Ex-CIA Officials: 'Israel will be destroyed if it attacks Iran'

A group of ex-CIA officials have warned Washington against Tel Aviv's efforts to "mousetrap" the US on Iran, a mistake that would "destroy" Israel.

In a memo to the US President Barack Obama, a group of former CIA intelligence officers at the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity warned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is ready to go unilateral on Iran.

"Blindsiding has long been an arrow in Israel's quiver," the group said on Thursday.

To prevent such a 'disaster', the former officials wrote, the White House should "move quickly to pre-empt an Israeli attack by publicly condemning such a move before it happens."

If Obama fails to do so "Israel's leaders would calculate that once the battle is joined, it will be politically untenable for you to give anything less than unstinting support to Israel," the memo continues.

Plans for a military attack against Iran have gained momentum in Tel Aviv over the past few months.

On November 7, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon warned Iran that Tel Aviv's persistent threats of military action were not just a bluff.

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AP Exclusive: CIA whisked detainees from Gitmo

Four of the nation's most highly valued terrorist prisoners were secretly moved to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2003, years earlier than has been disclosed, then whisked back into overseas prisons before the Supreme Court could give them access to lawyers, The Associated Press has learned.

The transfer allowed the U.S. to interrogate the detainees in CIA "black sites" for two more years without allowing them to speak with attorneys or human rights observers or challenge their detention in U.S. courts. Had they remained at the Guantanamo Bay prison for just three more months, they would have been afforded those rights.

"This was all just a shell game to hide detainees from the courts," said Jonathan Hafetz, a Seton Hall University law professor who has represented several detainees.

Removing them from Guantanamo Bay underscores how worried President George W. Bush's administration was that the Supreme Court might lift the veil of secrecy on the detention program. It also shows how insistent the Bush administration was that terrorists must be held outside the U.S. court system.

Years later, the program's legacy continues to complicate President Barack Obama's efforts to prosecute the terrorists behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The arrival and speedy departure from Guantanamo were pieced together by the AP using flight records and interviews with current and former U.S. officials and others familiar with the CIA's detention program.

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America Is at Risk of Boiling Over!!!

Wall Street Journal

It is, obviously, self-referential to quote yourself, but I do it to make a point. I wrote the following on New Year's day, 1994. America 16 years ago was a relatively content nation, though full of political sparks: 10 months later the Republicans would take the House for the first time in 40 years. But beneath all the action was, I thought, a coming unease. Something inside was telling us we were living through "not the placid dawn of a peaceful age but the illusory calm before stern storms."

The temperature in the world was very high. "At home certain trends—crime, cultural tension, some cultural Balkanization—will, we fear, continue; some will worsen. In my darker moments I have a bad hunch. The fraying of the bonds that keep us together, the strangeness and anomie of our popular culture, the increase in walled communities . . . the rising radicalism of the politically correct . . . the increased demand of all levels of government for the money of the people, the spotty success with which we are communicating to the young America's reason for being and founding beliefs, the growth of cities where English is becoming the second language . . . these things may well come together at some point in our lifetimes and produce something painful indeed. I can imagine, for instance, in the year 2020 or so, a movement in some states to break away from the union. Which would bring about, of course, a drama of Lincolnian darkness. . . . You will know that things have reached a bad pass when Newsweek and Time, if they still exist 15 years from now, do cover stories on a surprising, and disturbing trend: aging baby boomers leaving America, taking what savings they have to live the rest of their lives in places like Africa and Ireland."

I thought of this again the other day when Drudge headlined increasing lines in London for Americans trading in their passports over tax issues, and the sale of Newsweek for $1.

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Scientists Question Government Team's Report Of Shrinking Gulf Oil Spill

The "greatest environmental disaster" in U.S. history -- which has appeared at times to leave a high-control White House powerless -- seemed to have lost its power to scare.

A few hours after BP's well was declared virtually dead, the Obama administration announced Wednesday that only about 26 percent of the oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico was unaccounted for. 

