002 — “whom I know very well”, General Gul told me — “had gone to India a few days back, and he has offered bases to India, five of them: three on the border, the eastern border with Pakistan, from Asadabad, Jalalabad, and Kandhar; one in Shindand, which is near Heart; and the fifth one is near Mazar-e Sharif. So these bases are being offered for a new game unfolding there.” This is why, he asserted, the Indians, despite a shrinking economy, have continued to raise their defense budget, by 20 percent last year and an additional 34 percent this year.
He also cited as evidence of these designs to destabilize Pakistan the U.S. Predator drone attacks in Waziristan, which have “angered the Pathan people of that tribal belt. And this state of anger is being fueled. It is that fire that has been lit, is being fueled, by the Indian intelligence from across the border. Of course, Mossad is right behind them. They have no reason to be sitting there, and there’s a lot of evidence. I hope the Pakistan government will soon be providing some of the evidence against the Indians.”
Several days after I had first spoken with General Gul, the news hit the headlines that the leader of the TTP, Baitullah Mehsud, had been killed by a CIA drone strike. So I followed up with him and asked him to comment about this development. “When Baitullah Mehsud and his suicide bombers were attacking Pakistan armed forces and various institutions,” he said, “at that time, Pakistan intelligence were telling the Americans that Baitullah Mehsud was here, there. Three times, it has been written by the Western press, by the American press — three times the Pakistan intelligence tipped off America, but they did not attack him. Why have they now announced — they had money on him — and now attacked and killed him, supposedly? Because there were some secret talks going on between Baitullah Mehsud and the Pakistani military establishment. They wanted to reach a peace agreement, and if you recall there is a long history of our tribal areas, whenever a tribal militant has reached a peace agreement with the government of Pakistan, Americans have without any hesitation struck that target.” Among other examples, the former ISI chief said “an agreement in Bajaur was about to take place” when, on October 30, 2006, a drone struck a madrassa in the area, an attack “in which 82 children were killed”.
“So in my opinion,” General Gul continued, “there was some kind of a deal which was about to be arrived at — they may have already cut a deal. I don’t know. I don’t have enough information on that. But this is my hunch, that Baitullah was killed because now he was trying to reach an agreement with the Pakistan army. And that’s why there were no suicide attacks inside Pakistan for the past six or seven months.”
‘Very, very disturbing indeed’
Turning the focus of our discussion to the Afghan drug problem, I noted that the U.S. mainstream corporate media routinely suggest that the Taliban is in control of the opium trade. However, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Anti-Government Elements (or AGEs), which include but are not limited to the Taliban, account for a relatively small percentage of the profits from the drug trade. Two of the U.S.’s own intelligence agencies, the CIA and the DIA, estimate that the Taliban receives about $70 million a year from the drugs trade. That may seem at first glance like a significant amount of money, but it’s only about two percent of the total estimated profits from the drug trade, a figure placed at $3.4 billion by the UNODC last year.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has just announced its new strategy for combating the drug problem: placing drug traffickers with ties to insurgents —and only drug lords with ties to insurgents — on a list to be eliminated. The vast majority of drug lords, in other words, are explicitly excluded as targets under the new strategy. Or, to put it yet another way, the U.S. will be assisting to eliminate the competition for drug lords allied with occupying forces or the Afghan government and helping them to further corner the market.
I pointed out to the former ISI chief that Afghan opium finds its way into Europe via Pakistan, via Iran and Turkey, and via the former Soviet republics. According to the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, convoys under General Rashid Dostum — who was reappointed last month to his government position as Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Afghan National Army by President Hamid Karzai — would truck the drugs over the border. And President Karzai’s own brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, has been accused of being a major drug lord. So I asked General Gul who was really responsible for the Afghan drug trade.
“Now, let me give you the history of the drug trade in Afghanistan,” his answer began. “Before the Taliban stepped into it, in 1994 — in fact, before they captured Kabul in September 1996 — the drugs, the opium production volume was 4,500 tons a year. Then gradually the Taliban came down hard upon the poppy growing. It was reduced to around 50 tons in the last year of the Taliban. That was the year 2001. Nearly 50 tons of opium produced. 50. Five-zero tons. Now last year the volume was at 6,200 tons. That means it has really gone one and a half times more than it used to be before the Taliban era.” He pointed out, correctly, that the U.S. had actually awarded the Taliban for its effective reduction of the drug trade. On top of $125 million the U.S. gave to the Taliban ostensibly as humanitarian aid, the State Department awarded the Taliban $43 million for its anti-drug efforts. “Of course, they made their mistakes,” General Gul continued. “But on the whole, they were doing fairly good. If they had been engaged in meaningful, fruitful, constructive talks, I think it would have been very good for Afghanistan.”
