Democratic Oversight of U.S. Intelligence Agencies

Sorry Pakistan, but we have no apology policy.

2006-01-17T18:17:00.000-05:00

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1. US Hunt for Al-Zawahiri

On the basis of information that al-Zawahiri and his body-guards were going to spend the night of January 12, 2005, in the Mamond village of Damadola in the house of a local smuggler of gems and precious stones, US aircraft, believed to be Predators of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), made two strikes with missiles at 3 AM and 3-30 AM on the morning of January 13, 2005, at a cluster of houses belonging to this smuggler in which his family members were staying.

Eighteen persons were killed, of whom 14 have been identified as members of the smuggler's family. The smuggler himself was reportedly away in Saudi Arabia for Haj. The identities of the remaining four are yet to be established. The local villagers have been insisting that they too were local residents and not foreigners, but have not been able to give their identities.

This is the fourth such instance of US operations against Al Qaeda in Pakistani territory in recent months.

2. The drone, the CIA and a botched attempt to kill bin Laden's deputy

'This is a big lie... Only our family members died in the attack,' said Shah Zaman, a jeweller who lost two sons and a daughter in the attack. 'They dropped bombs from planes and we were in no position to stop them... or to tell them we are innocent. I don't know [al-Zawahiri]. He was not at my home. No foreigner was at my home when the planes came and dropped bombs.' Haroon Rashid, a member of parliament who lives in a village near Damadola, told The Observer that he had seen a drone surveying the area hours before the attack.

'A drone has been flying over the area for the last three, four days, and I had a feeling that something nasty was going to happen,' he said in a phone interview. 'There was no foreigner there - we never saw a single foreigner here. They were all local people, jewellers and shop-keepers, who used to commute between Bajaur and their village. We knew them.'

The dead were reported to include four children, aged between five and ten, and at least two women. According to Islamic tradition, they were buried almost immediately. One Pakistani official, speaking anonymously, told The Observer that hours before the strike some unidentified guests had arrived at one home and that some bodies had been removed quickly after the attack. This was denied by villagers.

3. Anatomy of the airstrike in Pakistan

U.S. counterterrorism officials claim that shortly after the attack, the bodies of five dead were quickly removed.

Senior U.S. officials say that shortly after 9/11, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf agreed the U.S. could launch airstrikes against terrorist targets in Pakistan and only needed to inform the Pakistani government, not seek its permission.

4. Huge rally asks Pakistani prime minister to cancel US visit

The rally was organized by the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) as part of the countrywide protest against the early Friday attack on three houses in Bajur tribal region. The government coalition partner, Mutahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), had supported the MMA protest, and the support attracted a crowd of some ten thousand people in Karachi, correspondents said. "We want the Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to cancel his upcoming visit to the United States as a protest," deputy chief of the hard line Jamaat-e-Islami, Senator Prof. Ghafoor told the rally.

5. Aziz To Go Ahead With US Visit Despite Anti-America Protests

Aziz told reporters here that his scheduled visit to the United States was on despite anti-American rallies organised by Islamist alliance Muthahida Majlis Amal (MMA) over the Jan 13 missile attack on Damodala village in the tribal belt close to Afghan border in which 18 civilians, many of them women and children were killed.

6. Missile deaths unite Pakistan anti-US groups in outrage

General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's pro-US military ruler, faces nationwide eruptions of anger towards the US after at least 18 people were killed by missiles reportedly fired by a CIA-operated drone near the Afghan border.

Yesterday, at least 10,000 protesters from liberal and Islamic political groups, in a rare gesture of solidarity, joined an anti-US protest in Karachi, the southern port city, while smaller protests were reported across Pakistan, fuelling fears of a new wave of anti-US sentiment in the south Asian country.

Gen Musharraf did not criticise the US directly for the attack during a speech on Saturday, leaving it to the foreign ministry to protest, but warned that aiding militants was dangerous. "If we harbour foreign terrorists, those who carry out bomb blasts throughout the world, then remember that our future is not good," he said.

7. ‘No guarantee US won’t do it again’

“We apologize, but I can’t tell you that we wouldn’t do the same thing again,” [US Senator John] McCain said.

