20 Feb - The 'Scoop' on Afghanistan

Obama's Pentagon Rebrands Iraq War, Rolls Out PR Offensive in Afghanistan 
( Nice comment thread ) 

Global Warfare USA: World is the Pentagon's Oyster 
Bush had continued the policies of his predecessor Bill Clinton in relation to the Balkans, Iraq and Latin America - with troops and a massive military base in Kosovo, regular bombings of Iraq and a monumental expansion of military aid to Colombia - and in addition launched two wars of his own, those against Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq two years later.


Obama, so thoroughly does U.S. polity predetermine individual administrations' policies, entered office by intensifying the deadly drone missile attacks in Pakistan begun by Bush in late 2008 and announced that he was doubling the number of American troops in Afghanistan.

Already presiding over the world's largest military budget, officially 41.5% of world expenditures in 2008 and far larger with non-Defense Department spending factored in, in April the new president requested from Congress an additional $85 billion in supplemental funding for the war in Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq.

U.S. lawmakers were more than accommodating and on July 24 Obama signed Iraq and Afghanistan War Supplemental Appropriations amounting to $106 billion.

On October 28, he signed the $680 billion 2010 National Defense Authorization Act which includes another $130 billion to fund what his administration now calls overseas contingency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

With the authorization of $106 billion in July, the last official supplemental appropriation for the wars, and $130 billion last month for Afghanistan and Iraq the combined official spending for both wars will exceed $1 trillion. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) 2009 Year Book, total international military spending for 2008 was not much more than that: $1.464 trillion.

Obama Never Considered Diplomacy In Afghanistan 

Even as polls show a majority of Americans want U.S. forces out of Afghanistan and that Americans do not believe the war is worth fighting, President Obama---a former editor at the CIA front Business International Corporation in 1983-84---embraces a position in line with the long-held CIA view the U.S. must control the Middle East’s energy resources. It was the CIA that overthrew Iran in 1953 after Tehran nationalized its oil production, depriving British Petroleum of its lucrative swindle. Afghanistan is valued today for the oil and gas pipelines the U.S. wants built there, no matter what other reasons Obama gives.
Paul Craig Roberts writing in the December Rock Creek Free Press of Washington, D.C., the U.S./U.K. military aggression in Afghanistan “had to do with the natural gas deposits in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.” Roberts explains:

“The Americans wanted a pipeline that bypassed Russia and Iran and went through Afghanistan. To insure this, an invasion was necessary. The idiot American public could be told that the invasion was necessary because of 9/11 and to save them from ‘terrorism,’ and the utter fools would believe the lie.” The war, Roberts continued, is to guard the pipeline route. “It’s about money, it’s about energy, it’s not about democracy.”

The Great Game: US., NATO War In Afghanistan 

 Fifty or more countries in a single war theater
The U.S. (and Britain) began bombing the Afghan capital of Kabul on October 7, 2001 with Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from warships and submarines and bombs dropped from warplanes and shortly thereafter American special forces began ground operations, a task that has been conducted since by regular Army and Marine units. The bombing and the ground combat operations continue more than eight years later and both will be intensified to record levels in short order.
The combined U.S. and NATO forces would represent a staggering number, in excess of 150,000 soldiers. By way of comparison, as of September of this year there were approximately 120,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and only a small handful of other nations' personnel, those assigned to the NATO Training Mission - Iraq, remaining with them.

"Secretary Gates has made clear that the conflicts we're in should be at the very forefront of our agenda. He wants to make sure we're not giving up capabilities needed now for those needed for some unknown future conflict. He wants to make sure the Pentagon is truly on war footing....For the first time in decades, the political and economic stars are aligned for a fundamental overhaul of the way the Pentagon does business."

The Afghanistan Surge and Dubious Rationales 


The rationale that the Afghan surge is necessary to prevent Al Qaeda from securing a safe haven is dubious. The capabilities of the central Al Qaeda group which carried out the attacks of 9/11 are now negligible while Al Qaeda has failed in its overarching strategic goals.

Their primary strategic goal of creating a multinational Islamic empire under Shariah law looks increasingly distant, if it ever had a chance at all. The general idea was that a display of power by Al Qaeda – represented by a successful military attack against the military, economic and political symbols of American power - would mobilise the Muslim masses to rise up against American-backed regimes. This did not happen, and any support the Al Qaeda leadership gained from that attack has been destroyed by attacks against Muslim people throughout the Middle East.

Furthermore, the argument that the Taliban will provide safe haven to groups like Al Qaeda is flawed. The evidence in recent years shows a fundamental schism has emerged between Al Qaeda and the Taliban. They were never one and the same and the Taliban would have less reason to provide safe haven today to such groups than it did before 9/11. After all, it forced them from power once, why not again?

If that was not enough there is the fact that a senior US intelligence official recently told ABC News that there were less than 100 Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan and that they pose no military threat to Afghanistan or to the US.

Inside the Military-Industrial-Media Complex: Impacts on Movement for Social Justice
The continuing occupation by US forces has guaranteed a monthly mass death rate of thousands of people a carnage that ranks among the most heinous mass killings in world history. More tons of bombs have been dropped in Iraq than in all of World War II.[iii] Six years later the casualties continue but the story, barely reported from the start, has vanished.

