Ian Blair admits he misled MPs over terror threat

SIR Ian Blair has admitted misleading MPs by overstating the gravity of the terror threat to Britain.

The gaffe-prone Metropolitan police commissioner said he had been forced to clarify his claims about the number of serious terrorist plots Britain had faced since 2005.

Blair gave evidence to MPs in support of 42-day detention, stating to a Commons committee that police had disrupted “something like 12” serious terrorist plots since the 2005 London bombings. However, Scotland Yard now accepts that the true number is six. The Met chief gave his testimony on April 22 to a committee scrutinising the government’s counter-terrorism bill. One of his deputies who accompanied him said 15 plots had been foiled since the London bombings, prompting banner headlines.

Blair’s admission that he — albeit unwittingly — exaggerated the extent of the terror threat places him in difficulty because he was giving evidence on the government’s proposals to detain terror suspects for 42 days without charge. Ministers have used his backing for the plan to strengthen their case.

He told the MPs that “the growth in the number of plots” was one of the main reasons why “sooner or later we are going to need 42 days”.

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Condi Stomps the Mullahs

By Philip Giraldi / Former CIA Officer

The war drums are again beating. It's beginning to look like the neocons have cranked up their useful idiots in the Bush administration for a fall offensive, target Iran. And maybe also Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians.

The bad guys' list, which is remarkably similar to a roll call of Israel's enemies, seems to have expanded both vertically and horizontally at a time when the U.S. military is using paper clips and chewing gum to hold together its efforts in Iraq. The critique of Iran has sharpened and intensified and new friends of Iran have been discovered in Afghanistan and Gaza.

Even Venezuela is accused of being a tad too close to the mullahs, criticized by the State Department for having "deepened relations" with Iran and establishing a weekly flight connecting Caracas with Tehran via Iran Airlines. Lest there be any misunderstanding, doing business or even talking nice with Iran will not be tolerated.

It is not clear where the resources for a new war will come from, particularly if Tehran is audacious enough to resist, but some in the White House and Pentagon seem convinced that unleashing death by means of bombers and cruise missiles is enough to bring the hated mullahs to their knees. It is surely no coincidence that Iran was featured in the annual State Department report on terrorism that came out on Wednesday, which says,

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3 Iraqis Testify About Haditha Killings

Three Iraqis are at Camp Pendleton this week to testify about the killing of 24 people in Haditha, Iraq, by Marines in 2005, a lawyer said yesterday.

Two doctors and a nurse from Haditha are giving depositions, said attorney Brian Rooney. He represents Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, who is accused of not properly investigating the killings.

Prosecutors said members of a Camp Pendleton-based platoon went after the Iraqis, including at least 15 civilians, as revenge for a roadside bomb that killed a Marine and injured two others. The events occurred Nov. 19, 2005.

Defense attorneys have said the Marines couldn't avoid killing civilians during bona fide combat with insurgents.

Rooney said the two doctors are expected to testify about a Haditha town council meeting, during which Iraqis demanded that Chessani investigate the 24 deaths.

There are three defendants in the Haditha case, including Chessani. First Lt. Andrew A. Grayson also is charged with not fully looking into the killings. The most serious accusations are being made against Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, who led the platoon that day. Wuterich faces such charges as voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, obstruction of justice and dereliction of duty.

Blackwater Inquiry Sought

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders wants to know whether Blackwater Worldwide misrepresented itself when it sought city permits to set up an indoor military training facility in Otay Mesa.

Blackwater has leased an industrial building near Brown Field where it will operate a shooting range, a simulated Navy ship and classrooms.

Yesterday, Sanders sent a memo to the city's chief operating officer, Jay Goldstone, asking for an investigation into the company's permits with a report by May 23.

“Questions have been raised as to the appropriateness of this location for the uses planned by Blackwater and the means used by the company to acquire the necessary permits from the City,” the memo said.

“Specifically, allegations have been made that the company potentially used misleading names . . . to inappropriately disguise the true identity of the occupant.”

In March, San Diego's Development Services Department granted the permits for interior improvements at the Otay Mesa facility without public hearings. The site was zoned for a vocational school, and city staff members decided that Blackwater's training of Navy personnel qualified.

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Committee Chairman Accuses VA of Cover Up

House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Bob Filner accused the Department of Veterans Affairs Tuesday of criminal negligence in the handling of data about the number of veterans who have committed suicide.

E-mails among VA officials were recently disclosed during a trial in San Francisco that suggested some might have been attempting to hide the number of attempted suicides by those under the agency's care. The judge has not yet ruled in the lawsuit filed by two veterans groups.

At the opening of a hearing by his panel on the issue, Filner said that officials involved with the e-mails should be fired by Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake.