8. Foreign hand in Balochistan?

There is little doubt that arms are flowing into Pakistan's Balochistan both through Iran and Afghanistan. That, however, in no way means that the states of Iran or Afghanistan are directly involved. Surely, the entire region has long been flooded with Kalashnikovs, heavy machine guns, rocket propelled grenades, landmines and mortars. Every kind of killing machine is available to anyone who is willing to pay the price, and then Pakistan's border with Afghanistan is a rugged 2,430 kilometres long, the one with Iran is 909 kilometres (even America has failed to block the supply of arms to Iraqi 'insurgents'). "We don't face any external threat," said General Musharraf. ... The very structure of the state of Pakistan is such that authority is extremely centralised, and the needs of large segments of Pakistani population outside the power structure are not responded to until they go violent. When Balochistan goes violent, gunship helicopters with automatic cannons are sent in. There is no military solution to deprivation, discrimination and poverty.

9. Balochistan leader slams Musharraf

Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, the powerful tribal chieftain whose followers have been engaged for several weeks in full-blown warfare with Pakistani troops in the province of Balochistan, on Wednesday slammed President Pervez Musharraf's claims that India was providing support to the rebellion.

"President Musharraf is using his favourite weapon - lies," Nawab Bugti said in a satellite-phone interview to The Hindu , his first to an Indian publication. "His objective is to defame the legitimate demands of the people of Balochistan." He spoke from the traditional seat of the Bugti tribe, Dera Bugti, which has been besieged by Pakistani troops for several days.

In a recent interview to the television channel CNN-IBN, Gen. Musharraf claimed there was proof that India was providing support to the Baloch nationalist forces, whom he described as "anti-government and anti-me." Indian involvement in Balochistan included "financial support" and "support in kind."

Nawab Bugti, however, denied that Baloch fighters had received any assistance from India. "What is the need for us to take anything from anyone," he asked. "The weapons we are now using flowed into this region when the United States financed the jihad in Afghanistan. It was the Inter-Services Intelligence which distributed them to Afghanistan, Iran, Jammu and Kashmir - and to us in Balochistan."

10. Benazir blames Musharraf for unrest in Pakistan

On the US support to Pakistan, she said: ''Gen Musharraf does what Washington wants him to do and President George W Bush is happy with him.'' It is a pity that Gen Musharraf pays no attention to what the people of Pakistan were saying.'' ''Gen Musharraf has failed to protect the people from unemployment. He may be applauded in Washington for his support and understanding of the needs of President Bush, but he does not understand the needs of the people of Pakistan,'' Ms Bhutto added.

''The press in Pakistan was ''not free'' as it was only free to write against politicians, not against Gen Musharraf or any of the generals otherwise 'your car will get burnt or you will be beaten and end up in exile in Washington','' she said.

11. Of Western Media Hype and Iran

So, why did those “senior sources speaking on condition of anonymity”, let’s call them the SSSCA for short, chose June as the invasion date? The only answer is that they wanted to demonstrate their sense of humor. On the calendar of Iran, June is the month of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the revolution. It was in June 1963 that he organized his first uprising against the Shah. And it was also in the June of 1989 that he died. ...

My guess is that the SSSCA either do not exist or, if they do, are using some gullible journalists dreaming of a Pulitzer-securing scoop, to exert psychological pressure on the Iranian leadership.

But what if the SSSCA do exist and the New Yorker and other media that frequently publish their “leaks” know something that we don’t? What if the invasion starts on March 19 ? Would we not end up with egg on our face? Well, we will have to wait and see.

NSA just one of many agencies spying on Americans

2006-01-12T19:42:00.000-05:00

1. Congress and Executive Power

The new law repudiates the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Rasul v. Bush, 124 S. Ct. 2686 (2004), which held that non-U.S. prisoners at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanano Bay, Cuba (GTMO) could access the federal courts via claims based in habeas corpus, 28 U.S.C. 2241, federal questions, 28 U.S.C. 1331, and the Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. 1350. Now, the prisoners' only access to U.S. courts is limited to appeals of the outcome of GTMO proceedings, and limited to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The new law also specifically states that the military officers who sit in judgment may use evidence obtained by coercion, if they decide it has "probative value."

The law unwisely limits the longstanding right to habeas corpus forged in England. Habeas corpus requires than the Executive can be forced to justify its detention of any person. It is a check for preventing the Executive from becoming too powerful. After all, an Executive that can jail anyone it dislikes, for as long as it likes, is a formidable power indeed.

