"Lawyers press case that 9/11 confessions given to FBI are tainted" by Carol Rosenberg New York Times, July 29, 2019
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — By the time the CIA delivered Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to the military prison at Guantánamo Bay in 2006, it had already extracted confessions from him through interrogations that included waterboarding, rectal abuse, sleep deprivation, and other forms of torture, but none of what Mohammed said during his 3 1/2 years in secret CIA prisons could be used in the military commission trial he would face on charges that he was the architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. So, within months of his arrival at Guantánamo Bay, the Bush administration had FBI agents question him and other al-Qaida suspects to obtain fresh, ostensibly lawful confessions. Prosecutors called the new interrogators “clean teams.”
Now defense lawyers in the Sept. 11 case — which has been stuck in pretrial hearings since 2012 and will not go to trial before next year — are stepping up their arguments that those teams were not so clean after all.
They say that they have growing evidence that the FBI played some role in the interrogations during the years when the suspects were in the secret prisons by feeding questions to the CIA and that the CIA kept a hand in the case after the prisoners were sent to Guantánamo. The result, they contend, is a blurring of lines that undercuts the assertion that the confessions extracted after torture could be legally separated from those given by Mohammed and his four alleged accomplices to the FBI at Guantánamo.
At one point I would have thought this was excellent journalism and a scoop. Now I view it as nothing but garbage from a government mouthpiece. What they are essentially saying is the allegedly legal confessions after torture are now called into question. Typical government incompetence sabotaging a trial, with the FBI and CIA taking the hit. The cover story stays in place, no questioned asked. He's an Oswald.
That would put these events under the purview of the now discredited Mueller, who was FBI director all this time and was head of the agency when the rounded up and then sent back the Israeli spy ring that was operating in country before 9/11, shadowing -- or setting up -- the alleged hijackers, while the current CIA director was elbow-deep in this kind of stuff during this time.
Oh, yeah, then there is the offhand and cavalier references to torture as if no big deal. If I remember correctly, they tortured his kids in front of him to get him to confess, and apparently his friends are planning another 9/11.
The defense teams cite documents turned over to them under court order showing that the FBI was involved in the case when the prisoners were being held by the CIA, from 2002 to 2006. Then, after President George W. Bush had them transferred to US military custody at Guantánamo, the CIA continued to control or influence the detention of Mohammed and the other men, the documents suggest.
The extent of the cooperation between the two agencies is a matter of dispute, some of it carried out in closed national security court hearings, but the intermingling of their work, defense lawyers say, means that the statements the suspects gave the FBI should be ruled inadmissible.
That way, none of this stuff is brought before anyone and all we are left with is the official narrative.
The intensifying battle over the confessions, which prosecutors say are critical to their case, is just one way that the legacy of torture continues to shadow the effort to get justice for the 2,976 people killed by the Sept. 11 hijackings, and it highlights how the military commission system has struggled to decide complex legal disputes, leaving the case unlikely to be decided even by 2021, two decades after the attacks.
“The clean teams were a fiction from the very beginning,” said Cheryl Bormann, the lawyer for Waleed Mohammed Bin Attash, a Saudi-born man accused of serving as a deputy to Mohammed in the hijacking conspiracy. “There was no separation. It’s all one big team.”
The official story of events that day is a fiction!
The first public information about FBI and CIA collaboration on interrogations involving the five alleged Sept. 11 conspirators emerged in a December 2017 pretrial hearing that challenged whether one of the defendants, Mustafa al Hawsawi, was subject to trial by a military tribunal rather than a federal court. Hawsawi, a Saudi man who was captured in Pakistan in March 2003 with Mohammed, is accused in the joint capital trial of helping the hijackers with travel and finances.
Abigail L. Perkins, a retired FBI special agent, said at the hearing that she had reviewed some of Hawsawi’s statements to the CIA before she interrogated him in January 2007 as a member of a clean team, four months after his September 2006 transfer to Guantánamo. She also said that while Hawsawi was held incommunicado at the CIA black sites, the FBI fed questions to CIA interrogators to ask their captives.
A partially redacted transcript of a national security hearing held last summer at Guantánamo also shows that FBI agents questioned Hawsawi during his time at a CIA black site but hid their affiliation from him. At that hearing, a prosecutor also disclosed that information the government had given defense lawyers to prepare for trial commingled FBI and CIA information that came from the Rendition, Detention and Interrogation Program, the formal name of the black sites, leaving the impression that it had all come from the CIA.
Prosecutors say the FBI agents who questioned the terrorism suspects at Guantánamo in 2007 did so independently of what happened during the period when the defendants were tortured.
That's where my print version stopped the torture, but the web version continued:
Even though the US government “put together the aspects of law enforcement, intel, and military, for the purpose of gaining information, and ultimately obtaining a criminal case against these men in military commissions,” Ed Ryan, one of the prosecutors, argued in court, the work of the clean teams is “legally defensible” because of the magnitude of the government investigation in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks.
Whether to accept the prosecution’s argument will be for the new trial judge, Colonel W. Shane Cohen of the Air Force, to decide.
Last summer, the first trial judge, Colonel James L. Pohl, forbade the use of the FBI interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, then retired from the Army. Another prosecutor on the case, Jeffrey D. Groharing, called the 2007 FBI interrogations “the most critical evidence in this case” and persuaded an interim judge, Colonel Keith A. Parrella of the Marines, to reinstate them.
Now the new judge, who took over the case in June, plans to consider again whether each of the five defendants’ FBI interrogations should be admissible. Hearings on the question could start in September and run until March.
First, however, the judge must decide the delicate question of how much testimony to take from former black site workers, including agents and contractors whose identities the CIA is shielding by invoking a national security privilege. The defendants want the judge to hold an exhaustive hearing on what went on in the CIA prison network between 2002 and 2006 as a basis for deciding whether the clean-team statements are admissible.
You know, like a Soviet trial before being sent to the gulag.
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Related:
"In 2001, Robert Mueller, President George W. Bush’s choice to head the FBI, promised the Senate Judiciary Committee that if confirmed, he would move forcefully to fix problems at the agency. (Mueller became FBI director on Sept. 4, 2001, a week before the 9/11 attacks.)"
That means he was also in charge of the Anthrax investigation and covering up where that led.
"In 2014, the CIA’s insistence that it did not spy on its Senate overseers collapsed with the release of a stark report by the agency’s internal watchdog documenting improper computer surveillance and obstructionist behavior by CIA officers."
See: CIA Spied on Senate
It was all over the Senate Torture Report and I guess they thought you wouldn't see the secret torture sites or Obama's Guantanamo.
"Appearing in the Rose Garden with more than 60 first responders from the 2001 terrorist attacks, Trump signed into law an extension of the fund through 2092, essentially making it permanent....."
Paul and Lee where given an ultimatum, and I'm told the president’s recollections about his own personal experiences that day cannot be verified, and that he played up his own personal connection on Monday to the World Trade Center site; however, his presence was confirmed by one source.
