The Gack File

Determined Ignorance…

toddgack — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:46:27 +0000

Paul Pillar over at The National Interest brings to light the continued ignorance of the U.S. public when it comes to the Middle East:

In a new poll directed by Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland, 38 percent of Americans polled said that the United States had “found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al-Qaeda terrorist organization.” In a somewhat differently formulated question, 15 percent said that “Iraq was directly involved in carrying out the September 11th attacks” and another 31 percent—for a total of 46 percent—believed that Iraq was not involved in 9/11 but had given “substantial support” to al-Qaeda. Perhaps in an age when major presidential candidates doubt that natural life on earth has evolved or that human activities affect the climate, we should not be surprised at such officially instigated ignorance.

The Bush administration’s determined effort to convince the public to believe “their” truth has resonated over time even when all facts have been brought to light. As the lingo on Twitter goes, #USFAIL.

Semi-daily posts coming soon

toddgack — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 21:50:18 +0000

I am doing a lot of organizing and reading but plan to resume semi-daily posting very soon.

Until next time…

Egypt Crackdown by Mubarak Goons & Thugs

toddgack — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:12:22 +0000

Please follow Ben Wedeman’s Twitter feed; he is in the middle of events in Tahrir Square as Mubarak’s Government cracks down on peaceful protests.

Fire bombs are being hurled by his thugs & goons to halt revolution, I believe it will not work and the Egyptian people are too brave and strong.

Until next time…

What is going on in Afghanistan?

toddgack — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 02:24:09 +0000

From Todd Pittman of the Associated Press:

Eight months after U.S.-led forces launched the biggest operation of the war to clear insurgents from the southern poppy-growing district of Marjah, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Today, the world’s most powerful military is still struggling to rout guerrillas staging complex hit-and-run attacks relentlessly, every day.

The ongoing conflict here comes as another massive American-led clearing operation is under way 100 miles to the east in neighboring Kandahar province. NATO commanders are touting recent successes there in seizing ground from Taliban militants who, as in Marjah, once roamed freely.

Anthony Loyd in The Australian:

The best Taliban commanders are dead or captured. Their men are harried and subject to constant attack and betrayal. They are under-equipped, overwhelmed and demoralised. In a word, the Taliban are losing.

In Britain and the US there may be doubt and confusion over the future of the Afghan war, but in southern Afghanistan the description of the Taliban insurgency by senior figures at the forefront of the fighting is bold and unequivocal.

The troop surge is working, they say. The Taliban is at breaking point and an Iraq-style watershed, when momentum is shifting in a favour of the NATO coalition, may be nigh. It amounts to a ray of hope for NATO aims as the war begins its 10th year today.

Commentary in The Washington Times:

“Overall, we can see now that the surge forces are starting to make a difference,” he said. “And you have to be encouraged by some of the progress that’s being made. All that said, we’re in a tough fight, and I believe we will continue to gain momentum.”

Gen. Keane offered two observations as evidence. First, most commanders with whom he spoke said they are encountering Taliban who want to stop fighting and reintegrate into Afghan society. “That’s a big deal,” he said.

What is truly going on in Afghanistan, and in particularly in southern Afghanistan? Is there progress being made or are we just treading water? The media covering the war is not helping to clarify this question at all and only months away from the end of year review many are beginning to wonder where we are headed.

Until next time…(h/t KOW)

UN Report: Israeli commandos performed summary executions on Flotilla

toddgack — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 09:59:45 +0000

I think the writing of Gareth Porter in the Huffington Post speaks for itself in describing the execution of a US citizen by Israel: (h/t Glenn Greenwald)

The report reveals that Dogan, the 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish descent, was filming with a small video camera on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara when he was shot twice in the head, once in the back and in the left leg and foot and that he was shot in the face at point blank range while lying on the ground.

The report says Dogan had apparently been “lying on the deck in a conscious or semi-conscious, state for some time” before being shot in his face.

The forensic evidence that establishes that fact is “tattooing around the wound in his face,” indicating that the shot was “delivered at point blank range.” The report describes the forensic evidence as showing that “the trajectory of the wound, from bottom to top, together with a vital abrasion to the left shoulder that could be consistent with the bullet exit point, is compatible with the shot being received while he was lying on the ground on his back.”

Glenn Greenwald adds:

Needless to say, the Israeli Government — as it virtually always does when confronted with well-documented, official findings of its severe human rights violations — attacked the source, accusing the report of being “biased and distorted.”

For good measure, it seems the U.S. media has pretty much ignored this recent report all together as they would much rather have it fade away and go back to covering those “unprecedented peace talks.”