The American people face a serious moral dilemma. Murder and war crimes have been conducted in their name. Yet most Americans have no idea of the magnitude of deaths and tend to believe that they number in the thousands and are primarily Iraqis killing Iraqis. Corporate mainstream media are in large part to blame. The question then becomes how can this mass ignorance and corporate media deception exist in the United States and what impact does this have on peace and social justice movements in the country?
In the United States today, the rift between reality and reporting has peaked. There is no longer a mere credibility gap, but rather a literal Truth Emergency in which the most important information affecting people is concealed from view. Many Americans, relying on the mainstream corporate media, have serious difficulty accessing the truth while still believing that the information they receive is the reality. A Truth Emergency reflects cumulative failures of the fourth estate to act as a truly free press. This truth emergency is seen in inadequate coverage of fraudulent elections, pseudo 9/11 investigations, illegal preemptive wars, torture camps, doctored intelligence, and domestic surveillance. Reliable information on these issues is systematically missing in corporate media outlets, where the vast majority of the American people continue to turn for news and information.

From Gaza to Lebanon: Beware the Iron Wall 
One thing we all know by now is that Israel is a highly militarized country. Its definition of ‘existence’ can only be ensured by its uncontested military dominance at all fronts, thus the devastating link between Palestine and Lebanon. This link makes any analysis of Israel’s military intents in Gaza, that excludes Lebanon - and in fact, Syria - seriously lacking.

Decline Of U.S. Dominance In World Defence Markets  
LONDON ( 9th February 2010) The United States’ dominance of the global defence sectors is likely to be eroded over the coming decade as both Russia and China encroach on formerly assured markets, according to the latest Jane’s Industry Quarterly study: “Crossing Borders: International Defence Industrial Relationships – a Global Perspective.”
“The aggressive military export strategies of Russia, and China to a lesser extent, are likely to pose significant challenges for Western military producers.”

US Claims Right To Assassinate Americans Overseas 
Aping the assassination tactics of Josef Stalin, the U.S. has created an illegal “hit list” of Americans abroad marked for murder.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told a House Intelligence Committee hearing February 3rd the U.S. may, with executive approval, target and kill American terrorist suspects, Inter Press News Service of Rome reported. ”We take direct action against terrorists in the intelligence community,” he said.
Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, said, ”It is alarming to hear that the Obama administration is asserting that the president can authorize the assassination of Americans abroad, even if they are far from any battlefield and may have never taken up arms against the U.S., but have only been deemed to constitute an unspecified 'threat'”

Gordon Campbell on the SAS in Kabul  
By keeping a lid on any information about the role of our special forces in Afghanistan, the government stifles the grounds for protest about our involvement. The less that people know, the less they can complain about. That how totalitarian regimes operate. In any real democracy though, the government should expect the media to challenge that agenda of secrecy, and not be browbeaten into colluding with it.

Brits, Dutch Confront Illegal Iraq War 
On March 18, 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Elizabeth Wilmshurst resigned as Deputy Legal Adviser to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), the British equivalent of the U.S. State Department.In an office of 35 or so lawyers, she may have been the only one to resign. However, she testified that her perspective was shared unanimously among all the FCO Legal Advisers, including the head of the office, Sir Michael Wood.

Sir Michael himself told the Chilcot Inquiry: “I considered that the use of force against Iraq in March 2003 was contrary to international law. In my opinion, that use of force had not been authorized by the Security Council, and had no other legal basis in international law.”

In sum: every lawyer charged with advising the British government on the legality of the Iraq invasion believed it was illegal.
“I regarded the invasion of Iraq as illegal, and I therefore did not feel able to continue in my post,” she said later. Ms. Wilmshurst discussed her resignation while appearing before the current British inquiry into the Iraq War — the Chilcot Inquiry.

Corruption threatens global economic recovery 
As the world economy begins to register a tentative recovery and some nations continue to wrestle with ongoing conflict and insecurity, it is clear that no region of the world is immune to the perils of corruption, according to Transparency International’s 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), a measure of domestic, public sector corruption released today.

EDITORIAL: Treaty on cluster bombs 
Cluster bombs are capable of inflicting incredible damage because they release many small bomblets over a wide area. Unexploded bomblets can kill or maim civilians long after a conflict is over. As a result, they are often referred to as "second landmines."

An international treaty to ban cluster bombs, called the Convention on Cluster Munitions, will come into force in August after being ratified by 30 nations. We hope this leads to renewed diplomatic efforts to eliminate this inhumane weapon.





Climategate revisited 
Now that the main charges of scientific misconduct arising from the hacking of the University of East Anglia email system have been proven false, it’s possible to get a reasonably clear idea of what actually happened here.

 Distinguishing Climate "Deniers" From "Skeptics" 
( Considerate of David to so clearly elucidate the grounds for ignoring other's ideas. Unmentioned is the consideration that the issue is a high-stakes political football subject to spin. ) 

Journalism at its most irresponsible. There really ought to be a law. At least there ought to be consequences.

The BBC interviews Phil Jones:
B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
The Daily Mail headline:
Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995
Right.

but the text is more reasonable, if also, well, wrong: