War against terror

[denoir 0]

Quote[/b] ]Nice way of bypassing the human rights laws.....

You hear about some of people you were release from gitmo and restarted their activities again....

Quote[/b] ]Ex-Gitmo Thugs At It Again

By Niles Lathem

WASHINGTON —

....

In context:

Extract from Seymor Hersh's "Chain of Command"

(Pulitzer prize winning reporter who uncovered the My Lai massacre and was the first one to report on the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse)

Quote[/b] ]

In the late summer of 2002, a CIA analyst made a quiet visit to the detention centre at the US Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where an estimated 600 prisoners were being held, many, at first, in steel-mesh cages that provided little protection from the brutally hot sun. Most had been captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan during the campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaida.

The Bush administration had determined, however, that they were not prisoners of war but "enemy combatants", and that their stay at Guantánamo could be indefinite, as teams of CIA, FBI, and military interrogators sought to prise intelligence from them. In a series of secret memorandums written earlier in the year, lawyers for the White House, the Pentagon and the justice department had agreed that the prisoners had no rights under federal law or the Geneva convention. President Bush endorsed the finding, while declaring that the al-Qaida and Taliban detainees were nevertheless to be treated in a manner consistent with the principles of the Geneva convention - as long as such treatment was also "consistent with military necessity".

But the interrogations at Guantánamo were a bust. Very little useful intelligence had been gathered, while prisoners from around the world continued to flow into the base, and the facility constantly expanded. The CIA analyst had been sent there to find out what was going wrong. He was fluent in Arabic and familiar with the Islamic world. He was held in high respect within the agency, and was capable of reporting directly, if he chose, to George Tenet, the CIA director. The analyst did more than just visit and inspect. He interviewed at least 30 prisoners to find out who they were and how they ended up in Guantánamo. Some of his findings, he later confided to a former CIA colleague, were devastating.

"He came back convinced that we were committing war crimes in Guantánamo," the colleague told me. "Based on his sample, more than half the people there didn’t belong there. He found people lying in their own faeces," including two captives, perhaps in their 80s, who were clearly suffering from dementia. "He thought what was going on was an outrage," the CIA colleague added. There was no rational system for determining who was important.

Two former administration officials who read the analyst’s highly classified report told me that its message was grim. According to a former White House official, the analyst’s disturbing conclusion was that "if we captured some people who weren’t terrorists when we got them, they are now".

That autumn, the document rattled aimlessly around the upper reaches of the Bush administration until it got into the hands of General John A Gordon, the deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, who reported directly to Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser and the president’s confidante. Gordon, who had retired from the military as a four-star general in 2000 had served as a deputy director of the CIA for three years. He was deeply troubled and distressed by the report, and by its implications for the treatment, in retaliation, of captured American soldiers. Gordon, according to a former administration official, told colleagues that he thought "it was totally out of character with the American value system", and "that if the actions at Guantánamo ever became public, it’d be damaging to the president".

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, there had been much debate inside the administration about what was permissible in the treatment of prisoners and what was not. The most suggestive document, in terms of what was really going on inside military prisons and detention centres, was written in early August 2002 by Jay S Bybee, head of the justice department’s office of legal counsel. "Certain acts may be cruel, inhuman, or degrading, but still not produce pain and suffering of the requisite intensity to fall within [a legal] proscription against torture," Bybee wrote to Alberto R Gonzales, the White House counsel. "We conclude that for an act to constitute torture, it must inflict pain that is difficult to endure. Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." (Bush later nominated Bybee to be a federal judge.)

"We face an enemy that targets innocent civilians," Gonzales, in turn, would tell journalists two years later, at the height of the furore over the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "We face an enemy that lies in the shadows, an enemy that doesn’t sign treaties."

Gonzales added that Bush bore no responsibility for the wrongdoing. "The president has not authorised, ordered or directed in any way any activity that would transgress the standards of the torture conventions or the torture statute, or other applicable laws," Gonzales said. In fact, a secret statement of the president’s views, which he signed on February 7, 2002 contained a loophole that applied worldwide: "I determine that none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al-Qaida in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world," the president asserted.

John Gordon had to know what he was up against in seeking a high-level review of prison policies at Guantánamo, but he persevered. Finally, the former White House official recalled, "We got it up to Condi."

As the CIA analyst’s report was making its way to Rice, in late 2002 there were a series of heated complaints about the interrogation tactics at Guantánamo from within the FBI, whose agents had been questioning detainees in Cuba since the prison opened. A few of the agents began telling their superiors what they had witnessed, which, they believed, had little to do with getting good information.

"I was told," a senior intelligence official recalled, "that the military guards were slapping prisoners, stripping them, pouring cold water over them, and making them stand until they got hypothermia. The agents were outraged. It was wrong and also dysfunctional." The agents put their specific complaints in writing, the official told me, and they were relayed, in emails and phone calls, to officials at the department of defence, including William J Haynes II, the general counsel of the Pentagon. As far as day-to-day life for prisoners at Guantánamo was concerned, nothing came of it.

The unifying issue for General Gordon and his supporters inside the administration was not the abuse of prisoners at Guantánamo, the former White House official told me: "It was about how many more people are being held there that shouldn’t be. Have we really got the right people?" The briefing for Condoleezza Rice about problems at Guantánamo took place in the autumn of 2002. It did not dwell on the question of torture or mistreatment. The main issue, the former White House official told me, was simply, "Are we getting any intelligence? What is the process for sorting these people?"

Rice agreed to call a high-level meeting in the White House situation room. Most significantly, she asked Secretary Rumsfeld to attend. Rums feld, who was by then publicly and privately encouraging his soldiers in the field to get tough with captured prisoners, duly showed up, but he had surprisingly little to say. One participant in the meeting recalled that at one point Rice asked Rumsfeld "what the issues were, and he said he hadn’t looked into it". Rice urged Rumsfeld to do so, and added, "Let’s get the story right." Rumsfeld seemed to be in agreement, and Gordon and his supporters left the meeting convinced, the former administration official told me, that the Pentagon was going to deal with the issue.

Nothing changed. "The Pentagon went into a full-court stall," the former White House official recalled. "I trusted in the goodness of man and thought we got something to happen. I was naive enough to believe that when a cabinet member" - he was referring to Rumsfeld - "says he’s going to take action, he will."

Over the next few months, as the White House began planning for the coming war in Iraq, there were many more discussions about the continuing problems at Guantánamo and the lack of useful intelligence. No one in the Bush administration would get far, however, if he was viewed as soft on suspected al-Qaida terrorism. "Why didn’t Condi do more?" the official asked. "She made the same mistake I made. She got the secretary of defence to say he’s going to take care of it."

There was, obviously, a difference between the reality of prison life in Guantánamo and how it was depicted to the public in carefully stage-managed news conferences and statements released by the administration. American prison authorities have repeatedly assured the press and the public, for example, that the al-Qaida and Taliban detainees were provided with a minimum of three hours of recreation every week. For the tough cases, however, according to a Pentagon adviser familiar with detainee conditions in mid-2002, at recreation time some prisoners would be strapped into heavy jackets, similar to straitjackets, with their arms locked behind them and their legs straddled by straps. Goggles were placed over their eyes, and their heads were covered with a hood. The prisoner was then led at midday into what looked like a narrow fenced-in dog run - the adviser told me that there were photographs of the procedure - and given his hour of recreation. The restraints forced him to move, if he chose to move, on his knees, bent over at a 45-degree angle. Most prisoners just sat and suffered in the heat.

One of the marines assigned to guard duty at Guantánamo in 2003, who has since left the military, told me, after being promised anonymity, that he and his enlisted colleagues at the base were encouraged by their squad leaders to "give the prisoners a visit" once or twice a month, when there were no television crews, journalists, or other outside visitors at the prison.

"We tried to fuck with them as much as we could - inflict a little bit of pain. We couldn’t do much," for fear of exposure, the former marine, who also served in Afghanistan, told me.

"There were always newspeople there," he said. "That’s why you couldn’t send them back with a broken leg or so. And if somebody died, I’d get court-martialled."

The roughing up of prisoners was sometimes spur-of-the-moment, the former marine said: "A squad leader would say, ’Let’s go - all the cameras on lunch break.’" One pastime was to put hoods on the prisoners and "drive them around the camp in a Humvee, making turns so they didn’t know where they were. [...] I wasn’t trying to get information. I was just having a little fun - playing mind control." When I asked a senior FBI official about the former marine’s account, he told me that agents assigned to interrogation duties at Guantánamo had described similar activities to their superiors.

In November 2002, army Major General Geoffrey Miller had relieved Generals Dunlavey and Baccus, unifying the command at Guantánamo. Baccus was seen by the Pentagon as soft - too worried about the prisoners’ well-being. In Senate hearings after Abu Ghraib, it became known that Miller was permitted to use legally questionable interrogation techniques at Guantánamo, which could include, with approval, sleep deprivation, exposure to extremes of cold and heat, and placing prisoners in "stress positions" for agonising lengths of time.

In May 2004, the New York Times reported that the FBI had instructed its agents to avoid being present at interrogation sessions with suspected al-Qaida members. The newspaper said the severe methods used to extract information would be prohibited in criminal cases, and therefore could compromise the agents in future legal proceedings against the suspects. "We don’t believe in coercion," a senior FBI official subsequently told me. "Our goal is to get information and we try to gain the prisoners’ trust. We have strong feelings about it." The FBI official added, "I thought Rumsfeld should have been fired long ago."

"They did it the wrong way," a Pentagon adviser on the war on terror told me, "and took a heavy-handed approach based on coercion, instead of persuasion - which actually has a much better track record. It’s about rage and the need to strike back. It’s evil, but it’s also stupid. It’s not torture but acts of kindness that lead to concessions. The persuasive approach takes longer but gets far better results."

There was, we now know, a fantastical quality to the earnest discussions inside the White House in 2002 about the good and bad of the interrogation process at Guantánamo. Rice and Rumsfeld knew what many others involved in the prisoner discussions did not - that sometime in late 2001 or early 2002, the president had signed a top-secret finding, as required by law, authorising the defence department to set up a specially recruited clandestine team of special forces operatives and others who would defy diplomatic niceties and international law and snatch - or assassinate, if necessary - identified "high-value" al-Qaida operatives anywhere in the world.

Equally secret interrogation centres would be set up in allied countries where harsh treatments were meted out, unconstrained by legal limits or public disclosure. The programme was hidden inside the defence department as an "unacknowledged" special-access programme (SAP), whose operational details were known only to a few in the Pentagon, the CIA and the White House.

The SAP owed its existence to Rumsfeld’s desire to get the US special forces community into the business of what he called, in public and internal communications, "manhunts", and to his disdain for the Pentagon’s senior generals. In the privacy of his office, Rumsfeld chafed over what he saw as the reluctance of the generals and admirals to act aggressively. Soon after September 11, he repeatedly made public his disdain for the Geneva convention. Complaints about the United States’ treatment of prisoners, Rumsfeld said, in early 2002, amounted to "isolated pockets of international hyperventilation".

One of Rumsfeld’s goals was bureaucratic: to give the civilian leadership in the Pentagon, and not the CIA, the lead in fighting terrorism. Throughout the existence of the SAP, which eventually came to Abu Ghraib prison, a former senior intelligence official told me, "There was a periodic briefing to the National Security Council [NSC] giving updates on results, but not on the methods." Did the White House ask about the process? The former officer said that he believed that they did, and that "they got the answers".

By the time of Rumsfeld’s meeting with Rice, his SAP was in its third year of snatching or strong-arming suspected terrorists and questioning them in secret prison facilities in Singapore, Thailand and Pakistan, among other sites. The White House was fighting terror with terror.

On December 18 2001, American operatives participated in what amounted to the kidnapping of two Egyptians, Ahmed Agiza and Muhammed al-Zery, who had sought asylum in Sweden. The Egyptians, believed by American intelligence to be linked to Islamic militant groups, were abruptly seized in the late afternoon and flown out of Sweden a few hours later on a US government-leased Gulfstream private jet to Cairo, where they underwent extensive and brutal interrogation. "Both were dirty," a former senior intelligence official, who has extensive knowledge of special-access programmes, told me, "but it was pretty blatant."

The seizure of Agiza and Zery attracted little attention outside of Sweden, despite repeated complaints by human-rights groups, until May 2004 when a Swedish television news magazine revealed that the Swedish government had cooperated after being assured that the exiles would not be tortured or otherwise harmed once they were sent to Egypt. Instead, according to a television report, entitled The Broken Promise, Agiza and Zery, in handcuffs and shackles, were driven to the airport by Swedish and, according to one witness, American agents and turned over at plane-side to a group of Americans wearing plain clothes whose faces were concealed. Once in Egypt, Agiza and Zery have reported through Swedish diplomats, family members and attorneys, that they were subjected to repeated torture by electrical shocks distributed by electrodes that were attached to the most sensitive parts of their bodies. Egyptian authorities eventually concluded, according to the documentary, that Zery had few ties to ongoing terrorism, and he was released from jail in October 2003, although he is still under surveillance. Agiza was acknowledged by his attorneys to have been a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group outlawed in Egypt, and also was once close to Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is outranked in al-Qaida only by Osama bin Laden. In April 2004, he was sentenced to 25 years in an Egyptian prison.

Fredrik Laurin, a Swedish journalist who worked on The Broken Promise, extensively researched the leased Gulfstream jet that was used to take Zery and Agiza to Cairo. Laurin told me that he was able to track the aircraft to landings in Pakistan, Kuwait, Egypt, Germany, England, Ireland Morocco, as well as the Washington DC area. It also made visits to Guantánamo. The company told Laurin that the plane was leased almost exclusively to the US government. Significantly, the records obtained by Laurin indicate that the Gulfstream apparently halted its overseas trips from May 5 2004 - the week after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke - until July 7, when it flew from Dulles Airport in suburban Washington to Cairo.

After the Abu Ghraib abuses were revealed, a former senior intelligence official with direct information about the SAP gave me an account of how and why the top-secret programme had begun. As the American-led hunt for al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden began to stall, he said, it was clear that the American intelligence operatives in the field were failing to get useful intelligence in a timely manner. With the pressure mounting, some information was being delivered via the CIA by friendly liaison intelligence services - allies of the United States in the Middle East and south-east Asia - who were not afraid to get rough with prisoners. The tough tactics appealed to Rumsfeld and his senior civilian aides.

Rumsfeld then authorised the establishment of the highly secret programme, which was given blanket advance approval to kill or capture and, if possible, interrogate high-value targets. The SAP - subject to the defence department’s most stringent level of security - was set up, with an office in a secure area of the Pentagon. The people assigned to the programme recruited, after careful screening, highly trained commandos and operatives from US elite forces - navy seals, the army’s delta force, and the CIA’s paramilitary experts.

"Rumsfeld’s goal was to get a capability in place to take on a high-value target - a stand-up group to hit quickly," the former senior intelligence official told me. The operation had across-the-board approval from Rumsfeld and from Condoleezza Rice. Fewer than 200 operatives and officials, including Rumsfeld and General Myers [Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff], were "completely read into the programme", the former intelligence official said. "The rules are ’Grab whom you must. Do what you want.’"

One Pentagon official who was deeply involved in the programme was Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary of defence for intelligence. Cambone had worked closely with Rumsfeld in a number of Pentagon jobs since the beginning of the administration, but this office, to which he was named in March 2003, was new; it was created as part of Rumsfeld’s reorganisation of the Pentagon. Known for his closeness to Rumsfeld, Cambone was a strong advocate for war against Iraq. He chafed, as did Rumsfeld, at the CIA’s inability before the Iraq war to state conclusively that Saddam Hussein harboured weapons of mass destruction.

Early in his tenure, Cambone provoked a bureaucratic battle within the Pentagon by insisting that he be given control of all special-access programmes that were relevant to the war on terror. In mid-2003, the SAP was regarded, at least in the Pentagon, as one of the success stories of the war on terror.

"It was an active programme," the former senior intelligence official told me. "As this monster begins to take life, there’s joy in the world. The monster is doing well - real well" - at least from the perspective of those involved who, according to the former officer, began to see themselves as "masters of the universe in terms of intelligence".

I was initially told of the SAP’s existence by members of the intelligence community who were troubled by the programme’s prima facie violation of the Geneva convention; their concern was that such activities, if exposed, would eviscerate the moral standing of the United States and expose American soldiers to retaliation. In May 2004, a ranking member of Congress confirmed its existence and further told me that President Bush had signed the mandated finding officially notifying Congress of the SAP.

The legislator added that he had none the less been told very little about the programme. Only a few members of the House and Senate leadership were authorised by statute to be informed of it, and, even then, the legislators were provided with little more than basic budget information. It’s not clear that the Senate and House members understood that the United States was poised to enter the business of "disappearing" people.

The Pentagon may have judged the SAP a success, but by August 2003, the war in Iraq was going badly and there was, once again, little significant intelligence being generated in the many prisons in Iraq. The president and his national security team turned for guidance to General Miller, the "Gitmo" [Guantánamo] commander. Recounting that decision, one of the White House officials who had supported General Gordon’s ill-fated effort to change prisoner policy asked me, rhetorically, "Why do I take a failed approach at Guantánamo and move it to Iraq?"

By the autumn of 2003, a military analyst told me, the extent of the Pentagon’s political and military misjudgments in Iraq was clear. The solution, endorsed by Rumsfeld and carried out by Cambone, was to get tough with the Iraqi men and women in detention - to treat them behind prison walls as if they had been captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan. General Miller was summoned to Baghdad in late August to review prison interrogation procedures.

Rumsfeld and Cambone went a step beyond "Gitmoizing", however: they expanded the scope of the SAP, bringing its unconventional methods to Abu Ghraib. The commandos were to operate in Iraq as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be treated roughly and exposed to sexual humiliation.

"They weren’t getting anything substantive from the detainees in Iraq," the former intelligence official told me. "No names. Nothing that they could hang their hat on. Cambone says, I’ve got to crack this thing and I’m tired of working through the normal chain of command. I’ve got this apparatus set up - the black special-access programme - and I’m going in hot.

"So he pulls the switch, and the electricity begins flowing last summer. And it’s working. We’re getting a picture of the insurgency in Iraq and the intelligence is flowing into the white world. We’re getting good stuff."

Cambone then made another crucial decision, the former intelligence official told me: not only would he bring the SAP’s rules into the prisons, he would bring some of the army military intelligence officers working inside the Iraqi prisons under the SAP’s auspices.

"So here are fundamentally good soldiers - military intelligence guys - being told that no rules apply," the former official said.

In a separate interview, a Pentagon consultant, who spent much of his career directly involved with special-access programmes, spread the blame. "The White House subcontracted this to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon subcontracted it to Cambone," he said. "This is Cambone’s deal, but Rumsfeld and Myers approved the programme." When it came to the interrogation operation at Abu Ghraib, he said, Rumsfeld left the details to Cambone. Rumsfeld may not be personally culpable, the consultant added, "but he’s responsible for the checks and balances. The issue is that, since 9/11 we’ve changed the rules on how we deal with terrorism and created conditions where the ends justify the means."

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation - aspects of which were known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green - encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the insurgency. A senior CIA official confirmed the details of this account and said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of clandestine and paramilitary operations from the CIA.

Who was in charge of Abu Ghraib - whether military police or military intelligence - was no longer the only question that mattered. Hard-core special operatives, some of them with aliases, were working in the prison. The military police assigned to guard the prisoners wore uniforms, but many others - military intelligence officers, contract interpreters, CIA officers, and the men from the SAP - wore civilian clothes. It was not clear who was who, even to General Karpinski, then the commander of the 800 military police brigade. "I thought most of the civilians there were interpreters, but there were some civilians that I didn’t know," Karpinski told me. "I called them the disappearing ghosts. I’d seen them once in a while at Abu Ghraib and then I’d see them months later." The mysterious civilians, she said, were "always bringing in somebody for interrogation or waiting to collect somebody going out". Karpinski added that she had no idea who was operating in her prison system.