More evidence Obama is a lot like Bush

toddgack — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 17:30:26 +0000

Though they are drastically different on the domestic front, Presidents Obama and Bush are eerily similar when it comes to their foreign policies. You can even make a compelling case that President Obama is more aggressive than Bush in the now defunct “Global War on Terror.”

Two recent articles examine the ever growing Predator War we are now waging in Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia and who knows where else. Proving that Obama and Bush are clones in many respects when it comes to fighting the never ending war against terror.

Jeff Stein of WaPo’s SpyTalk looks at an account from Bob Woodward’s new book; “Obama’s Wars“, detailing a meeting in New York between then CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden and Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari during which he acknowledges the killing of “U.S. passport holders” in Pakistan.

Hayden and his deputy, Stephen Kappes, had gone to meet with Zardari, elected only two months earlier, to gauge his reaction to the drone strikes, which were generating widespread protests in Pakistan.

According to Woodward’s unattributed account of the meeting, Zardari said, “Kill the seniors. Collateral damage worries you Americans. It does not worry me.”

Hayden had told Zardari that “many Westerners, including some U.S. passport holders, had been killed five days earlier on the Kam Sham training camp in the tribal area of North Warziristan,” Woodward writes. “But the CIA would not reveal the particulars due to the implications under American law.”

“A top secret CIA map detailing the attacks had been given to the Pakistanis,” Woodward continues. “Missing from it was the alarming fact about the American deaths … The CIA was not going to elaborate.”

The CIA declined to comment for the record or make Kappes, who resigned in April, available for comment. Hayden did not respond to requests for comment.

Piggybacking on Jeff’s post is Nick Baumann of Mother Jones who looks a bit closer at the legality of the drone strikes and how Obama is getting accustomed to invoking state secrets just like the Bush administration did when they were covertly spying on us. Though when it comes to killing U.S. citizens the Bush administration did not make it a point to reveal they had been killed, while the Obama Administration seems keen on letting us know and even highlighting their targeting of Anwar Al-Awlaki.

If Bush was having Americans killed in Pakistan in 2008, then it’s not surprising that President Barack Obama is ordering the CIA to kill American cleric and accused terrorist Anwar Al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2010, right? Not really—the cases are pretty different.

Much has changed since the Bush administration left office. Two years ago, the CIA was worrying about legal issues surrounding the killing of Americans at an alleged terrorist training camp in Pakistan. Now the Obama administration has apparently put American citizens on a “targeted killing” list.

The drone strikes described in Woodward’s book aren’t even the first example of the Bush administration worrying about the propriety of something the Obama administration seems comfortable with. Kamal Derwish (aka Ahmed Hijazi), a US citizen and alleged terrorist, was killed by a missile strike in Yemen in November 2002. At the time, US officials were quick to emphasize to reporters that Derwish was not the target of the attack.

By contrast, the Obama administration makes no bones about targeting Al-Awlaki or other US citizens. Dennis Blair, the former Director of National Intelligence, admitted that citizens are targeted for killing in a public congressional hearing in January. On Friday, the government responded to a lawsuit intended to obtain an injunction against killing Al-Awlaki without due process. The lawsuit, which was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of Al-Awlaki’s father, Nasser, has little chance of success.

At the end of its sixty page brief, as expected, the Obama administration brings out the big guns, its get-out-of-court-free card: the so-called “State Secrets” privilege. That, at least, is something the Bush administration could get on board with. During the Bush years, Justice Department lawyers repeatedly invoked the privilege to force courts to throw out lawsuits challenging Bush’s counterterrorism policies, including “enhanced interrogation” and widespread surveillance of Americans. The Obama administration has continued that practice.

This further exemplifies that Obama and Bush are the same in terms of foreign policy. The Bush administration began the covert drone war and the Obama administration has put it on steroids. We are in the midst of a forever war and need to evaluate all means by which we fight.

I agree with a bunch of what is being done and do think there is no “right” solution to the problem of terrorism. Education and understanding why terrorism occurs is by far and away one of the most important tools we have to address the situation. The arguments that “they hate us” and “they are monsters” just do not fly in any logical sense. There was a figure I heard the other day in regards to the FBI; there are only nine fluent Arabic speakers in the FBI, NINE!

As Lawrence Wright recently told the Economist; (h/t Andrew Sullivan)

Our intelligence community was extremely poorly prepared before 9/11. Since then it hasn’t done a good job of hiring the kind of people who speak and understand the languages and cultures of that region. One of the heroes of my book and my film, Ali Soufan, the FBI agent who came closer than anyone at stopping 9/11, was one of eight Arabic-speaking agents at the FBI on 9/11. Now there are nine. The really woeful thing about it is that if Ali Soufan tried to work in the FBI now, he probably couldn’t get security clearance. I talked to the guy who’s the head of the army translation corp, and he said that after 9/11 many Muslims and Arab-Americans came forward and offered their services to American intelligence and were spurned. The army picked up a number of them and they went to Iraq to become interpreters, which is the most dangerous imaginable assignment. He said after four years of serving their country they still can’t get a job in American intelligence because they can’t get past the security clearance. Well what other declaration of loyalty do you need to make?