Referring to the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, General Gul told me in a later conversation that Taliban leader “Mullah Omar was all the time telling that, look, I am prepared to hand over Osama bin Laden to a third country for a trial under Shariah. Now that is where — he said [it] twice — and they rejected this. Because the Taliban ambassador here in Islamabad, he came to me, and I asked him, ‘Why don’t you study this issue, because America is threatening to attack you. So you should do something.’ He said, ‘We have done everything possible.’ He said, ‘I was summoned by the American ambassador in Islamabad’ — I think Milam was the ambassador at that time — and he told me that ‘I said, “Look, produce the evidence.” But he did not show me anything other than cuttings from the newspapers.’ He said, ‘Look, we can’t accept this as evidence, because it has to stand in a court of law. You are prepared to put him on trial. You can try him in the United Nations compound in Kabul, but it has to be a Shariah court because he’s a citizen under Shariah law. Therefore, we will not accept that he should be immediately handed over to America, because George Bush has already said that he wants him “dead or alive”, so he’s passed the punishment, literally, against him.” Referring to the U.S. rejection of the Taliban offer to try bin Laden in Afghanistan or hand him over to a third country, General Gul added, “I think this is a great opportunity that they missed.”
Returning to the drug trade, General Gul named the brother of President Karzai, Abdul Wali Karzai. “Abdul Wali Karzai is the biggest drug baron of Afghanistan,” he stated bluntly. He added that the drug lords are also involved in arms trafficking, which is “a flourishing trade” in Afghanistan. “But what is most disturbing from my point of view is that the military aircraft, American military aircraft are also being used. You said very rightly that the drug routes are northward through the Central Asia republics and through some of the Russian territory, and then into Europe and beyond. But some of it is going directly. That is by the military aircraft. I have so many times in my interviews said, ‘Please listen to this information, because I am an aware person.’ We have Afghans still in Pakistan, and they sometimes contact and pass on the stories to me. And some of them are very authentic. I can judge that. So they are saying that the American military aircraft are being used for this purpose. So, if that is true, it is very, very disturbing indeed.”
Source: Foreign Policy Journal
Hat tip to aangirfan for the link.
Thoughts On The War Between The USA And Pakistan
Winter Patriot is back after a short hiatus to give us some insight into the Neverending Wars™.
The Obama administration embodies none of the change we were hoping for. We are still governed by Bush/Clinton retreads, neo-con chicken hawks, friends and agents of Israel, and Wall Street bankers. None of these people see anything wrong with the American imperial project. The destruction of Pakistan is, and always has been, essential to that project. And the movers and shakers don’t care how much pain and suffering they cause.
To prevent a disastrous war between the USA and Pakistan, it would be necessary to dismantle the American imperial system, and this — as we keep seeing over and over and over — is not about to happen.
See the rest here.
The ‘Good’ War Once Again – The Dead Can’t Give an Opinion
The never ending war. The Orwellian twisting of words calling our ‘surge’ in Afghanistan “the good war” by the neocon/neolib/neo-killers is a sick attempt to perpetuate the myth that cave dwellers did 9/11 and that al-Qaeda will strike again on our soil if we don’t get them and the Taliban over there.
There will be no expose of the American/Mossad 9/11 false flag. We’ll just continue to kill civilians and spend our way to oblivion. The Obama administration is a war criminal regime the same as the Bush one was. War profiteers laugh all the way to the bank and the goal of World War III to solidify the banker/globalist/zionist empire and a one world government/ currency looms ever closer.
An Afghan boy pushed a handcart among new graves of people killed after air strikes in Ganj Abad of Bala Buluk district in Farah Province on Monday. At least 113 civilians were killed in bombing attacks.
Ron Paul questions professional liar Richard Holbrooke in Congress.
Chris Floyd – Rolling Out the Product: A New Full-Court Press for Pakistan War
We are now in the midst of a full-blown campaign to “roll out the product” for a new war: this time, in Pakistan. Anyone who lived through the run-up to the invasion of Iraq should be able to read the signs — anyone, that is, who is not blinded by partisan labels, or by the laid-back cool of a media-savvy leader far more presentable than his predecessor.
We noted some of these signs in a long post yesterday and won’t belabor them here. But today brings yet another bumper crop of panic buttons and alarm bells from the powers-that-be, with ever-increasing emphasis on the “Taliban kooks with Muslim nukes” theme: one more variation on the old “mushroom clouds rising in American cities” ploy that has worked like a charm for our militarists lo these 60 years or more.
Some of the war-pushing powers-that-be are public figures in the Obama Administration (including Obama himself, who has dutifully taken on the Bushian mantle of Fearmonger-in-Chief), and some of them are shadowy, unnamed eminences in the military-security apparat, clearly aiming to act for Obama as those daggers of the mind did for Macbeth: “Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going.” {more}
Our Secretary of State/War Whore Hillary Clinton has ‘regrets’ and is ‘impressed.’
In Washington, where Afghan President Hamid Karzai met Wednesday with top officials, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. deeply regretted the loss of life.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says she is optimistic that Afghanistan and Pakistan will take steps to fight extremists and that she’s “quite impressed” with recent Pakistani military action against the Taliban.