Also, the law is an overreaction to 9/11. Fear is understandable, but Congress should recognize that we are not really in a state of "rebellion or invasion," as the Constitution requires for the suspension of habeas corpus; nor is public safety clearly threatened. Repeated fears of "dirty bombs" and remote-controlled planes spraying anthrax make it easy to overlook that there have been no Al Qaeda attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11 not a single bomb, not a single jihadist shooting up a shopping mall, not a single zealot ramming his car into a busy, pedestrian-crammed crosswalk. No major political, sporting or entertainment event has been cancelled due to the threat of terrorism. The government has not required owners of dangerous facilities such as chemical plants to step up security. Even if we were attacked today, we should keep in mind that the peaceful period between 9/11 and now more than four years exceeds the entire length of the U.S. involvement in World War II, as well as the Civil War.

2. NSA Destroyed Evidence of Domestic Spying

The National Security Agency, the top-secret spy shop that has been secretly eavesdropping on U.S. citizens under a plan authorized by President George W. Bush four years ago, destroyed the names of thousands of Americans and U.S. companies it collected shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks. According to media sources, the NSA feared it would be taken to task by lawmakers for conducting unlawful surveillance on U.S. citizens without authorization from a court, according to a little known report published in October 2001 and intelligence officials familiar with the NSA's operations.

3. NSA just one of many federal agencies spying on Americans

Besides the NSA, the Pentagon, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security and dozens of private contractors are spying on millions of Americans 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

“It’s a total effort to build dossiers on as many Americans as possible,” says a former NSA agent who quit in disgust over use of the agency to spy on Americans. “We’re no longer in the business of tracking our enemies. We’re spying on everyday Americans.”

“It's really obvious to me that it's a look-at-everything type program,” says cryptology expert Bruce Schneier.

Schneier says he suspects that the NSA is turning its massive spy satellites inward on the United States and intentionally gathering vast streams of raw data from many more people than disclosed to date potentially including all e-mails and phone calls within the United States.

But the NSA spying is just the tip of the iceberg.

4. You're being watched ...

Since 9/11, the expansion of efforts to gather and analyze information on U.S. citizens is nothing short of staggering. The government collects vast troves of data, including consumer credit histories and medical and travel records. Databases track Americans' networks of friends, family and associates, not just to identify who is a terrorist but to try to predict who might become one.

5. Judges briefed on domestic spying

The Justice Department has held an unusual closed-door briefing for judges on a secret foreign-intelligence court in response to concerns about President George W. Bush's decision to allow domestic eavesdropping without warrants.

A number of judges from around the country who serve on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which issues eavesdropping warrants in terror cases, flew to Washington to hear the administration's defense Monday of the legality and use of the program, officials said.

One judge who sat on the court, James Robertson, stepped down in protest last month after the warrantless surveillance operation was first publicly disclosed.

Some of the other 10 judges on the court are also known to have voiced recent concerns about whether information that grew out of the National Security Agency's surveillance operation might have been used improperly in securing warrants from the court for intelligence wiretaps.

6. Guantanamo detainee boycotts trial

Al-Bahlul ended his participation in the proceedings with one word in English, "Boycott", and the presiding officer, army Colonel Peter Brownback, set his trial tentatively for 15 May. ...

Through his military lawyer, Captain John Merriam, Khadr asked that a more experienced military attorney be appointed to represent him.

The hearing was the first time that Merriam has defended anybody in a courtroom, and Chester said he thought the request could be granted.

The Pentagon is proceeding with the two cases even though courts have halted the trials of other Guantanamo prisoners pending a US Supreme Court ruling on whether George Bush as president had authority to establish the tribunals to try foreign terrorism suspects after the 11 September 2001 attacks.

7. Persian poker

In this game of poker, Iran is holding five strong cards. While the US invasion of Iraq has brought American troops to its border, they are bogged down while Shia Islamists sympathetic to Iran have emerged triumphant from the Iraqi elections. Tehran feels confident, moreover, that it can play Europeans and Americans off against each other. At home, the clerical regime last year established near total political control, sweeping away a vestigial reformist government with the ascent of President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, a fundamentalist who veers alarmingly between provocation and mysticism. To add to its self-confidence, Tehran can claim to be acting within the legal limits of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty. Finally, it calculates that its oil and gas riches will win it a sympathetic hearing from countries such as China and India that are scouting for secure energy supplies to feed their fast-growing economies, and perhaps dissuade the US from any precipitate action that might disrupt supplies and send oil prices higher.

8. Syria In Their Sights

The United States is indeed pursuing a hard-edged regime-change strategy for Syria. And it isn’t necessarily going to be a Cold War - in fact, it could well get very hot very soon. In Washington, analysts disagree over exactly how far the Bush administration is willing to go in pursuing its goal of overthrowing the Assad government. In the view of Flynt Leverett, a former CIA Syria analyst now at the Brookings Institution,
the White House favors a kind of slow-motion toppling. In a forum at Brookings, Leverett, author of Inheriting Syria: Bashar’s Trial by Fire, announced his conclusion that Bush was pursuing "regime change on the cheap" in Syria. But others disagree, and believe that Syria could indeed be the next Iraq. For neoconservatives, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. For the rest of us - watching the war in Iraq unfold in horror, lurching toward breakup and civil war - the prospect ought to be both tragic and alarming.

9. Dividing up the prize - Iraqi oil

The former federal interim administration’s Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi and Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr Al Uloum both want UK and US oil firms to be given first bite of the oily pie to thank their governments for liberating Iraq. Iraq should do no such thing.

10. US turns against Musharraf

According to a contact who spoke to Asia Times Online, a person close to the US Central Intelligence Agency paid a low-profile visit to New Delhi in the third week of December and briefed strategic planners on Washington's plan to try to curtail the role of the Pakistani army, while at the same time renewing support for democratic forces in Pakistan.

India's cold shoulder on the diplomatic front toward Pakistan and a policy statement against the military operation in Balochistan was an immediate outcome. Islamabad promptly responded by accusing India of meddling in Balochistan, charges that Delhi strenuously denied.

The same person then visited Islamabad and held high-level meetings with political personalities. On his return to the US he stopped over in Dubai in the UAE and held detailed meetings with former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto, who lives there.

A sudden upsurge in the activities in Pakistan of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy - which Bhutto supports - followed.

Reports of impending attack on Iran are false

2006-01-07T21:51:00.000-05:00

All the scare stories about an imminent attack on Iran are puzzling. Apparently intended as sabre rattling, they are doomed to backfire. An attack on Iran is just not an option. Israel and Iran would both be devastated by a war. Likewise, Iran could counterattack against the US in Iraq, both militarily and through its political influence with the Shia.

Iran may be ten years away from developing a bomb, which is what a CIA report concluded some months ago. Certainly the UN inspectors have found nothing to justify a military strike. Or Iran could already have several nuclear weapons. Who knows.

Iranian President Ahmadinejad's wild rhetoric is calculated to show that the West is incapable of doing anything at all to Iran. An attack on Iran simply isn't worth it, for the US or Israel. And there are no legal grounds for an attack on Iran, since Iran is in compliance with the NPT.From Iran's point of view, it doesn't need the US or "EU-3", whatever that is, and Iran's economy will boom as it sells its oil and gas to the East. I doubt these news stories will have their intended effect of influencing the Iranian government. They will only scare the US and "EU-3" publics, and then disappoint them when there is no war. Yes, that's true - the public will be disappointed when there is no war.

- Paul

1. Report Rebuts Bush on Spying, The Washington Post, Jan 7, 2006

A report by Congress's research arm concluded yesterday that the administration's justification for the warrantless eavesdropping authorized by President Bush conflicts with existing law and hinges on weak legal arguments. The Congressional Research Service's report rebuts the central assertions made recently by Bush and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales about the president's authority to order secret intercepts of telephone and e-mail exchanges between people inside the United States and their contacts abroad.

2. Agency First Acted on Its Own to Broaden Spying, Files Show, The New York Times, January 3, 2006

The agency has also tapped into some of the nation's main telecommunications arteries to trace and analyze large volumes of phone and e-mail traffic to look for patterns of possible terrorist activity.

3. Excerpt of Interview with NSA Whistleblower Russell Tice, Democracy Now, Jan 3rd, 2006

I kinda liken the FISA court to a monkey with a rubber stamp. The monkey sees a name, the monkey sees a word justification with a block of information. It can't read the block, but it just stamps "affirmed" on the block, and a banana chip rolls out, and then the next paper rolls in front of the monkey. When you have like 20,000 requests and only, I think, four were turned down, you can't look at the FISA court as anything different.

So, you have to ask yourself the question: Why would someone want to go around the FISA court in something like this? I would think the answer could be that this thing is a lot bigger than even the President has been told it is, and that ultimately a vacuum cleaner approach may have been used, in which case you don't get names, and that's ultimately why you wouldn't go to the FISA court. And I think that's something Congress needs to address. They need to find out exactly how this system was operated and ultimately determine whether this was indeed a very focused effort or whether this was a vacuum cleaner-type scenario. ...

4. Your phone records are for sale, Chicago Sun-Times, Jan 5, 2006

To test the service, the FBI paid Locatecell.com $160 to buy the records for an agent's cell phone and received the list within three hours, the police bulletin said.

5. Pentagon orders soldiers to promote Iraq war while home on leave, Capitol Hill Blue, Dec 29, 2005

The program, coordinated through a Pentagon operation dubbed "Operation Homefront," ordered military personnel to give interviews to their hometown newspapers, television stations and other media outlets and praise the American war effort in Iraq.

Initial reports back to the Pentagon deem the operation a success with dozens of front page stories in daily and weekly newspapers around the country along with upbeat reports on local television stations.

6. Bush could bypass new torture ban, The Boston Globe, January 4, 2006

When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief.

After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a ''signing statement" -- an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law -- declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said.

7. Options running out after Iran snub, The Asia Times, Jan 7, 2006

Though the EU-3 has coordinated its diplomatic efforts with Washington, Iran is by no means isolated. Russia is clearly in Iran's corner. ... In a very strong show of support for Tehran, Moscow agreed to sell Iran an air-defense system known as the Tor-M1. Arguably the most advanced system of its kind, the Tor-M1 uses a mobile launcher to track and destroy multiple targets, which can include incoming missiles, aircraft and helicopters.

China also clearly supports Iran. Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told EU-3 representatives that placing Iran's nuclear dossier before the Security Council "could encourage Iran to take extreme measures". While Russia has strong commercial ties with Iran in the nuclear and military fields, China has strong ties to Iran's petroleum sector. Given China's growing thirst for oil, it is unlikely that Beijing would abandon Tehran in favor of the US and EU.

Facing almost certain veto by Russia and China, any US-EU attempt to impose sanctions on Iran in the Security Council will fail - a situation both Washington and the EU-3 are aware of. ... Because of its commitment of resources to the occupation of Iraq, a US military strike against Iran has been generally described as not feasible.

8. Reports on US to launch attack on Iran are false, Hurriyet, Jan 4, 2006

Turkey said on Monday that newspaper reports, which stated the US had asked Ankara for permission to use military bases in Turkey for possible attacks on neighboring Iran, are not connected to reality. It was reported in the Turkish media and other newspapers in other countries that a series of high-profile US visitors to Ankara in recent months were in preparation for US strikes from Turkey against Iran's nuclear facilities. "This speculation has no connection with reality," Turkey's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

9. Poland denies backing US in attack on Iran, Xinhua Online, Jan 5, 2006

The Polish Foreign Ministry on Thursday denied reports that Warsaw has pledged to support the United States in the event of a U.S. decision to attack Iran. The Polish Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Pawel Dobrowolski, said on Thursday that the Polish government has not made any declaration to Washington on this matter, saying the related reports were fabricated. ...

Wayne Madsen, a former U.S. intelligence officer, said on his website he was told by anonymous Polish intelligence sources that Poland had assured the United States of support for any U.S. strike against Iran, the newspaper Rzeczpospolita reported on Thursday.

George W. Bush as the New Richard M. Nixon

2006-01-01T10:18:00.000-05:00

Covert CIA Program Withstands New Furor

By Dana Priest, The Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2005

Working behind the scenes, the CIA has gained approval from foreign governments to whisk terrorism suspects off the streets or out of police custody into a clandestine prison system that includes the CIA's black sites and facilities run by intelligence agencies in other countries.The presidential finding also permitted the CIA to create paramilitary teams to hunt and kill designated individuals anywhere in the world, according to a dozen current and former intelligence officials and congressional and executive branch sources.In four years, the GST has become larger than the CIA's covert action programs in Afghanistan and Central America in the 1980s, according to current and former intelligence officials....

Refining what constitutes an assassination was just one of many legal interpretations made by Bush administration lawyers. Time and again, the administration asked government lawyers to draw up new rules and reinterpret old ones to approve activities once banned or discouraged under the congressional reforms beginning in the 1970s, according to these officials and seven lawyers who once worked on these matters.