Military intelligence personnel assigned to Abu Ghraib repeatedly wore "sterile", or unmarked, uniforms or civilian clothes while on duty. "You couldn’t tell them apart," a source familiar with the investigation said. The blurring of identities and organisations meant that it was impossible for the prisoners, or, significantly, the military policemen on duty, to know who was doing what to whom and who had the authority to give orders.

By last autumn, according to the former intelligence official, the senior leadership of the CIA had had enough. "They said, ’No way. We signed up for the core programme in Afghanistan - pre-approved for operations against high-value terrorist targets. And now you want to use it for cab drivers, brothers-in-law, and people pulled off the streets.’" The CIA balked, the former intelligence official said: "The agency checks with their lawyers and pulls out," ending those of its activities in Abu Ghraib that related to the SAP. (In a later conversation, a senior CIA official confirmed this account.)

The CIA’s complaints were echoed throughout the intelligence community. There was fear the situation at Abu Ghraib would lead to the exposure of the secret SAP, and thereby bring an end to what had been, before Iraq, a valued covert operation. "This was stupidity," a government consultant told me. "You’re taking a programme that was operating in the chaos of Afghanistan against al-Qaida, a stateless terror group, and bringing it into a structured, traditional war zone. Sooner or later, the commandos would bump into the legal and moral procedures of a conventional war with an army of 135,000 soldiers."

In mid 2003, Rumsfeld’s apparent disregard for the requirements of the Geneva convention while carrying out the war on terror had led a group of senior military legal officers from the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps to pay two surprise visits within five months to Scott Horton, who was then chairman of the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on International Human Rights. "They wanted us to challenge the Bush administration about its standards for detentions and interrogation," Horton told me in May 2004. "They were urging us to get involved and speak in a very loud voice. [ ... ] The message was that conditions are ripe for abuse, and it’s going to occur." The military officials were most alarmed about the growing use of civilian contractors in the interrogation process, Horton recalled. The JAG officers told him that, with the war on terror, a 50-year history of exemplary application of the Geneva convention had come to an end.

In July 2004, I again spoke to Scott Horton, who has maintained contact with a network of JAG lawyers. He told me that Rumsfeld and his civilian deputies had pressured the army to conclude the pending investigations by late August, before the Republican convention in New York. Horton added that the politics were blatant.

Pentagon investigations, he said, "have a reputation for tending to whitewash, but even taking this into account, the current investigations seem to be setting new standards". Rumsfeld’s office had circumscribed the investigators’ charge and also placed tight controls on the documents to be made available. In other words, Horton said, "Rumsfeld has completely rigged the investigations. My friends say we should expect something much akin to the army inspector general’s report - ’just a few rotten apples’."

But General Taguba’s highly critical internal investigation into military prisons in Iraq - which, together with the shocking photographs of prisoner abuse, sparked the Abu Ghraib scandal in April - amounted to an unsparing study of collective wrongdoing and the failure of army leadership at the highest levels. The picture Taguba drew of Abu Ghraib was one in which army regulations and the Geneva convention were routinely violated, and in which much of the day-to-day management of the prisoners was abdicated to army military intelligence units and civilian contract employees.

Rumsfeld’s most fateful decision, endorsed by the White House, came at a time of crisis in August 2003 when the defence secretary expanded the highly secret SAP into the prisons of Iraq. The roots of the Abu Ghraib scandal therefore lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few army reservists, but in the reliance of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld on secret operations and the use of coercion - and eye-for-an-eye retribution - in fighting terrorism.

[BoweryBaker 0]

The new tactic in nabbing these terrorists, is to take all these enemy states, possible safe havens for terrorists to operate out of, and turn them democratic.  They don't care about liberating the people of iraq and they're not worried about Irans nukes.  They just don't want to run black ops anymore.  Plain and simple.  When you got terrorists operating out of an entire country that they own and operate then you got to go large scale, so its Bushes idea to knock down all the establishments against America so that Al Qaeda has nowhere to hide. That way they can monitor communications of Al Qaeda no matter where they are. A very crude plan.

[theavonlady 2]

What's going on?

Quote[/b] ]Weapons cache stuns Canucks

Fri, October 15, 2004

By PETER WORTHINGTON -- For the Toronto Sun

Canadian soldiers attached to the Afghan National Army (ANA) have stirred up a hornet's nest in Kabul by being too efficient.

They've "discovered" a huge Soviet ammunition dump a few kilometres from Camp Julien with the potential of obliterating the camp, as well as most of Kabul.

That may sound like hyperbole, but I was with the Canadians who discovered the cache -- soldiers (mostly Princess Pats and combat engineers) who are training and working with the ANA and consider themselves to have the best job in the army.

In the dusty foothills, 10 minutes drive from Camp Julien (population 2,000), 82 buried bunkers, each 20-

metres long, housed thousands of Soviet FROG missiles (one step down from Scud missiles), and every variety of rocket and mortar shells.

Some of the FROG missiles were still in their original cases. Some heaped in the open. Some stacked to the roof in the unlocked, open bunkers. Much of the ordnance had warheads removed to collect the explosive for homemade bombs -- or for blasting at a nearby quarry.

"Unbelievable!" was Maj. Brian Hynes' reaction when he saw them. "We (troops of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)) have been here some two years, and no one knew this was at our back door. Unbelievable."

In truth, the Soviet bunkers were well-known in an area supposedly under control of the Afghan Militia Force (AMF) -- not to be confused with the ANA. The AMF is paid by various warlords and so their loyalty is to them.

The hero of the discovery was combat engineer Sgt. Mike Mazerolle of New Brunswick, who has run the observation post for eight days with ANA soldiers. They watch the valleys leading to Kabul.

He saw people to his rear so he investigated and found the 82 bunkers "loaded with ordnance, and here I am sleeping next to a FROG!"

He informed his boss, Maj. Hynes and -- eureka -- the cache was discovered.

Many of the rockets, missiles and shells had been pried open for the explosives, which are used peacefully to blast mountain rock into gravel, and by those who want to make bombs that disrupt Kabul.

"These bunkers have been known for two years but no one bothered to check them," said Maj. Hynes.

"To me, that's incompetence."

"To me it's criminal," said Sgt. Power, who works with the major in training the ANA.

I've never seen anything like it. The feeling is that AMF soldiers were selling access to the dump or permitting friends to enter it.

Littered with burned out Soviet military vehicles, the whole area is a junk pile strewn with every sort of live ammunition, fuses, unexploded shells, rockets, etc., all supposedly under the authority of Belgian troops (at the moment), who ignored it.

In the midst of examining the bunkers and taking photos, a Swedish UN guy, a French major and a German colonel arrived to make a fuss and order the Canadians to leave. The French major insisted his government had a deal with the Afghan government for the area, and ISAF had no business being there.

This cut little ice with Maj. Hynes, who is responsible -- not to the commander of Camp Julien, Col. Jim Ellis -- but to the ANA, which has now moved in to secure the site.