Also see:
NY Fire Commissioners Call for New 9/11 Investigation, Citing “Overwhelming Evidence of Explosives”
The fireman knew from the very day something was wrong, but were told to clam up if they wanted their benefits.
"Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats is leaving his job next month, ending a two-year tenure marked by President Trump’s clashes with intelligence officials. Trump announced Coats’s departure on Aug. 15 in a tweet Sunday that thanked Coats for his service. He said that he will nominate Representative John Ratcliffe, Republican of Texas, to the post and that he will name an acting official in the coming days. Ratcliffe is a frequent Trump defender who fiercely questioned former special counsel Robert Mueller last week during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. Coats often appeared out of step with Trump and disclosed to prosecutors how he was urged by the president to publicly deny any link between Russia and the Trump campaign. The frayed relationship reflected broader divisions between the president and the government’s intelligence agencies. Coats’s public, and sometimes personal, disagreements with Trump over policy and intelligence included Russian election interference and North Korean nuclear capabilities. Trump had long been skeptical of the nation’s intelligence community, which provoked his ire by concluding that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election with the goal of getting him elected. A former Republican senator from Indiana, Coats was appointed director of National Intelligence in March 2017, becoming the fifth person to hold the post since it was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to oversee and coordinate the nation’s 17 intelligence agencies. Coats had been among the last of the seasoned foreign policy hands brought to surround the president after his 2016 victory, of whom the president steadily grew tired as he gained more personal confidence in Oval Office, officials said. That roster included Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and later national security adviser H.R. McMaster. Coats developed a reputation inside the administration for sober presentations to the president of intelligence conclusions that occasionally contradicted Trump’s policy aims."
The Deep State under coat, 'er, cover, and thing in common among the roster is they all crossed Kushner (as did John Kelly).
So what does he know that you do not that would cause him to bail at this crucial time?
"She robbed multiple banks in several states along the East Coast, armed with notes demanding money from tellers — and, the authorities say, a ‘‘distinctive pink handbag,’’ and now, the FBI says, the woman whom the bureau nicknamed the ‘‘Pink Lady Bandit’’ has been captured. Police in Charlotte, N.C., arrested 35-year-old Circe Baez and her suspected accomplice, 38-year-old Alexis Morales, on Sunday, the FBI said in a statement. Baez and Morales were apprehended at Charlotte Speedway Inn & Suites, nearly 100 miles from Hamlet, N.C., the site of the Pink Lady Bandit’s last robbery. The FBI had offered a reward of up to $10,000 for help capturing the mysterious woman who had robbed at least four banks along a 665-mile stretch over the span of a week, traveling from Pennsylvania to Delaware to North Carolina, according to an FBI ‘‘Wanted’’ poster. The Pitt County Sheriff’s Office posted triumphantly about the arrests on Facebook, congratulating police, FBI, and others for their work enabling the ‘‘quick outcome.’’ ‘‘The pink lady is changing her trademark to an orange jumpsuit,’’ the office wrote....."
They sending her to Gitmo, too?
Related: Photo raises questions over a confession
They mean in Italy:
"Italy: Teen held in officer’s death ‘illegally blindfolded’" by Frances D’Emilio Associated Press, July 28, 2019
ROME — An American teenager was illegally blindfolded before he was interrogated as a suspect in the slaying of a newlywed police officer in Rome, an Italian police commander said Sunday after the emergence of a photo showing the young tourist restrained with handcuffs and with his head bowed.
I don't think America is in a position to criticize.
Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth, 18, was blindfolded ‘‘for a very few minutes, four or five’’ on Friday just before he was taken to the interrogation in a police station about the fatal stabbing, Rome Provincial Commander Francesco Gargaro said.
Natale-Hjorth and another suspect from California, 19-year-old Finnegan Lee Elder, remained jailed while Italians lined up outside a chapel to pay respects to Deputy Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega. The 35-year-old officer had recently returned to duty on the Carabinieri paramilitary police force after a honeymoon.
Oh, he killed a cop.
That's the death penalty over here.
The officer was attacked with a knife on a street close to the teens’ upscale hotel in Rome. An autopsy showed he had been stabbed 11 times.
‘‘Whoever killed him is an animal,’’ said the mayor of the officer’s hometown, Somma Vesuviana. Mayor Salvatore Di Sarno spoke after leaving a wake for the officer in a chapel close to the police station in Rome where he had worked for years.
The coroner concluded that the policeman bled to death, according to Italian news reports.
Hundreds of Romans lined up in silence to file past the officer’s coffin. Among the mourners were his widowed bride, Rosa Maria Esilio, and Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte.
Cerciello was popular for warmly greeting residents of the neighborhood in historic Rome. He spent off-duty hours as a volunteer dishing out hot meals to the homeless in Rome’s main station and accompanied ailing faithful to religious shrines, including in Lourdes, France.
Investigators allege Elder knifed the policeman during a struggle after Cerciello Rega and his partner, both plainclothes officers, identified themselves as police. The officers were following up on a report of a drug deal that allegedly involved the teens.
Authorities contend Natale-Hjorth repeatedly punched the other officer, who was not seriously hurt.
Police said Saturday that both Americans confessed to their roles in Cerciello Rega’s death. Under Italian law, anyone who participated in a slaying can face murder charges.
Gotta throw it out, for it was under duress.
Italian newspapers on Sunday published a photo of Natale-Hjorth with what appears to be a scarf covering his eyes and with his arms handcuffed behind his back as he sat in a chair at a police station. Police and prosecutors are conducting separate investigations of the blindfolding.
Blindfolding of a suspect ‘‘is illegal. It’s not allowed,’’ Gargaro said. The officer who put the blindfold on committed a ‘‘mistake’’ but did so to prevent Natale-Hjorth from seeing documents related to the investigation, the commander said.
Natale-Hjorth had been brought in handcuffs to the station house from his hotel, Gargaro said. He was interrogated by police and prosecutors without a lawyer there since he had not been formally detained as a suspect and Italian law does not allow an attorney’s presence at that stage, the commander said, but Rome’s prosecutor general, Giovanni Salvi, said in a statement that there was indeed a lawyer present during the actual interrogation. It was not immediately clear if Gargaro might have been referring to the time spent while waiting for the interrogation.
Salvi, as Gargaro did, also stressed that the two suspects ‘‘were brought to the interrogation physically free, without blindfolds or handcuffs.’’ Salvi said the interrogation, by two magistrates, ‘‘was recorded and entirely transcribed. The defendants were advised of their rights.’’
The officer who placed the blindfold on was being transferred to a different unit, Gargaro said. The Carabinieri were also investigating who took the photo and how it was leaked.
Elder’s lawyer, Francesco Codini, did not reply to a request for comment. Natale-Hjorth’s lawyer could not be reached.
Italian media reported that Natale-Hjorth had recently been visiting, with his father and a grandfather, a town near Rome where they have relatives, then met up with his school alumnus Elder in Rome, staying in the hotel.