"A significant amount of this," said Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "is a direct result of the very robust federal response efforts." 

But, in interviews, scientists who worked on the report said the figures were based in large part on assumptions and estimates with a significant margin of error. 

Some outside scientists went further: In a situation in which many facts remain murky, they said, the government seemed to have used interpretations that made the gulf -- and the federal efforts to save it -- look as good as possible. 

"There's a lot of . . . smoke and mirrors in this report," said Ian MacDonald, a professor of biological oceanography at Florida State University. "It seems very reassuring, but the data aren't there to actually bear out the assurances that were made."

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Cover Up: Nixon secretly gave permission to escalate bombing in North Vietnam

During the summer of 1972, official Washington was dragging Air Force Gen. John D. Lavelle's name and reputation through the mud. Multiple investigations by the Pentagon and Congress concluded that the four-star commander had ordered unauthorized bombing missions in North Vietnam and then tried to cover them up. He was demoted to major general and forced to retire, in disgrace.

Lavelle maintained his rectitude until his death, saying he was acting on orders. Nearly four decades later, it turns out he was right.

On Wednesday, after an exhaustive reexamination of Lavelle's actions, President Obama asked the Senate to restore his honor and his missing stars. The decision officially sets the record straight about who really lied during the controversial chapter in the Vietnam War, who told the truth and who was left holding the bag.

Historical records unearthed by two biographers who came across the material by happenstance show that Lavelle was indeed acting on orders to conduct the bombing missions and that the orders came from the commander in chief himself: President Richard M. Nixon.

Not only did Nixon give the secret orders, but transcripts of his recorded Oval Office conversations show that he stood by, albeit uncomfortably, as Lavelle suffered a scapegoat's fate.

"I just don't want him to be made a goat, goddamnit," Nixon told his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, on June 14, 1972, a few days after it was disclosed that Lavelle had been demoted for the allegedly unauthorized attacks.

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Pentagon increases pressure on WikiLeaks to return military files

The Pentagon has demanded that WikiLeaks immediately erase the huge cache of secret US military files about the Afghan war it has posted online and hand over another 15,000 classified records in its possession.

Condemning the whistleblowers' website for inciting the leaking of military secrets, the Department of Defence warned it would examine ways to compel WikiLeaks to "do the right thing" if it did not do so voluntarily.

"The only acceptable course is for WikiLeaks to take steps to immediately return all versions of all of those documents to the US government and permanently delete them from its website, computers and records," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said yesterday.

"If doing the right thing is not good enough for them then we will figure out what alternatives we have to compel them to do the right thing."

Although the defence department has no independent power to enforce its demands, its increasingly threatening language is seen as a bid to deter WikiLeaks from releasing the 15,000 Afghan war records it has not published as well as an encrypted file recently added to the site entitled "insurance".

WikiLeaks posted more than 76,900 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the Afghan war on its website last month, providing a devastating portrait of the failing war. They reveal how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, how Taliban attacks have soared and how Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.

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IMF document illustrates plan to raise global currency

It's no secret that many of the world's largest industrialized nations are somewhat eager to ease their reliance on the U.S. dollar. For months China and Russia have pushed ever subtly, for a new "global reserve currency," to give governments around the world enhanced economic stability in the event of greater fluctuations in the dollar's value.

But what wasn't known, until recently, is how far along the International Monetary Fund was in the planning of elevating its so-called "special drawing rights" from mere international agreement to an actual, legitimate global currency.

The report examines what it calls the "imperfections" of the global reserve banking structures, and how hoarding of reserves by sovereign nations can subject the system to risk and occasional shocks.

In 35 pages of extrapolation and footnotes, the IMF's Strategy, Policy and Review Department lays out the how and why of a global currency, which would move from an "inside money" as the SDR to an "outside money" that is traded by governments.

However, they conclude that "the ideas discussed are unlikely to materialize in the foreseeable future absent a dramatic shift in appetite for international cooperation."