The French major was clearly bluffing, hadn't checked the bunkers and got a classic Canadian roasting from Maj. Hynes -- who was supported by a German general who was also appalled at the laxity.

"Now we've stirred up the hornet's nest," grinned Maj. Hynes. "Good. Now we may get some action."

"I feel foolish that for eight days we've been watching our front, when at our back all this was going on and nobody cared," said Sgt. Mazerolle.

[theavonlady 2]

Apparently, Spain has not finalized paying the price:

Quote[/b] ]Spain Seizes Islamic Militants Suspected of Plot

Mon Oct 18, 2004 06:20 PM ET

MADRID (Reuters) - Police arrested seven suspected Islamic militants in raids across Spain on Monday to foil a planned bomb attack on the High Court, judicial sources said.

The arrests came seven months after train bombs killed 191 people in Madrid.

The seven suspects, including four Algerians and one Moroccan, were arrested in the southern region of Andalusia, the Mediterranean city of Valencia and Madrid.

Further arrests could be made in the coming hours as part of the operation against a radical and violent Muslim network, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Crusading Judge Baltasar Garzon ordered the arrests as part of his inquiry into Islamic militant cells in Spain.

The suspects had been in contact with other individuals in Europe, the United States and Australia, the statement said.

[denoir 0]

What's going on?

Any more.. umm.. literate references? A report using expressions such as "a Swedish UN guy" and "got a classic Canadian roasting", doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

The use of language is very similar to British tabloids - like the Sun - who are notorious for making up and exaggerating stories.

[Tovarish 0]

*edit* nm,found a similar but unrelated incident from a few months ago, thought it was the same

[theavonlady 2]

Funny though, no mention there of any Swedish UN guys or French officer's getting roasted. I'm guessing good old Pete Worthington couldn't help throwing in an extra "FROG" in his story, wonder what he's got against the Swedes though.

*edit* Whhhoooa....just noticed the date on my link:

Quote[/b] ]

Thu. Jul. 29 2004 11:20 PM ET

Looks like someone over at the Toronto Sun's been regurgitating old "news" with some added flavour of their own.

Haha! Gotcha before you deleted your post.

Just to point out that, from other articles on the Sun's site, Worthington is in Afghanistan himself, i.e., these are not remote heresay reports heard through the grapevine.

Or do you all believe that 90% of what this guy is writing is fiction?

[miles teg 1]

The new tactic in nabbing these terrorists, is to take all these enemy states, possible safe havens for terrorists to operate out of, and turn them democratic.  They don't care about liberating the people of iraq and they're not worried about Irans nukes.  They just don't want to run black ops anymore.  Plain and simple.  When you got terrorists operating out of an entire country that they own and operate then you got to go large scale, so its Bushes idea to knock down all the establishments against America so that Al Qaeda has nowhere to hide.  That way they can monitor communications of Al Qaeda no matter where they are.  A very crude plan.

Um.... Iraq was never controlled by terrorists. In fact under Saddam Hussein Al-Qaeda was not allowed to operate in Iraq. The only Al-Qaeda affiliated group was up in the North near the Iranian border. That group was pretty much contained by Kurdish secular forces and the Iraqi military. Essentially nothing happened in Iraq without the Baath party knowing about it because the Baath party operated as a cell system with everyone spying on each other and rich rewards given to those who reported anti-Saddam activities or any type of religious uprising such as the Shí'a attempted in southern Iraq.

The only country that overtly and clearly supported terrorists was the Taliban in Afghanistan. However just before 9/11 the Bush administration was trying to close a deal with them.

Ironically also it was the Iranians who supported the Northern Alliance long after the Russians had left.

There was actually a golden window of opportunity to restore relations with Iran as Iran offered intelligence information to the US. However their olive branch extension was quickly rejected in Bush's "axis of evil" speech.

Toppling the Iranian government and similar governments (like Syria) in my opinion will only create more instability in the region, less democracy, more corruption, and without a doubt, VASTLY MORE terrorism. In a chaotic situation like in Iraq, such regions become massive recruiting grounds for terrorist groups who use these areas to highlight to the Islamic world what they see as Western/infidel aggression against Islam and Muslims.

If Bush really believes he's spreading Democracy and Freedom he's a complete idiot. The American public seems to have entirely forgotten the lessons of the Vietnam War. During that period, similar catch phrases were used to justify the war in Vietnam. The American public and the world was told that we were fighting against Communism and fighting for democracy and freedom in South Vietnam.

In reality we were supporting a highly corrupt and oppressive government in South Vietnam with a military that was extremely demoralized because they generally did not have much faith in their government and did not enjoy fighting their countrymen or believe strongly in their cause.

We find this identical situation in Iraq with corruption now rampant at all levels of government in Iraq, and with a police and military force that largely is disillusioned (aside from a few units with good leadership just as in South Vietnam's Army).

As in South Vietnam we are facing an enemy that is highly motivated. However rather then being motivated by political ideology like the NVA and Vietcong, Iraqi militants and Al-Qaeda militants are motivated by a much more powerful method of motivation: Religion.

There is a fundamental flaw in the entire paradigm that this war on terror is being based upon....that flaw is a complete failure to understand the nature of this conflict and the nature of our enemies and what motivates them.

Instead, just as during the Vietnam War, we dehumanize the enemy and call them inhuman terrorist savages who are only fit to kill and who we can't negotiate with.

Also like the Vietnam War we are having immense trouble differentiating between a "Good Muslim and a Bad Muslim".

There is no litmus test for identifying terrorists. Just as in Vietnam there was no way to know for sure if a Vietnamese peasant was a Vietcong supporter or not...the only sure way was to just kill them all... at least that was the attitude of many US military commanders during that war in which the indiscriminate killing of civilians was not uncommon. Likewise in Iraq there are many well documented reports of indiscriminate killing by US soldiers especially in combat zones in which anyone on the streets is seen as fair game for US snipers. Why this happens has not been studied to my knowledge and has been covered up by the US military who denies widespread occurences of war crimes even in the face of evidence that indeed indiscriminate killings of civilians is occuring. This is important because in the Arab media these accounts of war crimes are highly publicized with no effort to counter such reports by the US State Department or Department of Defense.

Just as in the Abu-Graib prison scandal, the US military goes into cover-up mode with no officers being court-martialed even though there exists enormous amounts of testimonies showing that officers at many levels knew of the torture being conducted in prisons not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan.

The terms "Freedom and Democracy" ring hollow in the ears of most Arabs when they see such things being done by Americans in the Middle East. Most Americans don't comprehend this fact and believe that if Arabs don't want "freedom and democracy" then they must be the enemy without comprehending that the problem is that Arabs have seen the US only supporting dicatorships in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Yemen, Morocco, Bahrain, Jordan, ect...) with no record of supporting democracy in the Middle East aside from Turkey perhaps. Part of this is because these dictatorships we support are defenses against Islamic extremism. For this reason democracy is difficult to establish in the Middle East. If Iraq had true freedom and democracy, more then likely Islamic fundamentalist governments would be elected. The US will not allow this.