We need to start to address the problems in a completely different manner and start to realize we are in a war that for the most part is one where no one understands one another. We have such an immense advantage over the terrorists in terms of resources and yet we squander and waste. Where do we go from here? I haven’t the faintest clue.

Until next time…

Is the White House trying to buy off Israel?

toddgack — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 17:05:43 +0000

With the Middle East “peace negotiations” now officially underway and essentially not much being expected of them, I thought two stories recently were worth highlighting for you.

Report: Obama trades weapons for talks

Ma’an News

US President Barack Obama sent a letter of guarantees to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in bid to save direct peace talks from collapse, Israel’s Hebrew language daily Maariv reported on Wednesday.

The guarantees were reportedly in exchange for an immediate halt to settlement construction, and dealt with issues around Israeli security negotiated between Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and head of the Israeli negotiating team Isaac Molcho during their New York and Washington visits over the past weeks

White House denies Obama sent freeze letter to Netanyahu

Jerusalem Post

Spokesman contradicts reports that in return for a two-month extension of building freeze the US guaranteed future weapons deliveries and an IDF presence in Jordan Valley, among other promises.

“At its core, the draft letter offers a string of assurances to Israel in return for a two-month moratorium extension. More specifically, U.S. officials indicate that the document makes commitments on issues ranging from current peace and security matters to future weapons deliveries in the event that peace-related security arrangements are reached,” Makovsky wrote.

My question whould be; how in the hell will this actually solve anything? Ok, another 60 days, wow the Palestinians should really be thanking their god now. This is just another example of how Israel and the U.S. do not care about peace at all.

The U.S. is reportedly agreeing to INCREASE our aid to Israel for a measly 60 more days of partial building instead of full out colonization (which is already occurring daily despite this “moratorium”). There is not even a modicum of incentive for Palestinians to accept this deal, though the puppets that are Abbas and Fayyad are another story all together and never are really acting in the peoples interest.

The inevitable failure of these “negotiations” will lead to the keeping of the status quo and that is EXACTLY what Israel desires.

Until next time…

Here’s a thought

toddgack — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:32:58 +0000

With ISAF not knowing what to do with all the poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, they have tried to eradicate and they have tried to look the other way, why not use it as the main source of income and export?

Well Michael Hancock at Registan asks exactly that:

If A-E are true, what is our course of action? After discussing the issue at length with some Afghani friends, I know I have only the beginnings of a grasp on the matter. Still – why doesn’t NATO or the US put together a fund to step in as the new buyer of all this opium. Why not ask Australian or Indian farmers to plant something else, as their contribution to the Coalition war effort? If they don’t want to put their soldiers at risk, that’s fine – they can fight the Taliban so much more effectively with their checkbooks, hurting the insurgents by cutting off a primary source of funding.

Please read the entire article and for that matter you should try to read everything on Registan, they know what they are talking about. Back to the issue at hand; are the U.S. and their allies too afraid to even entertain this thought? I am not really sure how it would be done but it should at least be posed to those running the war effort.

Until next time…

Israel wants to be the U.S., circa 1950′s

toddgack — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 11:53:54 +0000

Israel is following the path of America’s birth almost identically;

Usurping land that is not theirs- check

Kicking out the true inhabitants of the land- check

Ethnically cleansing the lands rightful owners- check

Institutionalized racism- check and see below;

Originally, the school was fined for this policy of racial segregation, because the school was state funded. Now, the Israeli education ministry has agreed with the white parents’ request to allow the school to continue with its racial discrimination under private funding.

There is no law preventing racial discrimination by private organizations, even schools, in Israel.

(h/t Angry Arab)

Until next time…

Israeli lobby

toddgack — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 11:32:05 +0000

It continues to be sickening how much influence the lobby has on American Foreign policy and how much being attached to the hip of Israel hurts the U.S. in the Arab world.

The drums of war are beginning to beat with regard to attacking Iran and their “nuclear program” and “mortal threat” to the Jewish people. Though when it comes to Saudi Arabia the lobby might as well just look the other way.

Courtesy of The Angry Arab:

Just notice that the mega arms sale worth $60 billion to Saudi Arabia stirred not one whisper from from the Israeli lobby–which has to approve by US law all arms sales to Arab and Islamic countries.

It would be nice to see if President Obama was to take control of our foreign policy and make it accountable to the American people and not that of our biggest liability in the region.

Until next time…