The PDF document appeared to have been taken offline at time of this writing, but a cached version was still available. The document is from April, but was only recently noticed by Financial Times.

"[In] the eyes of the IMF at least, the best way to ensure the stability of the international monetary system (post crisis) is actually by launching a global currency," they note.

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Study: CIA doctors ‘gave green light to torture’

A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association reveals that physicians with the CIA's Office of Medical Services (OMS) played an even greater role in facilitating the torture of detainees than was previously recognized.

As described in the (subscription required) study, "In 2003, partially in response to a CIA Inspector General investigation that questioned the use of enhanced interrogation methods and criticized the agency’s failure to consult with OMS about the risks to detainees of waterboarding, OMS physicians assumed another role, providing opinions to the agency and lawyers whether the techniques used would be expected to cause severe pain or suffering and thus constitute torture."

This advisory function came in addition to the physicians' previous involvement in the torture of detainees through performing medical evaluations before and after interrogation, monitoring waterboarding sessions, and collecting information on the effectiveness and risks of various techniques.

The study, titled "Roles of CIA Physicians in Enhanced Interrogation and Torture of Detainees," was authored by Leonard S. Rubinstein, the president of Physicians for Human Rights, and Brig. Gen. (ret.) Stephen N. Xenakis, a former Army psychiatrist who is now with the Center for Public Health and Human Rights. It is based on a previously secret document from 2004, laying out OMS guidelines for detainee interrogation, which was released by the Obama administration.

In an article for Harper's, human rights lawyer Scott Horton notes that the JAMA study makes it apparent that the OMS physicians did not merely offer a medical opinion as to what constituted torture but "gave their bosses exactly what was expected of them: a green light to torture."

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Kabul: US-led raid killed 39 civilians

The Afghan government has released the findings of an investigation into a deadly rocket attack by US-led forces in Helmand province last month.

President Hamid Karzai's office said late on Wednesday the inquiry shows 39 civilians -- all women and children -- were killed in the attack.

"Subsequently, one rocket hit the house in which 39 women and children were killed and four wounded," the presidential office said in a statement.

The bombardment took place in the city of Sangin in the southern province of Helmand on July 23, 2010.

Civilians crammed into a house to flee the exchange of fire between NATO troops and alleged militants when they were attacked.

The death toll is fewer than first reported but is still dozens more than foreign forces admit.

Lt. Raymond Jeffery, a spokesman for NATO, has said he has no information about the result of any probe.

NATO previously said an initial assessment showed six people died in the incident. It added that most of those killed were militants.

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Polish court upholds Israeli Mossad 'spy' ruling

A Polish appeals court has upheld a lower court's decision to extradite to Germany an alleged Mossad agent linked with the assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai.

Based on the decision, the alleged agent, Uri Brodsky, must be handed over to Germany within 10 days, the Associated Press reported on Thursday.

"The appellate court has upheld the decision of the court of first instance ruling in favor of the extradition based on a European warrant," a judge at the Warsaw-based appellate court said.

In June, Poland detained Brodsky, who is an Israeli citizen, on suspicion of helping a Mossad terror agent obtain a German passport.

The passport was allegedly used in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel in January.

At least 11 people were allegedly involved in al-Mabhouh's assassination.

Police said evidence confirms the involvement of the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, in the operation.

The assassination team members carried forged passports from the UK, the Republic of Ireland, France, Australia, and Germany.

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Iran claims to have S-300 surface-to-air missiles

AP

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran has obtained four S-300 surface-to-air missiles despite Russia's refusal to deliver them to Tehran under a valid contract, a semiofficial Iranian news agency claimed Wednesday.

The Fars news agency, which has ties to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard, Iran's most powerful military force, said Iran received two missiles from Belarus and two others from another unspecified source. Fars didn't elaborate, and there was no immediate official confirmation of the report.