The teen had just completed his first year at Santa Barbara City College, according to the institution in Southern California.
With the slain officer being widely mourned as a hero, some Italians, such as center-right lawmaker Mariastella Gelmini, worried that the publication of the photo might aid the defense or thwart justice.
Another prominent politician, Pier Ferdinando Casini, said those who respect the sacrifice of officers such as Cerciello Rega ‘‘cannot justify the treatment of the young American, which goes contrary to every rule.’’
For others, the photo evoked the beating death of a young Roman who was jailed in a drug investigation a few years ago. Stefano Cucchi was severely beaten after his arrest and died several days later. After his family fought to find out the truth, several police officers were investigated for the beating and for attempting to cover it up.
His sister, Ilaria Cucchi, called the photo of the blindfolded Natale-Hjorth ‘‘terrible.’’
‘‘Certain things must not happen whatever the accusation is,’’ she said.
I see.
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At least it isn't a Russian prison:
"Fears of Navalny poisoning are rooted in previous attacks on Kremlin foes" by Neil MacFarquhar New York Times, July 29, 2019
MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin has tried to build an image of a powerful, united Russia, and anyone who would undermine that strength or point out that much of the country lives in poverty is often the target of official ire.
Independent journalists, rights advocates, opposition politicians, government whistleblowers, and others are smeared in the media, jailed on dubious charges and, in some cases, killed. Russia’s most prominent opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, himself temporarily lost most of the vision in one eye when someone threw a caustic liquid into his face in 2017.
Analysts have described both Navalny’s medical emergency and the mass detentions Saturday, when police carted away almost 1,400 protesters, as possible signs of the Kremlin’s unease about Putin’s continued drop in the polls, with Russians grumbling about their stagnant incomes. They said that instead of doing the hard work of changing policies to woo those who are angry with Kremlin, the government is trying to silence them.....
OMFG, NYT!
The Russians may well be Americans, and I'm told the cause of the covert destabilization effort was anger over preventing opposition candidates from registering for the September election, and that hence the crackdown will feed more protests with the next one scheduled for Saturday.
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Meanwhile, Navalny says he started to improve after a doctor gave him a shot, but he was not told anything about his condition and only discovered some details from a hospital report given to a news agency, and asks “are they such idiots as to poison me in a spot where they would be they only suspects?”
The short answer to that is NO!
This is all about squeezing the bear until he is dead.
Or a Brazilian one:
"At least 52 people were killed in a prison riot Monday in northeastern Brazil, authorities said, the second time since May that a clash between rival gangs exploded into a horrifying bout of violence. At least 16 of the victims were decapitated, authorities said. Others were asphyxiated. It took five hours for prison officials to quell the riot at the Altamira jail in Para state. The clash erupted early Monday after members of one gang infiltrated another part of the jail. Video and pictures aired by local media showed flames shooting out of the prison. Inmates took two prison officials as hostages. They were reportedly freed unharmed. Authorities did not immediately say which gangs were involved. The clash echoed a riot in northwestern Brazil on May 27, when a power struggle involving the Northern Family, Brazil’s third-most-powerful gang, led inmates to strangle or stab at least 55 people, some in front of visiting families. The violence illustrated the mounting insecurity in Brazil’s notoriously underfunded and overcrowded prisons — and the challenge facing officials as they struggle to restore order to the system. Brazil’s inmate population has swelled from about 500,000 inmates a decade ago to an estimated 800,000....."
Well, Bolsonaro was elected last year on promises to crack down on violent crime and he would ‘‘rather a prison cell full of criminals than a cemetery full of innocent people,’’ but Brazil office of Human Rights Watch said ‘‘it is really sad to see violence again, but not surprising.’’
"Miners kill indigenous leader in Brazil during invasion of protected land" by Ernesto Londoño New York Times, July 28, 2019
RIO DE JANEIRO — Several dozen heavily armed miners dressed in military fatigues invaded an indigenous village in remote northern Brazil this past week and fatally stabbed at least one of the community’s leaders, officials said.
The killing comes as miners and loggers are making increasingly bold incursions into protected areas, including indigenous territories, with the explicit encouragement of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. Officials warned that the conflict could escalate in the coming hours.
Bolsonaro has said that indigenous communities are in control of vast territories that should be opened up to industries to make them profitable.
Land invasions in indigenous territories are on the rise across Brazil, where indigenous leaders say they regularly come under threat by miners, loggers, and farmers. Yet assassinations of indigenous leaders are rare.
Leaders of the Wajãpi indigenous community made urgent pleas to the federal government Saturday, warning that the conflict between the miners and members of their community who live in remote villages in the northern state of Amapá risked turning into a blood bath.
“They are armed with rifles and other weapons,” Jawaruwa Waiãpi, a leader of the community, said in a voice message sent to one of the state’s senators, referring to the miners. “We are in danger. You need to send the army to stop them.”
Rodolfe Rodrigues, the senator, identified the slain indigenous leader as Emyra Wajãpi. He said the miners tossed his body in a river after stabbing him to death.
On Saturday night, an elite police force was en route to the area. The National Indian Foundation, a federal agency that was created to protect indigenous rights, said Saturday that its personnel in the area were trying to ascertain the facts surrounding the killing.
The Wajãpi, who have lived for centuries in the area that straddles northern Brazil and French Guiana, lived in isolation until the 1970s, when the Brazilian government built a road that made their areas accessible to miners and other outsiders.
Their territory was designated a protected area in 1996 as part of the process established by Brazil’s 1988 constitution. That charter, which was adopted after 21 years of military rule, set out to make amends for the brutality indigenous communities had endured since Europeans arrived on the continent in the 1400s......
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The last thing the Globe covered was the mass graves before burying it.
Or Chinese:
"China says most Muslims have been released from camps. Others say prove it." by Chris Buckley New York Times, July 30, 2019
BEIJING — China said Tuesday that most of the inmates in its reeducation camps for Muslim minorities — a vast network of detention centers estimated to have held as many as 1 million people or more — have been released.
Do they call them black sites?
The announcement appeared intended to blunt growing international condemnation of the camps, but specialists and members of targeted Muslim minority groups who have fled abroad quickly contested the assertion. Growing evidence from government documents shows the Xinjiang government wants to shift camp inmates and many other Uighurs into labor programs where they will work under the watch of the government and compliant factories, said Adrian Zenz, an independent researcher in Germany who studies the camps.
Yes, they are implying Chinese concentration camps with the subsequent imagery that is to be conjured up -- and the article was my World lead on that day.
Xinjiang is home to more than 11 million Uighurs, a largely Muslim minority, and their treatment has become a global human rights controversy under President Xi Jinping. Western governments, United Nations human rights specialists, and advocates of Uighur self-determination have condemned the increasingly harsh restrictions on many Uighurs, especially the reeducation camps.
They are called rehabilitation centers here in AmeriKa.