So where is the freedom if Iraqi's are not free to choose whatever type of government they wish to choose?

If its a democracy and they get tired of an Islamic fundamentalist government, they can simply elect more secular leaders if their government has proper checks and balances and a constitution protecting the right to vote for either secular or religious leadership. However now the US sees all "Islamic" governments who are even remotely anti-American or anti-Israeli as threats and will never allow this to happen.

So in essence what we are faced with now is a war against fundamentalist Islam by those who believe that American values/ways of life are superior and that American concepts of freedom and democracy must be forced upon people who may or may not necessarily share the same values or beliefs due to vastly different historical and cultural backgrounds.

So in a nutshell... Bush's dream of spreading "democracy and freedom" by invading countries that piss us off is absolutely insane and perilously dangerous. Right now we are simply filling the ranks of Al-Qaeda with fresh new recruits ready and eager to die for their beliefs in response to America's foreign policy actions in the Middle East.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[Tovarish 0]

Funny though, no mention there of any Swedish UN guys or French officer's getting roasted. I'm guessing good old Pete Worthington couldn't help throwing in an extra "FROG" in his story, wonder what he's got against the Swedes though.

*edit* Whhhoooa....just noticed the date on my link:

Quote[/b] ]  

Thu. Jul. 29 2004 11:20 PM ET  

Looks like someone over at the Toronto Sun's been regurgitating old "news" with some added flavour of their own.

Haha! Gotcha before you deleted your post.

Just to point out that, from other articles on the Sun's site, Worthington is in Afghanistan himself, i.e., these are not remote heresay reports heard through the grapevine.

Or do you all believe that 90% of what this guy is writing is fiction?

Yes, so my face is slightly red. The overall picture sounded much the same, so I didn't notice at first just how many of the details didn't jive.

You don't need to lecture me on Pete's wereabouts, I read the Sun pretty regularly . But I also know that he takes every chance he gets to rag on those that didn't join the Iraq war bandwagon - say the French or the U.N. - so I had my reasons to be suspicious.

[miles teg 1]

Being in Iraq or Afghanistan also doesn't mean that suddenly you are an expert on everything and are omniscient. I've seen reporters with biases on both sides of this war totally ignore facts on the ground because they chose to only seek out the facts that help to justify their own beliefs.

Also you can only experience so much in person unless you spend years in a place and travel extensively through a region. For this reason you get American soldiers in Iraq who are both for and against the war. Alot depends on personal experiences with Iraqis and the situations in which they served in Iraq.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[BoweryBaker 0]

It would seem complimentory to call Bush insane, depending on what side of the line you stand on.

[miles teg 1]

I don't think Bush is insane. But I do believe that he and his administration are guided by very simplistic ideologies that put people into either good guy or bad guy categories rather then any attempt to look at the vast complexity of the situation we find ourselves in. For example the Bush administration does not seem to want to fight the perception in the Islamic world that the US is leading a war against Islam. Early on the State Department made some very good attempts at doing this and their reps on Al-Jazeera defended our actions in Afghanistan very well. That's because the State Department was very much supportive of the Afghanistan campaign.

However once the Iraq campaign started, the Bush administration seemed to just totally drop the ball and instead let the rhetoric and propaganda of Al-Qaeda pass unchallenged which they continue to do to this day. I believe this is because the Bush administration honestly believes that most of the Islamic world wants American style freedom and democracy. In essence Bush believes his own rhetoric without a grasp of the perspective of regular people in the Middle East who may indeed want freedom and democracy, but not on American terms.

Rather he listens more often to Middle Eastern secularists who usually do a very poor job of representing the issues faced by the majority of Middle Easterners who are devout Muslims.

Bush also sends mixed signals to the Islamic world. For example he says he wants to bring democracy and freedom to the Middle East yet he supports most of the dictatorships in the region.

Realistically he can not alienate those dictatorships who assist us on the war on terror. However Bush can give these countries economic incentives to move towards a more democratic system such as giving them special trade status or by forgiving debts and ecouraging US investment if they begin making reforms in their governments. Ironically we are putting this kind of pressure on Pakistan, a country which arguably is better off under a dictator (Musharraff) rather then their previous democratic government which was riddled with corruption. So far I have not encountered a single Pakistani at my university that does not like Musharraff. He is overall very popular with most Pakistanis (aside from religious fundamentalists in the North Western Frontier Province and other parts of Pakistan).

Yet despite this the Bush administration is putting alot of pressure on him to step down from power...which in my opinion is a big mistake as Pakistan would lose a very capable and overall fairly wise leader who I think is courageously steering Pakistan through very dangerous times with quite a bit of skill.

Anyways...sorry for the long answers...

In a nutshell...is Bush Insane? Probably not. Is he stupid. Yeah. Is he misled? Yes. Is he arrogant? Definitely.

But America is an arrogant nation so I think he reflects my country sadly...but I think that things are changing...and that we are destined to repeat history and make the same mistakes as from the Vietnam War....and once again will be either humbled...or will commit attrocious genocide in order to save face.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[Tovarish 0]

Prosecutor: Beslan attackers were druggies

Quote[/b] ]MOSCOW (AP) - Forensic tests have shown that some of the militants who took more than 1,000 people hostage in a school in the southern Russian town of Beslan last month were drug addicts, a senior prosecutor was quoted as saying Sunday.

Nikolai Shepel, Russia's deputy prosecutor general, said forensic experts found traces of drugs in the bodies of some of the militants that exceeded normally lethal levels, indicating they were long-term drug addicts, according to a statement carried by the Interfax and ITAR-Tass news agencies.

Tests also revealed that "some of the terrorists had run out of drugs and were in a state of withdrawal, which usually comes with aggressiveness and inadequate behaviour," Shepel said. "This allows us to assess the situation before the tragic outcome."

After seizing the school in Beslan on Sept. 1, the militants placed bombs around its gym and held hostages there in sweltering heat for three days without food or water.

The standoff ended Sept. 3, when an explosion inside the school sent children fleeing and their captors began shooting them in the back, prompting the forces gathered outside to return fire. Nearly 340 hostages died.

Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev took credit for the attack, saying it was part of the rebel struggle for independence from Moscow.

[turms 0]

Prosecutor: Beslan attackers were druggies

Quote[/b] ]MOSCOW (AP) - Forensic tests have shown that some of the militants who took more than 1,000 people hostage in a school in the southern Russian town of Beslan last month were drug addicts, a senior prosecutor was quoted as saying Sunday.