Russia signed a contract in 2007 to sell S-300 missiles to Iran, a move that would have substantially boosted the country's defense capacities. Israel fears that supplying S-300s to Iran would change the military balance in the Middle East.

The S-300 anti-aircraft missile defense system is capable of shooting down aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missile warheads at ranges of over 90 miles (144 kilometers) and at altitudes of about 90,000 feet (27,432 meters).

Russia said in June that the new tough U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran prevent Russia from delivering the missiles to Iran but Iran has insisted that Moscow is under an obligation to carry out the contract to provide the S-300 missiles to Tehran.

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Pakistan’s President Zardari Says U.S., Allies Losing Afghanistan War

By Gregory Viscusi

Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said the U.S. and its allies are losing the war in Afghanistan because they failed to win local support and think too short term, drawing a rebuke from the U.S.

“The international community, of which Pakistan is a part, is losing the war against the Taliban because we have lost the battle for hearts and minds,” Zardari said in an interview with the Paris-based afternoon daily newspaper Le Monde.

“Military reinforcements are only a small part of the response,” Zardari said. “To win the support of the Afghan population, you must bring economic development and prove you can not only change their lives, but improve them.”

Pakistan’s role in the Afghan war came under scrutiny last week with the publication by WikiLeaks.org of leaked U.S. documents that suggest some U.S. military officials think elements of Pakistan’s intelligence services are secretly supporting the Taliban, a claim that Zardari has denied.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said U.S. President Barack Obama doesn’t share Zardari’s assessment of the course of the war.

“I don’t think the president would agree with President Zardari’s conclusion that the war is lost,” Gibbs told reporters at yesterday’s regular White House briefing. “The actions and the efforts that the coalition, international forces and American forces have taken over the last several months have very much the hearts and minds of the Afghan people at the forefront.”

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ACLU, CCR seek to have Obama enjoined from killing Awlaki without due process

Salon

A major legal challenge to one of the Obama administration's most radical assertions of executive power began this morning in a federal courthouse in Washington, DC.  Early last month, the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights were retained by Nasser al-Awlaki, the father of Obama assassination target (and U.S. citizen) Anwar al-Awlaki, to seek a federal court order restraining the Obama administration from killing his son without due process of law.  But then, a significant and extraordinary problem arose:   regulations promulgated several years ago by the Treasury Department prohibit U.S. persons from engaging in any transactions with individuals labeled by the Government as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist," and those regulations specifically bar lawyers from providing legal services to such individuals without a special "license" from the Treasury Department specifically allowing such representation. 

On July 16 -- roughly two weeks after Awlaki's father retained the ACLU and CCR to file suit -- the Treasury Department slapped that label on Awlaki.  That action would have made it a criminal offense for those organizations to file suit on behalf of Awlaki or otherwise provide legal representation to him without express permission from the U.S. Government.  On July 23, the two groups submitted a request for such a license with the Treasury Department, and when doing so, conveyed the extreme time-urgency involved:  namely, that there is an ongoing governmental effort to kill Awlaki and any delay in granting this "license" could cause him to be killed without these claims being heard by a court.  Despite that, the Treasury Department failed even to respond to the request.

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Obama Drops 2009 Pledge to Withdraw Combat Troops from Iraq

WASHINGTON, Aug 3, 2010 (IPS) - Seventeen months after President Barack Obama pledged to withdraw all combat brigades from Iraq by Sep. 1, 2010, he quietly abandoned that pledge Monday, admitting implicitly that such combat brigades would remain until the end of 2011.

Obama declared in a speech to disabled U.S. veterans in Atlanta that "America's combat mission in Iraq" would end by the end of August, to be replaced by a mission of "supporting and training Iraqi security forces".

That statement was in line with the pledge he had made on Feb. 27, 2009, when he said, "Let me say this as plainly as I can: by Aug. 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end."

In the sentence preceding that pledge, however, he had said, "I have chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months." Obama said nothing in his speech Monday about withdrawing "combat brigades" or "combat troops" from Iraq until the end of 2011.

