Documents found in the files of Muammar Gadhafi’s intelligence services in Libya, which indicated that the now overthrown dictator cooperated closely with U.S. rendition of terrorist suspects to his torture chambers, should prompt questions about how much President Barack Obama has improved civil liberties from the bad old days of George W. Bush. Answer: not …
Continue reading “Comparing Obama and Bush on Civil Liberties and War”
PESHAWAR — Journalists covering the United States–led “war-on-terror” in Pakistan’s turbulent Northwest are not sure who wants them out of the way more — the Taliban or the Pakistan army. So, when Hazrat Khan Mohmand, who works with the AVT Khyber TV Channel, was brutally beaten up by masked men on Aug. 22 near the …
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Osama bin Laden didn’t live to see the 10th anniversary of 9/11. And his organization, according to many U.S. government insiders, is on its last legs since his death at the hands of U.S. Special Forces in May. “We’re within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaeda,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently observed. Others disagree, pointing to …
Continue reading “Al-Qaeda Lost the Battle Long Ago”
During a televised speech today, Iraqi Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani publicly requested Baghdad to retain U.S. troops beyond a Dec. 31 deadline to withdraw. He warned that the country could relapse into sectarian violence or even a civil war. Meanwhile, at least 10 Iraqis were killed and eight more were wounded across the country.
From the coups that ousted Mohammed Mossadegh, Jacobo Arbenz, and Salvador Allende in the Cold War to the waterboarding of suspected terrorists in the Global War on Terror, the CIA has built a solid reputation as an extralegal agent of international sabotage and murder. Since the agency’s creation in 1947, successive U.S. presidents and their …
Continue reading “The CIA’s Selective Secrecy”
In the latest installment of a year-long advertising campaign on the Washington metro, subway riders are treated to a series of smart, mod photographs of leather-clad VPPs (very pretty people) who we assume are spies, operatives, or fugitives á la Jason Bourne. There’s a Carrie Moss with long hair, posing as though caught mid-mission, stilettos …
Continue reading “Post-9/11: All Eyes on You”
When David Petraeus walks into the Central Intelligence Agency today, he will be taking over an organization whose mission has changed in recent years from gathering and analyzing intelligence to waging military campaigns through drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. But the transformation of the CIA did not simply follow the expansion of the …
Continue reading “CIA’s Push for Drone War Driven by Internal Needs”
A deadly post-Ramadan escalation of hostilities has apparently paid off for Iran, as the Party Of A Free Life Of Kurdistan (P.J.AK.) has imposed a unilateral truce on itself, in the hope that Iran will join the ceasefire. At least 5 Iraqis were killed and 14 more were wounded across the country.
Turkish warplanes conducted new air strikes on Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq today, likely in response to violence blamed on the Kurdistan Workers Party (P.K.K.).
Although violence was fairly light today, an escalating border situation involving Iran and Kuwait could spell increasing woes for Iraq. Frustrated Iranian forces resumed cross-border shelling of Iraqi Kurdistan, resulting in the death of one civilian. And, Kuwait detained 11 fisherman who may have strayed into Kuwaiti waters. Overall, eight Iraqis were killed in new violence. Another 20 were injured in what may have been chlorine gas attack.