Beyond describing them as vocational training facilities, Xinjiang officials said the camps offered classes that have effectively inoculated Uighurs against the temptation to embrace religious extremism or terrorism. Until several years ago, Xinjiang had experienced a string of deadly attacks by discontented Uighurs, but former camp detainees who have left China say they were subjected to a high-pressure indoctrination program with the goal of removing devotion to Islam and instilling loyalty to China and its ruling Communist Party.
They call them schools over here.
Kind of reminds me of the de-Nazification programs under Eisenhower.
This month, a group of 22 countries, including Australia, Britain, Canada, France, and Germany, issued a statement urging China to halt the mass detention of Uighurs and other Muslims. China struck back with a letter signed by 37 ambassadors from countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America who praised its human rights record, including the “de-radicalization” policies applied in Xinjiang.
The Chinese government’s assertion that the population in reeducation camps is shrinking appeared intended to stave off debate about Xinjiang before a meeting of the UN General Assembly in September as well as sessions of the UN Human Rights Council, said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, but she said that there was no reason to believe the assertion.
“They lied about the existence of the camps, they admitted the camps existed, and lied about what happens inside them,” Richardson said. “So one has to be awfully skeptical about a claim that — oops! — it’s all sorted out.”
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The American ma$$ media and pre$$, and in particular the New York Times, are now engaged in massive cases of projection. What they accuse of others is what they themselves are guilty of, and the source should be called Juman Rights Watch at this point due to their ever timely reports regarding all enemies or potential enemies or allies we must pressure.
More on that later, but here is a reminder of where those God-awful lies regarding that God-awful day have led us:
KABUL — Amid tight security and raucous cheers, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani launched his reelection campaign Sunday, telling several thousand supporters in a giant auditorium that he was running for another five-year term ‘‘to complete the unfinished project of building a democratic state,’’ but hours later, insurgents attacked the Kabul office of Ghani’s top running mate, Amrullah Saleh, a former national intelligence chief. No group immediately asserted responsibility for the assault on the headquarters of Saleh’s Green Trend party, but the Taliban has often targeted intelligence facilities and personnel.
Here we go again. The Washington ComPost is implicating the Taliban with no evidence. WaComPo is the flip side of the government mouthpiece coin. Beyond that, I have no reason to believe this even even happened given the initial particulars. Smells like a false-flag claim right from the start.
The violence on the opening day of Afghanistan’s presidential campaign underscored the confusion, uncertainty, and danger overshadowing the election plans, even as peace talks between Taliban and US officials continue. Many Afghans fear that threats and attacks by the Taliban, which controls or contests nearly half of the country’s 400 districts, may fatally disrupt the polls. Many, including some of the presidential candidates, also say that reaching an accord with Taliban leaders is a much higher priority and that an election campaign could undermine peace talks.
And who benefits? The U.S. and its current puppet regime.
This propaganda that is being peddled these days isn't even any good anymore, and is as transparent as shi*!
In a report released Sunday, the independent Afghanistan Analysts Network noted that some specialists are of the view that a change of government should not take place until the Taliban can participate, although others argue that ‘‘sacrificing elections might mean they are never again held’’ under Taliban control. The report quotes an aide to one candidate as saying, ‘‘We prefer to have peace first and then conduct elections in a peaceful environment.’’
Then they will never be held in either case!
Good Gawd!
US officials, who have held seven rounds of peace negotiations with Taliban leaders, are pressing for a partial peace settlement by early September, but progress has been stymied by the Taliban’s refusal to hold formal talks with Afghan officials and agree on a long-term cease-fire. The insurgents seek a full withdrawal of US troops and a dominant future role in power.
Like before?
"The U.S. government was well aware of the Taliban's reactionary program, yet it chose to back their rise to power in the mid-1990s. The creation of the Taliban was "actively encouraged by the ISI and the CIA," according to Selig Harrison, an expert on U.S. relations with Asia. "The United States encouraged Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to support the Taliban, certainly right up to their advance on Kabul," adds respected journalist Ahmed Rashid. When the Taliban took power, State Department spokesperson Glyn Davies said that he saw "nothing objectionable" in the Taliban's plans to impose strict Islamic law, and Senator Hank Brown, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Near East and South Asia, welcomed the new regime: "The good part of what has happened is that one of the factions at last seems capable of developing a new government in Afghanistan." "The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis. There will be Aramco [the consortium of oil companies that controlled Saudi oil], pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that," said another U.S. diplomat in 1997."
Once you realize the inside job nature of 9/11, and the Taliban refusal to grant energy access as well as destroying the opium crop upon which CIA black budgets are bolstered, you can pretty quickly see that none of the narrative being provided by the pre$$ is true..... as the web version rolled on:
On Sunday, one of Ghani’s top rivals, Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, held a subdued campaign launch in a crowded wedding hall in the capital. Abdullah, who was also Ghani’s top rival in the 2014 election and is his estranged governing partner, said he had ‘‘come from the people’’ and would work to ‘‘take this broken ship to its desired destination.’’
Abdullah offered few policy ideas and refrained from directly criticizing Ghani, with whom he has clashed often since being persuaded to share power by US officials after a disastrous election, but a senior campaign adviser, former finance official Anwar Ahady, told the crowd that Ghani had run the country through ‘‘micromanagement and monopoly of power. That is what we will end if we win.’’
So which U.S. stooge would you prefer run the place?
Ghani, 70, said Sunday that he is determined to hold the election. He is considered the front-runner despite widespread public discontent with the economy and the ongoing war. He has benefited from divisions among his rivals as well as incumbency advantages. Some critics have accused him of making high-level job appointments to buy electoral support. Ghani recently appointed a new ambassador to India who is under investigation by the attorney general over corruption allegations.
They are looking more like AmeriKa all the time when it comes to their political $y$tem!
No wonder they want us out!
At the elaborately scripted rally, Ghani’s clever sound bites, delivered in a raspy roar, were a departure from the former World Bank official’s usual policy prescriptions. The audience loved the performance, with many rising to their feet to shout encouragement.
‘‘People say I am mad, but I am mad for progress,’’ Ghani declared to cheers and laughter. He vowed to rid the country of dependence on foreign charity, and, in a line referring indirectly to President Trump’s recent comments that he could end the Afghanistan war in 10 days by massive bombing, Ghani vowed that ‘‘hundreds of bombs can’t destroy Afghanistan.’’
Oh, he didn't mean it, and I'm sure we have dropped more than hundreds on them over the last 18 years, with its consequent destruction and poisoning of the environment.
The one discordant moment came when a man rose and shouted that Ghani was a ‘‘liar’’ who had cheated the public. Plainclothes security personnel immediately grabbed the man and hustled him out of the premises. They then appeared to demand that journalists erase footage of the incident, provoking an altercation.
I love self-serving WaComPo slop!
Other major candidates in the race include Hanif Atmar, a former national security adviser to Ghani; Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former fugitive militia leader who returned to Kabul in 2017 under a peace deal; Rahmatullah Nabil, a former national intelligence chief; and Ahmad Wali Massoud, a brother of the slain anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Hekmatyar is the CIA's ace-in-the-hole, and I'm almost positive all the others are on the payroll as well. After all, it's a WaComPo article! They have long been known as the CIA's newspaper.