Even the concept of "ending the U.S. combat mission" may be highly misleading, much like the concept of "withdrawing U.S. combat brigades" was in 2009.

Under the administration's definition of the concept, combat operations will continue after August 2010, but will be defined as the secondary role of U.S. forces in Iraq. The primary role will be to "advise and assist" Iraqi forces.

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Germany Gave Names to Secret Taliban Hit List

Spiegel

The Afghanistan war logs obtained by WikiLeaks revealed the existence of Task Force 373, a secret US unit assigned with eliminating Taliban leaders. Now SPIEGEL has learned that the German government provided names to the hit list used by the unit. At least one of the men is now dead. By SPIEGEL staff.

Omid Nouripour, a member of the German parliament for the Green Party, was wearing the German national team's jersey in honor of the Germany versus Serbia match scheduled that afternoon at the World Cup in South Africa. It was 7:30 a.m. on June 18, and Nouripour and his nine colleagues were expecting the match to be the most exciting event of the day.

In Room 04/100 at the German Defense Ministry, a windowless, bugproof space nicknamed the "U-Boot" ("submarine"), representatives of the defense and foreign affairs committees of the German parliament, the Bundestag, soon discovered that the day would turn out to be much more eventful than they had anticipated.  

After a brief introduction by Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Volker Wieker, the inspector-general of the German armed forces, stood up to give his presentation. By the time Wieker had shown his first few slides, the delegates realized that they were attending a premiere. But this time they weren't being regaled with accounts of the supposed achievements of German reconstruction teams. Instead, they were being given a brief glimpse into the most secret facets of the war in Afghanistan: NATO's ominous list of enemies and "the operations of US special forces units" within the zone controlled by the German military, the Bundeswehr.

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Arizona Sheriff: ‘Our Own Government Has Become Our Enemy’

 Pinal County (Ariz.) Sheriff Paul Babeu is hopping mad at the federal government.

Babeu told CNSNews.com that rather than help law enforcement in Arizona stop the hundreds of thousands of people who come into the United States illegally, the federal government is targeting the state and its law enforcement personnel.

“What’s very troubling is the fact that at a time when we in law enforcement and our state need help from the federal government, instead of sending help they put up billboard-size signs warning our citizens to stay out of the desert in my county because of dangerous drug and human smuggling and weapons and bandits and all these other things and then, behind that, they drag us into court with the ACLU,” Babeu said.

The sheriff was referring to the law suits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Department of Justice challenging the state’s new immigration law.

“So who has partnered with the ACLU?” Babeu said in a telephone interview with CNSNews.com. “It’s the president and (Attorney General) Eric Holder himself. And that’s simply outrageous."

Last week, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton placed a temporary injunction on portions of the bill that allowed law enforcement personnel during the course of a criminal investigation who have probable cause to think an individual is in the country illegally to check immigration status. The state of Arizona filed an appeal on Thursday with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

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U.S. nears key step in European defense shield against Iranian missiles

The U.S. military is on the verge of activating a partial missile shield over southern Europe, part of an intensifying global effort to build defenses against Iranian missiles amid a deepening impasse over the country's nuclear ambitions.

Pentagon officials said they are nearing a deal to establish a key radar ground station, probably in Turkey or Bulgaria. Installation of the high-powered X-band radar would enable the first phase of the shield to become operational next year.

At the same time, the U.S. military is working with Israel and allies in the Persian Gulf to build and upgrade their missile defense capabilities. The United States installed a radar ground station in Israel in 2008 and is looking to place another in an Arab country in the gulf region. The radars would provide a critical early warning of any launches from Iran, improving the odds of shooting down a missile.

The missile defenses in Europe, Israel and the gulf are technically separate and in different stages of development. But they are all designed to plug into command-and-control systems operated by, or with, the U.S. military. The Israeli radar, for example, is operated by U.S. personnel and is already functional, feeding information to U.S. Navy ships operating in the Mediterranean.