Smiling faces belie intentions of death.
WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama must press visiting Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to accept more help in securing US aid to secure his country’s nuclear arsenal, a top senator said Wednesday.‘He must convince President Zardari to accept more assistance and embrace cooperation,’ said Republican Senator Richard Lugar, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Lugar, a leading US foreign policy voice, cited global concerns that unrest in Pakistan could lead to its nuclear weapons, or the raw materials for chemical or biological weapons, ‘falling into the wrong hands.’ {more}
The dead can’t give an opinion – Christopher King
There’s a good question: “What does the USA contribute to the world?” Let’s leave aside the US delusion that it brings democracy and freedom to a benighted world.
Americans like doing one thing and they do it a lot: they like creating dead foreigners and travel all over the world to do it.
To make killing foreigners easier, Americans are very good at devising ingenious means of doing it, such as smart bombs, beam weapons and drones with which operators in Nevada can safely bomb wedding parties in Iraq or Afghanistan. One can only think that if all this money, energy and Yankee ingenuity were put into renewable energy and infrastructure improvement at home with genuine grass-roots economic aid abroad, the world would be a much better place and Americans would be much better loved. America is certainly the most powerful country in the world but what does that mean? It means only that America has the ability to kill more foreigners than anyone else. It’s by no means evident that this makes it the world’s legitimate policeman, implanter of democracy and freedom or any other of its myths. Nor is America the world economic leader, having ignored sound economics and squandered its wealth on an extravagant life-style and its military-industrial complex. Its debts and fraud are now being paid for largely by the rest of the world.
Politicians rely on the fact that dead people can’t express an opinion. I’ll do it for them. Not one of the dead American or European soldiers would have gone to Iraq or Afghanistan if he had known he would die there. They really believed that they would live and they believed the lies.
{more}
Obama on Afghanistan and Pakistan – Lies and Propaganda
Obama, Clinton and Gates in a press conference 3-27-09
Repeat al Qaeda ad nauseum. Make sure 9/11 is mentioned repeatedly.
Obama quotes:
“The single greatest threat to that future comes from al Qaeda and their extremist allies.”
“al Qaeda and extremist allies have killed several thousand Pakistanis since 9/11”
“I remind everybody that the United States of America did not choose to fight a war in Afghanistan. Nearly 3,000 of our people were killed on Sept. 11, 2001 for doing nothing than going about their daily lives. al Qaeda and their allies have since killed thousands of people in other countries. Most of the blood on their hands is the blood of Muslims.”
“al Qaeda and their extremist allies are a cancer.”
“They assassinated Benazir Bhutto.” {oh yeah}
“We will insist that action be taken one way or another.”
“…$1.5 billion to Pakistan each year for 5 years.”
More money and lives for the fraud of the ‘War on Terror.’
Obama Announces Plans for More Funding for Afghan War
4,000 Additional Troops to Deploy {in addition to the 17,000 military personnel he already has ordered to the country}
March 27, 2009 – Washington Post
President Obama this morning announced a new Afghanistan–Pakistan strategy that will require significantly higher levels of U.S. funding for both countries, with U.S. military expenses in Afghanistan alone increasing about 60 percent from the current toll of about $2 billion a month.
more
Richard Holbrooke has been named as the special representative for both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Doesn’t it seem odd that yet another jew is tasked with bringing peace to the Middle East. You might think that given the Israeli genocide in the area, Afghani and Pakistani people would prefer someone else. But being praised by the ADL, being an AIG insider, a key component of the 9/11 cover up and a lifelong war monger is all that Obama needs for a pick.
Richard Holbrooke only spent a year as the U.S. ambassador to Germany, but he tried to make sure that his hosts would not forget this son of German Jews.
Visitors to Holbrooke’s official residence were greeted by an ambassador who proudly displayed a photo of his grandfather, a Jewish businessman, in his World War I Germany army uniform. “I show it to German visitors as a symbol of what they lost,” Holbrooke told The New York Times in a 1994 interview.
Widely praised in the Jewish community for his role in ending the Bosnian war, he received awards for his efforts from the Anti-Defamation League and the World Jewish Congress.
Obama administration special envoy Richard Holbooke was on the American International Group Inc. board of directors in early 2008 when the insurance company locked in the bonuses now stoking national outrage. Holbrooke, a veteran diplomat who is now the administration’s point man on Pakistan and Afghanistan, served on the board between 2001 and mid-2008.
During that period, AIG undertook the aggressive investment strategies that led to a near-collapse and forced a multibillion-dollar federal bailout. more
Richard Holbrooke — former US ambassador to UN; CFR member; co-chaired “Independent Task Force on America’s Response to Terrorism” in which the Official Conspiracy Theory (OCT) {9/11} was promoted.
From Vietnam to today, Holbrooke has always had his hands right in the middle of death, destruction and theft.
As always, no ‘change’ here.
kenny's sideshow 