No other candidates have held public rallies yet, and specialists predict it will be difficult for all candidates to campaign in much of the country because of Taliban threats. They also worry that voter turnout will be extremely low, jeopardizing credible results. During parliamentary elections last fall, violence was reported in many areas and polls were postponed in two provinces.
As if anyone would have thought they will be credible under U.S. auspices, etc. The paper assumes a credibility they do not have!
I'm surprised they haven't blamed Russian interference!
Public enthusiasm for the presidential election has been subdued, and partisan and personal bickering among Ghani’s opponents have added to voter disillusionment. After Ghani’s rally ended and delegates were pouring into the streets, a man behind the counter at a nearby grocery store watched with a grim expression.
‘‘There is only one thing that matters for Afghans, and that is peace. Too many people are being killed everyday,’’ said the shopkeeper, who gave his name as Neematullah. ‘‘Elections will not help. None of these candidates can bring peace, not Ghani or Abdullah. None of them.’’
I know how he feels.
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Related:
"An Afghan soldier shot and killed two American service members in Afghanistan, US officials said Monday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak on the record about details that have not yet been made public. According to officials, the shooting took place in Kandahar in the country’s south. The US formally ended its Afghan combat mission in 2014 but still provides extensive air and other support to local forces battling both the Taliban and an affiliate of the Islamic State group. US and allied forces have faced increasing insider attacks in recent years. The last six months have seen the Taliban carry out near-daily attacks, mainly targeting Afghan security forces. The insurgent group effectively controls around half the country. The Taliban have rejected calls for a cease-fire even as they hold talks with the United States aimed at ending the 18-year war, America’s longest. The Islamic State, meanwhile, has launched attacks targeting security forces as well as minority Shi’ites. The United States has lost more than 2,400 soldiers in its longest war, and has spent more than $900 billion on everything from military operations to the construction of roads, bridges, and power plants. The Trump administration is trying to boost the capabilities of Afghan security forces and increase military pressure on the Taliban in the hope of forcing them to negotiate a peace....."
PFFFT!
You read something like that and your head spins from the shit-swirling spin of the pre$$. The U.S. is losing the war, has already lost the war, and the pre$$ tells me that Trump is boosting security forces (on the heels of an infiltrator attack, for God's sake) and putting on the military pressure (what does that mean, more bombing and kicking down of doors before dawn?) to force the Taliban to the peace table when it is the U.S. suing for peace (only on their terms, of course; otherwise, the lost cause continues. Looks like the Vietnam syndrome has indeed been kicked because we would have been out of Afghanistan long ago).
I sure hope the $1 TRILLION on Afghanistan alone was worth it, the lies that led to it, the torture that flowed from it, and the rivers of blood in this mass-murdering exercise that was promoted by the pre$$.
"Afghan soldier shoots 2 US troops dead at Kandahar army base" by Pamela Constable Washington Post, July 30, 2019
KABUL — Two American service members were shot dead and a third wounded Monday in a rare ‘‘insider’’ attack when an Afghan soldier opened fire on a group of American forces at a military base in a conflict-torn region of southern Kandahar province, Afghan defense and police officials said Tuesday.
How "rare?"
US military officials here confirmed that two American troops had been killed but did not provide any details or identify the victims, saying they needed to wait until their families were notified. A statement from the US Resolute Support mission here said only that two service members had died.
According to Afghan officials, the shooter was wounded in return fire and taken into Afghan military custody. It was the first known incident, also known as a ‘‘green on blue’’ attack, since November, when Brent Taylor, a major in the Utah National Guard and the mayor of a town in Utah, was killed by an Afghan soldier in Kabul.
Rare enough for you?
No information was immediately available about the shooter except that he was an Afghan army soldier. In past ‘‘green on blue’’ incidents, the attackers have included both bona fide Afghan troops who were angry, disgruntled or influenced by Taliban propaganda, and insurgent infiltrators who enlisted to attack and sabotage foreign forces.
Whatever, WaComPo. Looks like an FBI operation backed up by the pre$$.
Insider attacks have been a problem for American forces in Afghanistan over the past decade, peaking in 2012 with several high-profile incidents, but they declined significantly after US military officials began placing ‘‘guardian angel’’ forces in the battlefield, Afghan security officials improved vetting of recruits, and a major US troop drawdown began in 2014. A total of 2,400 US troops have been killed in the 18-year conflict.
Where do you fucking start? Obama promised to gets us out and then insider attacks rose and rose. So much for all the money and training (earlier they mentioned reconstruction, and yet we never read of all the U.S. successes in rebuilding the country. the reason is because the rebuilding money was either stolen or spent on $elf-$erving and $hoddy projects, with nothing to show for it; otherwise, my pos, war-promoting pre$$ would be writing about it).
Then they say the "rare" instances declined once we reinserted U.S. forces into the fight or whatever. Makes one ask WTF this whole god-damn thing has been about other than geopolitics and war profiteering. Fu*king ashamed of it all.
Meanwhile, the UN mission said in a report released Tuesday that more civilians were killed by Afghan and international coalition forces in Afghanistan in the first half of this year than by the Taliban and other militants.
UH-OH!
That means WE are the PROBLEM and NEED TO GO NOW!
Must be the "guardian angels" and aircraft helping to liberate Afghanis!
The report apparently refers to civilians killed during Afghan and US military operations against insurgents, such as airstrikes and night raids on militant hideouts. Insurgents often hide among civilians.
Yeah, the cowardly Taliban are hiding where they live.
I mean, this Jewi$h war slop has become so god-damned offensive I am nearly unable to read it anymore. I could change a few names around in this story and attach any dateI want from the last 18 years and you wouldn't even know it!
The UN report said 403 civilians were killed by Afghan forces in the first six months of the year and another 314 by international forces, a total of 717. That’s compared to 531 killed by the Taliban, an Islamic State affiliate, and other militants during the same period.
Oh, boy.
--more--"
Need something to take attention away from that:
"Bus hit by roadside bomb in Afghanistan, 32 killed" by Rahim Faiez Associated Press, July 31, 2019
KABUL, Afghanistan — A roadside bomb tore through a bus in western Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing at least 32 people, including children, a provincial official said.
I'm going to reserve judgement on whether this is an actual event or more propaganda being waved at us, especially with the children component. I'm not having Yemeni or palestinian children waved at me by this Jewi$h war organ.
Mohibullah Mohib, spokesman for the police chief in Farah province, said the explosion also wounded 15 people. Most of the wounded were said to be in critical condition, indicating the death toll could rise. The bus was traveling on a main highway between the western city of Herat and the southern city of Kandahar.
No one immediately claimed responsibility, but the Taliban operate in the region and frequently use roadside bombs to target government officials and security forces. The Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan is also known to have been behind attacks in the area. Islamic State militants frequently target civilians, especially the country’s minority Shiites.
Yeah, well, we all know ISIS™ is a U.S. proxy, and once again the pre$$ has implicated the Taliban with absolutely no evidence whatsoever. This is garbage journali$m, folks, complete war propaganda. That is why it is in the paper!
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly condemned Wednesday’s attack and reiterated that ‘‘international humanitarian law explicitly prohibits indiscriminate attacks and attacks directed against civilians,’’ UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. The UN chief appealed to all parties to the conflict to uphold their obligations to protect civilians, Dujarric said.
This comes on the heels of their own report saying the government the U.N. recognizes and supports and its allies are killing more people than the so-called terrorists. Now he is strongly condemning the bus attack on children! How convenient this all is!
The Taliban have kept up a steady tempo of attacks even as they have held several rounds of peace talks with the United States aimed at ending the 18-year war.
So we have been told, anyway. Could be anybody, and I'm likely to think they are U.S. proxies raising hell for the very reasons enumerated above. No elections, puppet regime and U.S. forces stay indefinitely.
The attack came a day after the UN mission in Afghanistan released a report saying that most civilian deaths in the first half of the year were caused by Afghan forces and their international allies. The report apparently referred to civilians killed during Afghan and US military operations against insurgents.
The UN report said 403 civilians were killed by Afghan forces in the first six months of the year and another 314 by international forces, a total of 717. That’s compared to 531 killed by the Taliban, an Islamic State affiliate and other militants during the same period. It said 300 of those killed by militants were directly targeted.
The UN said the leading cause of civilian deaths and injuries was ‘‘ground engagements,’’ which caused one in three casualties. Roadside bombs were a close second, accounting for 28 percent. Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world — a legacy of decades of war.
We call it liberation around here!
A spokesman for President Ashraf Ghani on Wednesday disputed the results and methodology of the UN report, saying the government is committed to protecting civilians.
Sediq Sediqqi said the Taliban were the ‘‘major cause’’ of civilian deaths and accused them of deliberately targeting schools, mosques, and hospitals. He said ‘‘we are sorry’’ for civilian casualties during Afghan security operations, but accused the Taliban of using civilians as human shields. He also said the UN had drastically undercounted the number of civilians killed by the Taliban.
This is the rankest kind of crap that flows from governments, and his words could very well be coming out of Zionist mouths!
The Taliban, who effectively control half the country, have been meeting with US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad since late last year. They appear to be closing in on an agreement whereby American forces would withdraw from Afghanistan in return for guarantees that it would not be used as a launch pad for international terror attacks.
Khalilzad has been in Kabul for talks with Afghan officials over the past several days and is expected to go to Islamabad next.
The Afghan government has been largely sidelined in the Taliban-US talks, with the insurgents refusing to negotiate with Kabul officials.
When was the last time peace talks led to anything in a war paper?
--more--"
"US military and intelligence officials at odds over Islamic State in Afghanistan" by Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Julian E. Barnes New York Times, August 2, 2019
Oh, look, more government propaganda and garbage being transmitted by their top mouthpiece!
WASHINGTON — Senior US military and intelligence officials are sharply divided over how much of a threat the Islamic State group in Afghanistan poses to the West, a critical point in the Trump administration’s debate over whether US troops should stay or withdraw after nearly 18 years of war.
US military commanders in Afghanistan have described the Islamic State affiliate there as a growing problem that is capable of inspiring and directing attacks in Western countries, including the United States, but intelligence officials in Washington disagree, arguing the group is mostly incapable of exporting terrorism worldwide. The officials believe that the Islamic State in Afghanistan, known as Islamic State Khorasan, remains a regional problem and is more of a threat to the Taliban than to the West.
Once again, the underlying narrative behind the official lie is being promoted here with the CIA front being used to sow chaos to maintain the status quo.
Of course, if one were to believe this bulls*t, one would soon come to the conclusion that the Taliban are a friend and ally, right?
Differences between the US military and Washington’s intelligence community over Afghanistan are almost as enduring as the war itself. The Pentagon and spy agencies have long differed over the strength of the Taliban and the effectiveness of the military’s campaign in Afghanistan.
So we better just stay, right?
Whether to keep counterterrorism forces in Afghanistan is at the heart of the Trump administration’s internal debate over the future of the war.
Actually, he already said he is going to leave a robust counterintelligence effort behind while pouring in mercenary contractors.
Ten current and former American and European officials who are familiar with the military and intelligence assessments of the strength of Islamic State in Afghanistan provided details of the debate to The New York Times. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss the issue and confidential assessments of the terrorism threat.
Just like they did with WMD in Iraq.
Fu*k you, NYT!
A State Department envoy is leading negotiations for a peace deal that would give the Taliban political power in Afghanistan and withdraw international troops. For months, the Trump administration has been drafting plans to cut the 14,000 US forces who are there by half. On Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Trump had ordered a reduction in the number of troops in Afghanistan before the 2020 presidential election, but he did not specify a number.
“That’s my directive from the president,” Pompeo said. “He’s been unambiguous: End the endless wars. Draw down. Reduce. It won’t just be us.”
Yet at the same time, current and former officials, including retired Army general Jack Keane, are lobbying the Trump administration to maintain several thousand Special Operations forces in Afghanistan. Doing so, they argue, will keep terrorist groups from returning and help prevent the collapse of the Afghan government and its security forces.
He is already going to do that, and it is just great to see so many warhawk analysts in my pre$$.
“US troops in Afghanistan have prevented another catastrophic attack on our homeland for 18 years,” Keane said. “Expecting the Taliban to provide that guarantee in the future by withdrawing all US troops makes no sense.”
What a crock of crap, and by that logic we can never leave anywhere ever and must continue to expand occupations wherever we go. I suppose that all sounds fine to war-planners like Jack.
The Islamic State in Afghanistan surfaced in 2015 and was quickly dismissed by Pentagon officials merely as a breakaway group from the Taliban in Pakistan, but one with little ability to expand.
Four years later, the Islamic State Khorasan is made up of roughly 3,000 fighters and is well resourced, funded, and entrenched in the rural areas of eastern Afghanistan.
They just confirmed them as a CIA front!
Well resourced, funded, and entrenched, huh?
A United Nations report released this week concluded that the group was responsible for 423 of the 3,812 civilians who were killed or wounded in Afghanistan during the first six months of 2019.
OMG, the New York Times told you less than half of the story!
--more--"
Maybe this photograph that came with the article will convince me:
Displaced residents of Tangi Wazir, a village raided and burned by Islamic State group militants, gathered at a roadside camp near Khogyani in eastern Afghanistan, on Dec. 2, 2017. As officials debate whether to withdraw all western troops from Afghanistan, the power of the group emerges as a key question. (Mauricio Lima/The New York Times/File)
OMG, it's a 2017 file photo! That could be anything! All we know for sure is it is a bunch of guys standing around!