Taken together, these initiatives constitute an attempt to contain Iran and negate its growing ability to aim missiles -- perhaps one day armed with a nuclear warhead -- at targets throughout the Middle East and Europe, including U.S. forces stationed there.

The concept of a missile shield began with former president Ronald Reagan, who first described his vision of a defense against a Soviet nuclear attack in his "Star Wars" speech in 1983.

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Blood on whose hands in Afghanistan?

Accusations from Obama administration officials and the media that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his sources have “blood on their hands” for revealing information on US military operations and informants in Afghanistan are contemptible slanders. Responsibility for blood spilled in Afghanistan lies with the US government, which launched the war.

Such accusations are all the more repugnant as the Obama administration is openly preparing an escalation of US military bloodletting in Afghanistan. Yesterday, a New York Times’ front-page article was headlined “Targeted Killing is New US Focus in Afghanistan.” It praised Task Force 373, the covert death squad revealed by the documents published by WikiLeaks, noting that “commando raids” killed “more than 130 significant insurgents” in the last five weeks.

Washington’s latest plans are for mass killings to terrorize the Afghan population into surrender. At last Tuesday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Senator Richard Lugar explained: “For the negotiating to be successful, we have to demonstrate strength. As bloody as this sounds, it’s critical that we kill a lot of Taliban.”

The fascistic mindset underlying such plans is no different than that of Hitler and his henchmen as they prepared wars and the repression of resistance forces in Europe.

In today’s degraded political environment, the media—which have systematically and deliberately concealed the crimes revealed by WikiLeaks—are lending themselves to the campaign against Assange. In a press conference last Thursday, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Assange and his sources “might have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family.”

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Iraq casualty dispute as US denies Baghdad figures

The US has disagreed with Iraqi assertions that July was the deadliest month there for more than two years.

According to the US military, 222 Iraqis died in July - fewer than half the 535 Baghdad says lost their lives.

The US released its own figures after Baghdad's information prompted concern that insurgents are exploiting a post-election power vacuum.

Insurgent attacks have increased amid failure to form a government since inconclusive elections in March.

Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions that won most seats are still bickering over who should be the next prime minister.

Both former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and incumbent Nouri Maliki insist that they are best placed to lead the war-torn country.

March's elections left Mr Allawi's Sunni-backed secular Iraqiyya alliance with 91 seats, just two ahead of Mr Maliki's mainly Shia coalition.

Both are well short of the 163 seats needed to form a government, meaning that some sort of wider coalition will be needed.

People are getting fed up with the stalemate, the BBC's Hugh Sykes reports from Baghdad.

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Army Offered To Pay Man To Infiltrate Wikileaks

Before the online site WikiLeaks published a trove of classified documents about the Afghanistan war, government investigators interviewed Boston-area acquaintances of a military analyst charged with providing other documents to the site in an effort to prevent additional leaks, according to one person interviewed in the probe.

The investigators from the Army and the State Department seemed to be "looking for classified documents that they thought to be in the Boston area," said the acquaintance, who would discuss the sensitive matter only on the condition of anonymity. "I got the impression they were still in the process of containing a leak."

The man, a computer expert who met Pfc. Bradley E. Manning in January, said he told the investigators in mid-June that he knew of no such documents.

The interview was among at least two investigators conducted in the Boston area after Manning was accused of giving WikiLeaks State Department cables and a video of a helicopter attack in which unarmed civilians were killed in Baghdad. Officials have said they are investigating whether Manning leaked the Afghanistan documents made public last week, a disclosure that prompted condemnation from the Obama administration.

The computer expert also said the Army offered him cash to, in his word, "infiltrate" WikiLeaks. "I turned them down," he said. "I don't want anything to do with this cloak-and-dagger stuff."

Army Criminal Investigation Division spokesman Chris Grey declined to comment on the claim. "We've got an ongoing investigation," he said. "We don't discuss our techniques and tactics."

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