Nikolai Shepel, Russia's deputy prosecutor general, said forensic experts found traces of drugs in the bodies of some of the militants that exceeded normally lethal levels, indicating they were long-term drug addicts, according to a statement carried by the Interfax and ITAR-Tass news agencies.

Tests also revealed that "some of the terrorists had run out of drugs and were in a state of withdrawal, which usually comes with aggressiveness and inadequate behaviour," Shepel said. "This allows us to assess the situation before the tragic outcome."

After seizing the school in Beslan on Sept. 1, the militants placed bombs around its gym and held hostages there in sweltering heat for three days without food or water.

The standoff ended Sept. 3, when an explosion inside the school sent children fleeing and their captors began shooting them in the back, prompting the forces gathered outside to return fire. Nearly 340 hostages died.

Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev took credit for the attack, saying it was part of the rebel struggle for independence from Moscow.

The article says that some of them were, your title gives a impression that all of them were drug addicts..

[Tovarish 0]

The article says that some of them were, your title gives a impression that all of them were drug addicts..

That's the title of the freaking article....go take it up with them if you don't like it

[BoweryBaker 0]

 If I were at the meeting table and a representative of your nation or people told me something like that, Miles Teg, I'd be like, "Dang, and he's not even a terrorist."  The reason part of this war on terror is dragging into these enemy countries with nukes is because of the fact that, they're just now learning about nukes, soon they could become so advanced about them that they could be very dangerous people.  Can we really trust them if they get as advanced as being able to compact a nuclear effect bomb inside of a suitcase is the question.  The answer to that is a worldwide nuclear treaty.  Back it up with a little old fashioned get down or lay down but make the treaty extremely fair.  Make the treaty say, if you're going to own nukes, then theres going to be a way to use them, and thats last minute defence.  Also, any country that does blah blah blah may not own nukes under this treaty.  If a country defies the treaty he is up for invasion or attack, no compromises.  Get all your nuclear countries to sign the treaty and boom you get a nuclear treaty.  Why hasn't anyone thought of this? If the treaty benefits all parties, of course they'll sign it. You just got to present it to them like its going to benefit them personally so they feel special.

[BoweryBaker 0]

Can I say *bump?*

[theavonlady 2]

Quote[/b] ]The Sunday Times, UK: Territorial Army infiltrated by Al-Qaeda

October 17, 2004

David Leppard

THE Territorial Army has been infiltrated by Al-Qaeda suspects, giving the Islamic terrorist group potential access to military bases, explosives and fuel dumps.

Five Al-Qaeda suspects are believed to have trained as part-time soldiers with the TA. At least one is now in custody.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has confirmed that other terror suspects have attempted to join the TA, but says they were rejected after undergoing security checks.

The connection with Britain’s Al-Qaeda network was uncovered in a series of wide-ranging investigations by MI5 and Scotland Yard’s Special Branch.

It is believed the terrorist suspects may have been taking advantage of military training as well as gaining access to bases and weapons.

Patrick Mercer, the Tory homeland security spokesman and a former army officer, said Al-Qaeda terrorists could use TA passes to penetrate security at key MoD establishments such as the permanent joint headquarters at Northwood in Greater London.

“This could have very serious security implications. Clearly in the war against terror you need to know who your friends are. The last thing we want is the enemy masquerading as our own people,†Mercer said.

The TA has about 41,000 members and comprises a substantial portion of the 102,000-strong British Army and has 329 centres throughout the country.

Most recruits have access to small arms and undergo infantry training. Security experts say while such access may be limited, terrorists could get greater benefit from targeting selected units such the Intelligence Corps, the Royal Engineers and logistics units.

The TA’s Royal Engineers would give them access to explosives. The Royal Logistics Corps would provide access to military fuel dumps and a fleet of tankers. Many army tanker drivers now on duty in Iraq are TA soldiers.More than 7,000 have been called up to serve in Iraq — the largest deployment in its 97-year history.

The MoD says all TA applicants went through the same “security check†procedure as members of the armed forces.

Candidates fill in a standard form that is passed to the Defence Vetting Agency, which carries out checks on the applicant’s nationality and family background.

Further checks are made against criminal records and candidates are asked to disclose if they have any known terrorist affiliations.

“They are very basic,†said an MoD spokesman. “We do check the information on the form and issues are spotted and managed as appropriate. People do fail the vetting because of associations with terrorist organisations.â€

Details of the TA connection have emerged in an inquiry by Scotland Yard into the background of several suspects arrested in Britain earlier this year. The arrests followed a tip-off from Pakistan, although details of the case cannot be reported for legal reasons.

Senior police and intelligence officers want to know whether terrorists are making a concerted effort to penetrate the TA as part of an initiative to gather intelligence for an attack.

Some believe they are attracted to the TA because it gives them a legitimate cover to undergo military training.

The territorials have previously been the target of terrorist interests. In the mid-1990s, Special Branch uncovered a plan by hardline animal rights activists to acquire explosives from weapons dumps.

MI5 and Scotland Yard has known for at least two years that as well as targeting the TA, Al-Qaeda recruiting sergeants in mosques are sending potential recruits on outward-bound courses to improve their fitness and undergo mock weapons training.

In the early 1990s the IRA bombed several TA barracks including the headquarters of the Honourable Artillery Company in the City of London, and a barracks in Hammersmith.

Despite a series of arrests by police and MI5, security officials stress that Al-Qaeda still poses a serious threat to Britain. Recently acquired intelligence suggests the group has been planning a “spectacular†attack, possibly using car bombs against high-rise office blocks in the City of London.

There are also fears that the group could target shopping centres and railway stations.

[BoweryBaker 0]

That's why you fight a war on terror with your special forces and not conventional troops. It's hard as hell to infiltrate special forces.

[Tovarish 0]

What's going on?

More from Pete

Quote[/b] ]Media people who seek to be "embedded" with Canadian troops in Afghanistan must agree in writing to certain "ground rules" that don't jeopardize security of operations -- such as agreeing not to give exact locations of observation posts or publicizing tactical plans before they occur.

In general, these rules are reasonable. As I learned firsthand last week, journalists embedded at Canada's Camp Julien in Kabul are treated well, and are the responsibility of public affairs officers (PAOs) who like to be kept informed of journalists' movements, especially when they leave the confines of the camp (and the protection of soldiers). That too is fair.

Security details

Occasionally the rules involve the PAOs checking what journalists write -- not as censors of opinions or assessments but to ensure security details aren't inadvertently exposed that might undermine a mission or put soldiers in danger.

That dictum was imposed on election eve in Kabul -- on our Thanksgiving weekend -- when violence was anticipated. A secret deception was planned to have a fake election headquarters in the centre of Kabul as a ruse, while the ballots were taken to the camp of the Afghanistan National Army (ANA) for counting and tabulating.