George W. Bush as the New Richard M. Nixon

By John W. Dean, Findlaw, Dec. 30, 2005

There can be no serious question that warrantless wiretapping, in violation of the law, is impeachable. After all, Nixon was charged in Article II of his bill of impeachment with illegal wiretapping for what he, too, claimed were national security reasons. ...

Given the national security implications of the story, the Times said they had been sitting on it for a year. And now that it has broken, Bush has ordered a criminal investigation into the source of the leak. ...

Such a criminal investigation is rather ironic - for the leak's effect was to reveal Bush's own offense. Having been ferreted out as a criminal, Bush now will try to ferret out the leakers who revealed him. ...

The legislative history of FISA makes it very clear that Congress sought to create laws to govern the uses of warrantless wiretaps. Thus, Bush's authorization of wiretapping without any application to the FISA Court violated the law.

The Bush Family Coup: Son revisits the sins of the father on America

By James Ridgeway, The Village Voice, Dec. 30, 2005

It is little wonder both left and right have come together to fight Bush and may yet jettison the Patriot Act. Revelations of the domestic spy operation, with its secret wiretaps, ought to supply sufficient evidence to impeach Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and launch criminal prosecutions of the top federal officials involved in carrying out the program. After all, these people are directly engaged in overthrowing constitutional government. How did this all come about?

Has Bush Gone Too Far?

By Richard Lacayo, Time, Jan. 1, 2006

But because of a 1978 law that forbids the NSA to conduct no-warrant surveillance inside the U.S., the new policy would require one of two steps. The first was to revise the law. The other was to ignore it.In the end, George Bush tried the first. When that failed, he opted for the second. In 2002 he issued a secret Executive Order to allow the NSA to eavesdrop without a warrant on phone conversations, e-mail and other electronic communications, even when at least one party to the exchange was in the U.S.the circumstance that would ordinarily trigger the warrant requirement. ...

A former senior intelligence official told Time the program was used to develop a "spiderweb" of links between any person connected to al-Qaeda who communicated from abroad and someone in the U.S. That in turn would lead investigators to whomever the U.S.-based person might communicate with later.

Denial in Haiti: AP reporter Régine is wearing two hats

By Anthony Fenton and Dennis Bernstein, Flashpoints, Dec. 27, 2005

A by-lined freelancer for the Associated Press, who is also a stringer for the New York Times in Haiti, is moonlighting as a consultant for the US Government funded National Endowment for Democracy, according to an official at the NED, and several of the agency's grantees.NED is funded annually by grants from the US Congress and State Department, with a 2006 global budget of $80 million, an increase of $20 million from 2005. For years the group has played a controversial role - with lopsided funding of elections in foreign countries - in promoting pro-US candidates and policies friendly to US interests. Most recently, the NED has been accused of attempting to destabilize the Venezuelan government.Regine Alexandre, whose name appears as an AP by-line at least a dozen times starting in May of 2004, and appears as a contributor to two NY Times stories, is a part of an NED "experiment" to place a representative on the ground in countries where the NED has funded groups.

Imperialism and its young admirers

By Dr. Azmi Bishara*, Arabic Media Internet Network, December 29, 2005

The US still acts as though it is at the beginning of a historic mission in the region, as Britain had in the wake of World War I. Bush showered Sharon with promises in an exchange of letters in April 2004 that have a strong whiff of the Balfour Declaration. Then, as surreptitiously as Sykes and Picot, the US began to draw up plans for dividing the Middle East. Although these British and French colonial architects used their pens and straightedges to carve their map onto countries, Washington is carving up countries along sectarian and ethnic lines. ...

How odd it is that this is the US that inaugurated its occupation of Iraq by dismantling the Iraqi army in accordance with an imperial edict issued by Caesar Bremer the Great in May 2003, as part of its project to build a sectarian confederation. The effect of this project and its attendant policies was to increase the power and prestige of the Kurdish and Shia militias, and the operations and assassinations these militias have carried out have only worked to augment the violent rejection of the new order in so-called Sunni areas. The subdivision of Iraq into sectarian-based political areas was unknown to that country before the Iraq-Iran war, which was one of the disasters initiated by Saddam Hussein with the support of the US and all its then allies, and opposed by all of the US's current ones. However, the sectarian politicization we see today, which exceeds all bounds of the imagination, is a purely American achievement. ...