Related: Afghanistan: In Search of Monsters to Not Destroy
Yeah, the "terrorists" give the U.S. government an excuse to go anywhere they want in the Eastern Hemisphere in the name of the GWOT while enforcing even greater police and surveillance state at home.
Cut bono?
Oh, I would be very, VERY WORRIED over the UPCOMING FALSE FLAG TERROR ATTACK coming at the end of the summer.
All lights are blinking red and there is no one on the job:
"Ratcliffe withdraws from consideration for intelligence chief, Trump says" by John Wagner and Shane Harris Washington Post, August 2, 2019
WASHINGTON — President Trump announced Friday that Representative John Ratcliffe, his embattled pick to lead the nation’s intelligence community, was withdrawing from consideration and would remain in Congress.
They don't want to lose the seat.
The Texas Republican was facing intense questions about padding his résumé and a lack of experience, which led to a lukewarm reception on Capitol Hill.
Trump said he would announce a new pick for director of national intelligence shortly.
In tweets, Trump said that Ratcliffe was being treated ‘‘very unfairly’’ by the media.
‘‘Rather than going through months of slander and libel, I explained to John how miserable it would be for him and his family to deal with these people,’’ Trump wrote. ‘‘John has therefore decided to stay in Congress where he has done such an outstanding job representing the people of Texas, and our Country.’’
In a statement issued shortly after Trump’s tweets, Ratcliffe said that he remained convinced that if confirmed by the Senate, he would have served ‘‘with the objectivity, fairness, and integrity that our intelligence agencies need and deserve.
‘‘However, I do not wish for a national security and intelligence debate surrounding my confirmation, however untrue, to become a purely political and partisan issue,’’ he said. ‘‘The country we all love deserves that it be treated as an American issue. Accordingly, I have asked the president to nominate someone other than me for this position.’’
Trump made the announcement of Ratcliffe’s withdrawal shortly before appearing at a White House event to announce a new deal to sell more beef to the European Union. He ignored questions shouted by reporters about Ratcliffe’s withdrawal as he left the event.
One White House official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said that Ratcliffe got cold feet because of the lack of support among Republican senators, but inside the White House, at least some believed that although Ratcliffe would probably have faced a contentious nomination fight, Senate Republicans were ultimately unlikely to vote against a Trump nominee. Ratcliffe might have survived, and may have withdrawn too early, in the view of some.
More WaComPo speculation and slop.
Ratcliffe’s background has come under scrutiny since Trump announced Sunday that he planned to nominate the lawmaker to be the next director of national intelligence, replacing Daniel Coats, a longtime senator and diplomat who was often at odds with the president.
Although Ratcliffe had dialed back claims that he had won convictions in a high-profile terrorism case as a federal prosecutor, his planned nomination drew opposition from Senate Democrats and tepid support from key Republicans.
Some current and former intelligence officials have said Ratcliffe is the least-qualified person ever nominated to oversee the country’s intelligence agencies — previous directors have been former diplomats, senior intelligence officials, and military leaders — and questioned whether he would use the position to serve Trump’s political interests.
You mean the way Ridge used it to bolster Bush? Every time Bush was in trouble with some scandal we got a color-coded terror alert -- usually involving some retard patsy set up by an FBI instigator!
The post was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to coordinate the 16 other agencies of the nation’s intelligence community.
Ratcliffe has been a staunch defender of the president and has alleged anti-Trump bias at the FBI. Trump tweeted out his plan to nominate Ratcliffe several days after the lawmaker attacked former special counsel Robert Mueller during a hearing.
Congressional and intelligence officials have described Ratcliffe as a relatively disengaged member of the House Intelligence Committee and as little-known across the ranks of spy agencies he has been tapped to lead.
He wasn't a Deep State creature and was thus unacceptable.
Though Ratcliffe’s membership on the House committee is perhaps his most important credential for the top intelligence job, officials said he has yet to take part in one of its overseas trips to learn more about spy agencies’ work. The other new lawmakers on the panel have done so or are scheduled to travel in the coming months.
Will they take him to the black site torture centers, or..... ?
What those trips are what George Romney once called brainwashing (see video at end of article).
It is also unclear whether Ratcliffe has spent much time at the headquarters of the CIA, the National Security Agency, or other parts of the sprawling US intelligence community that he has been nominated to direct.
No wonder he is unacceptable. He hasn't had his mind poisoned by them yet.
On Thursday, The Washington Post also reported that a Ratcliffe claim of a massive roundup immigrant workers at poultry plants in 2008 as a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Texas was undercut by the court record and recollections of others who participated in the operation. Ratcliffe has often cited the arrests as a highlight of his career.
That disqualified him?
In a statement, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr said he respected Ratcliffe’s decision to withdraw from consideration.....
And thanked him for getting them off spot!
--more--"
One almost forget that almost all the alleged hijackers were Saudi:
"Saudi Arabia chips away at oppressive system by granting women travel rights" by Ben Hubbard and Vivian Yee New York Times, August 2, 2019
BEIRUT — On the surface, the new regulations that Saudi Arabia announced early Friday did not seem like much. In dense, bureaucratic language, they granted all Saudis older than 21 the right to handle their families’ affairs, while officials said that all adults could obtain passports and travel on their own, but for gender relations in the kingdom, the new regulations were an earthquake, because for the first time, they granted women the kind of rights that had previously been under the control of male relatives.
“It is a great breakthrough,” Hoda Al-Helaissi, a member of the kingdom’s advisory Shura Council, said Friday. The new regulations that arrived under Saudi Arabia’s day-to-day ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, were the most significant weakening yet of Saudi Arabia’s “guardianship” system, a long-standing tangle of laws, regulations, and social customs that rights campaigners have long criticized as oppressing Saudi women.
Yes, let's all cheer the butcher of Yemen as he allegedly frees Saudi women!
As a practical matter, the changes will probably take time to trickle down to individual households and to women. As a symbolic matter, however, they are pivotal. Saudi women’s Twitter feeds crackled with jubilant posts. Memes of women praising the crown prince and ululating in celebration danced around the Internet.
Freedom is now the Internet and Twitter, and you have to love the New York Times going down on MBS like this, huh?
The guardianship changes were announced as part of a broader drive by Crown Prince Mohammed to overhaul the kingdom’s economy and to open up society. Since his father, King Salman, ascended to the throne in 2015, the crown prince, 33, has begun initiatives aimed at diversifying the economy away from oil, confronting Iran, and loosening the kingdom’s notoriously strict social customs.
Yeah, he is a REAL HERO!
In recent years, he has pushed for more women to enter the workforce, stripped the kingdom’s religious police of their power to arrest, and granted women the right to drive, billing the moves as essential for the insular Islamic kingdom to progress and to build its economy, but accompanying that wider social opening have been riskier moves that raised questions about whether Crown Prince Mohammed’s brash leadership style would destabilize the kingdom, and the Middle East as a whole. His forces are bogged down and accused of war crimes in Yemen. The murder of the dissident Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate in Istanbul last year drew global condemnation, and waves of arrests have scooped up clerics, intellectuals, royals, businessmen, and even some activists who had campaigned for an end to the driving ban and the guardianship system.