As it was, all went smoothly and the Kabul vote was more an exercise in patriotism, freedom, democracy and a hopeful future than the mere choosing of a president. The process of voting freely was more important to the people than the long-delayed result.

Last week I incurred the displeasure of the PAOs when I went with Canadian soldiers who are dedicated to shaping the ANA into a disciplined, responsible force. These Canadians had discovered a huge Soviet ammunition, rocket and missile dump about 10 minutes' drive from Camp Julien and Kabul.

We investigated some of 82 old 20-metre Soviet ammunition bunkers, of which 50 were filled with every type of explosive. No bunker doors were locked, there was no security, and Afghan militia (ostensibly responsible for the area) were suspected of selling or giving explosives to customers and friends.

The dangers of this are obvious. There were FROG-7 missiles and warheads (a step down from Scud missiles) lying in the open, unguarded and unknown to the Canadians.

Potential risk

This lethal dump stretched over a couple of kilometres and had been there, untended, for several years, and posed an enormous potential risk to Kabul and the Canadian camp.

I suspect the fact that a journalist and a couple of photographers were in on the "discovery" -- which I wrote about last week -- alarmed and embarrassed civilian authorities supervising the area.

On my return to Canada, an e-mail was waiting from Capt. Darren Steele, senior public affairs officer at Camp Julien.

In it he said, "the situation was a lot different than it appeared to you at the time."

He said "the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had been aware of, and was monitoring, the munitions dump for the past two years, destroying quantities of munitions every week." He pointed out "there was only one FROG missile and five warheads" and that French explosive teams have since destroyed the warheads. "There is still a large quantity of 122- and 107-mm rockets and mortar and artillery shells in the munitions dump, but these are being guarded by ANA troops, monitored by ISAF," he wrote, noting disposal teams are now busy destroying the ordnance.

About time, I'd say.

Certainly, the ANA are more reliable than the AMF -- Afghan Militia Force -- which is a private army paid for by local politicians and warlords whose loyalty is as questionable as their competence.

Frankly, as one who was there, I find the assertion that ISAF was "monitoring" the dump for two years to be nonsense. The soldier who alerted Camp Julien to the explosives was Sgt. Mike Mazerolle, of the Combat Engineers, helping train the ANA. He found the "thousands" of explosives open and insecure.

Can you imagine the destructive power of a FROG warhead being hoisted into the back of a pickup truck and driven and exploded in the centre of Kabul? And for over two years this risk has existed!

Casual security

I was there that day, and it seemed clear to me that the ISAF people knew nothing. I'd argue it's no coincidence this situation is now being addressed -- perhaps because media were there to record the horrendously casual security.

Rather than try to justify or explain the situation, the PAOs should be heaping praise on the vigilance of Sgt. Mazerolle, and the dedication of his boss, Maj. Brian Hynes, whose work with the ANA led to the "discovery" of the explosives and made their destruction inevitable.

...So, the leadership of the Canadian military and that on ISAF on one hand, and a lone tabloid reporter on the other. Who to believe?

[billybob2002 0]

You may bash me for posting drudge but he usually gets this stuff right....

http://www.drudgereport.com/abct.htm

Quote[/b] ]

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX WED OCT 27, 2004 12:42:01 ET XXXXX

ABCNEWS HOLDS TERROR WARNING TAPE

**Exclusive**

In the last week before the election, ABCNEWS is holding on a videotaped message from a purported al Qaeda terrorist warning of a new attack on America, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The terrorist claims on tape the next attack will dwarf 9/11. "The streets will run with blood," and "America will mourn in silence" because they will be unable to count the number of the dead. Further claims: America has brought this on itself for electing George Bush who has made war on Islam by destroying the Taliban and making war on Al Qaeda.

ABCNEWS strongly denies holding the tape back from broadcast over political concerns during the last days of the election.

The CIA is analyzing the tape, a top federal source tells the DRUDGE REPORT.

ABCNEWS obtained the tape from a source in Waziristan, Pakistan over the weekend, sources tells DRUDGE.

"We have been working 24 hours a day trying to authenticate [the tape]," a senior ABCNEWS source said Wednesday morning.

The terrorist's face is concealed by a head dress, and he speaks in an American accent, making it difficult to identify the individual. But US intelligence officials believe that man may be Adam Gadhan - aka Adam Pearlman - a southern California native who was highlighted by the FBI in May as an individual most likely to be involved in or have knowledge of the next al Qaeda attacks.

According to the FBI, Gadahn, 25, attended al-Qaida training camps and served as an al-Qaida translator.

The disturbing tape runs an hour -- the man simply identifies himself as 'Assam the American.'

MORE

[BoweryBaker 0]

Vote bush or face him?  What inner energy or motivation has you saying that.  Funny how everyone involved in his fight for presidency is either motivated by blindness, lies, or the will to conquer and destroy.  Nothing good at all.  If he comes for me, I'll stand till death, as a martyr against the traitor if I have to.  He's supposed to be a christian, a person of good, he has been taught under perverted religion.  Now the seeds that have taken root inside of him are growing and extending themselves in physical form.  Insecurity is what we have now.  I'm furious at the wickedness of this generation.  You think I'm intimidated?  I'll tell him!  Give me one chance.  Once clear chance.  I will shake him to his core with my words of clarity.  Blowing away his cloud of deception with holy spirit as a rushing wind.  You have no chance if you ally yourself with lies, deception, confusion, deceit, any of the untruthful methods of wickedness.  Not a chance in hell.  Not a chance, even in hell.  HMPH. dYou're good at stirring me up billybob, you ever think of joining the side of good, for the rights and better intention of the people? Wicked ass generals under a leader that shadows and confuses and dodges and denies.

[billybob2002 0]

Quote[/b] ]Vote bush or face him? What inner energy or motivation has you saying that. Funny how everyone involved in his fight for presidency is either motivated by blindness, lies, or the will to conquer and destroy. Nothing good at all. If he comes for me, I'll stand till death, as a martyr against the traitor if I have to. He's supposed to be a christian, a person of good, he has been taught under perverted religion. Now the seeds that have taken root inside of him are growing and extending themselves in physical form. Insecurity is what we have now. I'm furious at the wickedness of this generation. You think I'm intimidated? I'll tell him! Give me one chance. Once clear chance. I will shake him to his core with my words of clarity. Blowing away his cloud of deception with holy spirit as a rushing wind. You have no chance if you ally yourself with lies. Not a chance in hell.

You cannot take a joke? That is man called Batista and he is a wrestler...

[BoweryBaker 0]

He's a wrestler, but that is YOUR creativity.  Don't hide. Ally yourself with good, or die from the chaos you created for yourself. I learned it the hard way, but had the chance to be reborn in a sense. Complicated isn't it?

[billybob2002 0]

Quote[/b] ]He's a wrestler, that is your creativity. Don't hide.

Seriously, ... Look up Batista if you do not believe me.