The constant in US foreign policy planning is imperial interests. Imperial interests may dictate that some of the young zealots who believed in Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld bewail the death of a doctrine, just as the tears shed by Israeli settlers at the time of disengagement served Sharon's designs. The bottom line is that national interests prevail. The concept is less emotive and less ideologically coherent than it appears.

Its proponents are also less grandiose and less prone to feigning a worldly callousness than they appear, unlike adolescents trying to act as grownups and certainly unlike those neo-con intellectuals who had never fought a war in their lives, yet who swagger around spouting their notions about the greater picture. These self-styled intellectual giants are indifferent to petty details, such as the cries of misery issuing from the death and destruction below, as they stomp relentlessly forward to fulfil the historical mission to which they appointed themselves ever since they started working as journalists, think-tank scholars, congressional members or under-secretaries. The realists share this insensitivity to the suffering of others, of course. However, their insensitivity is real, not a pose, not the bravado of the university grad who prattles on blithely about the necessity of war, bloodshed, the displacement of people and the partition of nations.

* Member of the Israeli Knesset from Nazareth.

Leave the field now - the Iraqi endgame is about to begin

By Simon Jenkins, The Sunday Times Jan. 1, 2006

In reality the occupation cut and ran from Iraq in the course of 2004. This was when the Americans and their allies abandoned the policing of towns and cities and retreated bruised to more than 100 fortified bases. This is not like the Vietnam war, when American soldiers could move round Saigon at will. The bases are like crusader castles dotting a hostile Levant. Movement between them must be by air or heavily armoured convoy. Ferocious search-and-destroy sallies by the US Marines do not project power, only death and resentment. ...

The exit strategy at present relies on there being a fixed moment when the Iraqi army will pass some notional Sandhurst test. It will be "ready to take on the insurgents" and thus "prevent civil war". Such talk has long brought comfort to the armchairs of Pall Mall. Thus was the Indian army to keep the Empire intact. Thus were Diem's soldiers to take on the Vietcong and Moscow's surrogates to defeat the Taliban. The concept of locals being "almost ready" to replace our boys has long appealed to the imperial imagination. ...

The operative word is await. All Iraq is waiting. Civil strife is appalling because the militias, gangs and police operate under no political authority and with an army supposedly being prepared to fight them. The idea that American or British withdrawal would "lead to civil war" suggests that Iraq is like Yugoslavia. It is not. Since the foreign troops spend most of their time in bases they have no role in policing Iraq's communal strife. Their departure would rather end what Iraqis regard as a humiliation and remove a recruiting sergeant and target for the insurgency.

Doomsday for the Greenback

By Mike Whitney, opednews.com, Dec. 29, 2005

Every greenback carries with it the accumulated weight of two centuries of war, slavery, and ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. It is the flaccid script that has fueled 50 years of covert activities, coup d’etats, and third-world death-squads. It churns through the arteries of the empire to the furthest most extremities where torture and abuse are carried out beneath the tri-colored standard. It is strewn across the empire like the myriad gulags that now speckle the planet. It is the heart of the beast; a venom-pumping organ with arteries strung across the globe like the concertina-wire that surrounds Falluja, Samarra and Tal Afar.

Eventually the stately images of Lincoln and Washington will be stripped from the currency; replaced with the looming specter of Guantanamo’s gun towers or the iconic figure of an Abu Ghraib prisoner, hooded in sackcloth, arms outstretched in Christ-like submission, wires draped from his hands and feet. These are the freshly minted symbols of the new realm, the republic of terror.

As the empire extends its withering grip to the world’s last resource-centers, the dollar is coming under increasing scrutiny. It is the dollar that facilitates the perennial war and the vast expansion of military force; just as it is the dollar that binds together the constellation of American colonies that function exclusively in the interests of their Washington overlords. The asymmetrical warfare that is approaching will put the greenback squarely in the crosshairs; the weak-link in America’s coat of mail.

Hugo Chavez knows this, as did Saddam; that’s why he switched to the euro 6 months before “Shock and Awe”. Now, Putin is trading oil in euros and Iran will open an oil bourse in petro-euros in March. For Iran, its actions are tantamount to a declaration of war. Already, America’s proxy Israel has threatened to attack in March. Is it merely coincidence that Iran’s oil bourse is scheduled to open at the same time?

NSA ECHELON Revisited

2005-12-31T01:02:00.000-05:00

Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Bush was denied wiretaps, bypassed them

U.S. President George Bush decided to skip seeking warrants for international wiretaps because the court was challenging him at an unprecedented rate.