It's a Saudi shell game, and who cares about Yemen or Khashoggi (pre$$ cares more about their asset than the war they helped abet in Yemen)?
Those arrests, and the wider intolerance of dissent or criticism under the crown prince, made it hard to fully gauge public reaction to the changes, but many Saudi women cheered them as liberating.
What more is there left to say, really?
Helaissi, the Shura Council member, said she did not expect the changes to have a great immediate effect on most families.
Although the regulations allowing women to register family matters may appear routine, they will make an enormous difference for some women, such as those who are separated from their husbands and those who need to navigate the bureaucracy on behalf of their children, said Adam Coogle, a Saudi expert at Human Rights Watch.
Oh, so now Human Rights Watch is liking and praising the Saudis, huh?
They should call themselves Juman Rights Watch like I noted above!
I mean, c'mon! They just destroyed any semblance of credibility by liking the most odious regime on the face of the planet.
--more--"
Related:
"The first female leader of the Naval War College has officially assumed command of the school. Rear Admiral Shoshana Chatfield became the 57th president Thursday. Chatfield, a helicopter pilot, previously led a military command in Guam. She has said she’s humbled by her selection as college president and looks forward to serving. Navy Secretary Richard Spencer has called her a ‘‘historic choice.’’ (AP)."
Well, we might as well end this post the way we began it, with a limited hangout that supports the official cover story and is transmitted through the government mouthpiece:
"US officials say Osama bin Laden’s son killed in strike" by Julian E. Barnes, Adam Goldman and Eric Schmitt New York Times, July 31, 2019
WASHINGTON — Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza bin Laden, who was viewed as an eventual heir to the leadership of al-Qaida and who had repeatedly threatened to attack the United States, is dead, according to two US officials.
Oh, he was the heir to Al-CIA-Duh, huh?
Details of the strike that killed him were scarce, including when and where. The US government played a role in the operation, but it was not clear how, according to the officials, who discussed his death on the condition of anonymity because it involved sensitive operations and intelligence gathering.
PFFFFFFFFT!
He was killed before the State Department announced a $1 million reward for information on his whereabouts in February, but US military and intelligence agencies had not confirmed his death by then.
Whatever.
Though bin Laden carried a prominent name and lineage, the news of his death represented more of a symbolic victory for the US government than the removal of a threat. Al-Qaida has not carried out a large-scale attack in years, and though bin Laden was being groomed to eventually take over the group, that time appeared to be well into the future.
This post has been so tortuous that I am now laughing at the end.
After the 2011 death of Osama bin Laden in a SEAL Team 6 raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, two of his top lieutenants began preparing Hamza bin Laden for a top leadership role. He married a daughter of one of them and pledged to avenge his father’s death.
Yeah, the whole 2011 raid was a complete fiction, something to help bolster Obama and his failing presidency and get the attention of other things at the time. The computer screens where they watched to operation get streamed were dark, and then they dumped the body into the sea so none of the story could be verified. We are just supposed to believe this war propaganda and garbage at face value after all the lies, ha-ha-ha-ha!
Bin Laden was introduced as a voice of al-Qaida in August 2015 as “a young lion to carry forth the cause.” The regular messages that al-Qaida released from bin Laden stopped months ago, although an article attributed to him was published in May.
Bin Laden was likely operating on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, said Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
OMG, they turned to a war-mongering Zionist Jew outfit for expert analysis of this huge pile of BS!
While Joscelyn said he doubted that bin Laden was next in line to lead al-Qaida, he said he had an important role, both in terms of ties to the Taliban and as a spokesman.
“They were building him up to potentially be the No. 1 someday; he was not thought of as the heir apparent today,” Joscelyn said.
The location of bin Laden had been the subject of public speculation. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he and other members of al-Qaida fled to Iran, where they were detained. He was eventually allowed to leave Iran, then reportedly moved with his family to the Pakistan border region. At one point, intelligence showed that he had traveled to Syria in the past several years, former officials have said.
You know, Khan came and went and that was that.
The CIA has devastated al-Qaida, relentlessly targeting its operatives after 9/11. The agency killed another son, Saad bin Laden, in a drone strike in 2009 while he was operating in a remote area of Pakistan. Another son, Khalid, was killed in the 2011 Abbottabad raid.
Really?
No more AL-CIA-Duh, huh?
All ISIS™ now?
The CIA continues to hunt for Ayman al-Zawahri, who assumed the al-Qaida leadership mantle after Osama bin Laden’s death. Former intelligence officials said the agency launched a sophisticated effort in 2012 and 2013 to determine whether he was living in a village in Pakistan’s troubled North Waziristan region. Agency operatives had high confidence they had located al-Zawahri but were never able to identify his exact location within the village, one former official said.
Did they try Langley?
Ayman al Zawahiri - Star of David background. --source--"
You would think they would have been a little more careful when picking out the background.
Bin Laden appears to have worked closely with al-Zawahri, especially in maintaining ties to the Taliban in Afghanistan and shaping the organization’s message.
So now they are tying CIA-Duh into the Taliban.
What's next, they have a blood pact with Iran?
“If in fact he is dead, this makes the ranks of al-Qaida’s senior leadership that much thinner and the connection to Osama bin Laden even more attenuated,” said Nicholas J. Rasmussen, a former director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
Uh-huh.
What do you mean if?
Other key members of the organization remain alive, including Saif Al Adel and Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, who are wanted by the FBI in the bombings of two US embassies in East Africa in 1998. They are thought to be in Iran.
What did I just say?
Oh, man, this is RANK ROT WAR PROP that has JUMPED the SHARK!
Bin Laden’s time in Iran has been the subject of controversy, and the presence of al-Qaida members in Iran prompted questions about what the Iranian government was doing with them. Iran is dominated by Shiite Muslims, whom the hard-line Sunnis of al-Qaida see as heretics.
Oh, now we will be told IRAN was involved in 9/11 -- just like Iraq was!
At times when the al-Qaida officials were out of detention, Hoffman said, Iran allowed them to stay to ward off potential attacks from al-Qaida. Both Iran and al-Qaida also have the United States has a common enemy.
“It’s a marriage of convenience,” Hoffman said. Anything that Iran “can do keep the United States off balance,” he said, “they’ll do it.”
Who Hoffman, hey?
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other US officials have stressed ties between al-Qaida and Iran in recent briefings to Congress. Concerned members of Congress from both parties have said that the administration officials are trying to lay the legal groundwork for any potential military action against Iran by arguing that the 2001 authorization of war against al-Qaida or any of its allies would allow the United States to attack Iran.....
OMG, it's an Iran was involved in 9/11 piece of government bullshit now troweled by the garbage government mouthpiece known as the Jew York Times, and is all about WAR on IRAN!!!
--more--"
Related: Marathon bomber’s lawyers have Dec. court date to appeal death sentence
Gotta shut him up, too, because it turns out he's innocent.