Defense Lawyers in Terror Cases Plan Challenges Over Spy Efforts

Defense lawyers in some of the country's biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.

Listening In and Naming Names

In 1978, congressional investigations revealed that the NSA had spied on civilian anti-war protesters during Vietnam. The response was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. To prevent future abuses, the act drew a line between foreign intelligence and domestic law enforcement. The NSA was free to spy abroad, but when its agents wanted to wiretap in the United States, they had to ask a secret FISA court for a warrant.

Church Committee Report on the Huston Plan

"For years and years and years I have approved opening mail and other similar operations, but no. It is becoming more and more dangerous and we are apt to get caught. I am not opposed to doing this. I'm not opposed to continuing the burglaries and the opening of mail and other similar activities, providing somebody higher than myself approves of it. . . . I no longer want to accept the sole responsibility -- the Attorney General or some high ranking person in the White House -- then I will carry out their decision. But I'm not going to accept the responsibility myself anymore, even though I've done it for many years. "

- J. Edgar Hoover, quoted by William Sullivan

Bush Presses Editors on Security

Leonard Downie Jr., The Post's executive editor, would not confirm the meeting with Bush before publishing reporter Dana Priest's Nov. 2 article disclosing the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe used to interrogate terror suspects. Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, would not confirm that he, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman had an Oval Office sit-down with the president on Dec. 5, 11 days before reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed that Bush had authorized eavesdropping on Americans and others within the United States without court orders.But the meetings were confirmed by sources who have been briefed on them but are not authorized to comment because both sides had agreed to keep the sessions off the record. The White House had no comment.

Times And Post Should Have Disclosed Meeting with Bush on Controversial Stories

Word that members of the Bush administration met with editors of two major newspapers in an effort to stop the publication of news articles in recent weeks drew little surprise from veteran Washington journalists, who said such White House pressure has appeared during past decades.What concerned some, however, was that The New York Times and The Washington Post did not disclose those meetings when they eventually published the articles involved.

New counter intelligence operation directed at Arabs, Muslims and South East Asians

Dr. Bazian, an American of Palestinian origin, graphically explained how the community has been affected by the arrests, raids or search warrants against the Muslim, Arab and South Asian individuals, groups and organizations. In the hour long speech at the UC Berkeley campus, he also exposed the media frenzy created by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security by pre-arranging media coverage of these arrests, raids or search warrants.According to Dr. Bazian, the current infiltration program - under the premise of securing America from the sleeper cells - has a two fold goal: one, arrest those who might express support to Ben Laden; and second, which is more important these days, focusing on the pro-Palestinian sentiments among the targeted communities. However, he added, the overwhelming majority of cases after 9/11 have to do more with the Palestinian issue rather than Osama Ben Laden.

Dr. Germ and Mrs. Anthrax Set Free

Why is it not bigger news that those infamous Iraqi female scientists once routinely referred to in the media as “Dr. Germ” and “Mrs. Anthrax” have been quietly released from imprisonment in Iraq without any charges being brought by their U.S. captors? Don’t the newspapers and TV networks that all but pre-convicted them of crimes against humanity owe them—and us—the courtesy of an explanation for the sudden presumption of their innocence?After all, it was to stop these mad leaders of Saddam Hussein’s allegedly booming weapons-of-mass-destruction programs that the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003. We were told at the time by the White House that the U.N. inspectors scouring the country were being blocked by lying officials and scientists, themselves complicit in breaking U.N. sanctions, and so we wouldn’t get the truth until we could interrogate them as prisoners.

US as Belligerent Occupant

On 19 March 2003 President Bush Jr. commenced his criminal war against Iraq by ordering a so-called decapitation strike against the President of Iraq in violation of a 48-hour ultimatum he had given publicly to the Iraqi President and his sons to leave the country. This duplicitous behavior violated the customary international laws of war set forth in the 1907 Hague Convention on the Opening of Hostilities to which the United States is still a contracting party, as evidenced by paragraphs 20, 21, 22, and 23 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956). Furthermore, President Bush Jr.'s attempt to assassinate the President of Iraq was an international crime in its own right. Of course the Bush Jr. administration's war of aggression against Iraq constituted a Crime against Peace as defined by the Nuremberg Charter (1945), the Nuremberg Judgment (1946), and the Nuremberg Principles (1950) as well as by paragraph 498 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956).