In prepared testimony, Peake said that data about the number of veterans attempting suicide was not released because of concerns about its accuracy. Peake will testify later this morning.

Iraqi Sues U.S. Contractors Over Alleged Abu Ghraib Torture

An Iraqi man filed a lawsuit against two U.S. military contractors on Monday, claiming he was repeatedly tortured while being held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison for more than 10 months.

Emad al-Janabi claims in his lawsuit filed in Los Angeles federal court that he was abused beginning in September 2003 by employees of CACI International Inc., and San Diego-based L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., which was formerly Titan Corp. Also named as a defendant is CACI interrogator Steven Stefanowicz, known as “Big Steve.” The suit claims he directed some of the torture tactics.

Al-Janabi said he was punched and slammed into walls, hung from a bed frame and kept naked and handcuffed in his cell. In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, al-Janabi said he hoped the lawsuit would shed further light on what happened to him and other detainees.

“God willing, the righteousness will emerge and God willing, the criminal will receive his punishment,” al-Janabi said in the interview conducted in Istanbul, Turkey.

Phone messages left for Virginia-based CACI and New York-based L-3 Communications were not immediately returned Monday. Stefanowicz could not immediately be reached for comment at a Los Angeles address.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages.

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How to Beat the Matrix

The main problem isn't that we are up against superior forces. In actuality, the American people outnumber the anti-American imperialists by millions to one.

The main problem is that most people are asleep, and don't even realize that our flag-waving leaders are hell-bent on taking away our freedoms, our options and our money.

The main problem is that most people are still in the matrix, dreaming that the powers-that-be are on their side.

Once Neo woke up to the reality of the matrix, he had a fighting chance of doing something about it. (If you haven't seen the movie The Matrix, let me put it in a more day-to-day context: If you're camping, and a tick is burrowing into your finger, and you're dreaming that a puppy is licking your finger, the problem isn't that the tick is an overwhelming opponent. The problem is that you're dreaming, so you can't do anything to shake off the bugger.)

Some Powerful People Have Challenged the Matrix - And Failed

In 2000, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg did something unprecedented. In her dissenting opinion in the Bush v. Gore case (which threw the election to Bush), Ginsburg ended her opinion with the words "I dissent".

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Outsourcing Intelligence in Iraq: A CorpWatch Report on L-3/Titan

When U.S. troops or embassy officials want to track and investigate Iraqis — such as interrogating prisoners accused of terrorism, doing background checks on potential employees, or even to chat with ordinary citizens on the street — the principal intermediary is a relatively obscure company named L-3, that is just over a decade old. Although it is not as well known as companies like Halliburton , it is now the ninth-largest military contractor in the United States. Based in Manhattan, it is headquartered on the upper floors of a skyscraper on Third Avenue, a few blocks from the United Nations. The bulk of this work is done by a recently acquired L-3 subsidiary: Titan Corporation of San Diego.

The company’s principal role is to recruit, vet, hire, place and pay these personnel. The U.S. military oversees and directs the day-to-day work, but L-3 and Titan play a key role in staffing and maintaining what was once considered an inherently governmental function: the acquisition and analysis of human intelligence during war. All told, L-3 and Titan are now being paid approximately one billion dollars a year for this work, with a cumulative total approaching $3 billion since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.(1)

L-3/Titan is now probably the second largest employer in Iraq (after Kellogg, Brown & Root, a former Halliburton subsidiary) with almost 7,000 translators and more than 300 intelligence specialists.(2) Unfortunately, a number of the personnel hired by L-3 and Titan have been barely competent and several have been indicted for criminal acts.

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The Pentagon vs. America

By Scott Ritter

I recently heard from an anti-war student I met while I was speaking at a college in northern Vermont. The e-mail included the following query:

“I told you about how I wanted to build a career around social activism and making a difference. You told me that one of the most important things was to make myself reputable and give people a reason to listen to you. I think this is some of the best advice I’ve received. My issue however is that you mentioned joining the military as a way to do this and mentioned how that is how you fell into it. … We talked extensively about all of our criticisms of the military currently and our foreign policy. … What I don’t understand is, how can you [advise] someone who wants to make a difference with the flawed system, to join that flawed system?”

The question is a valid one. Throughout my travels in the United States, where I interact with people from progressive anti-war groups, I am often confronted with the seeming contradiction of my position. I rail against the war in Iraq (and the potential of war with Iran) and yet embrace, at times enthusiastically, the notion of military service. It gets even more difficult to absorb, at least on the surface, when I simultaneously advocate counter-recruitment as well as support for those who seek to join the armed services.

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The awfully nice guys allowing U.S. torture at Guantanamo Bay

The interrogation room in Guantanamo Bay, Christmas Eve 2002. Detainee 063 – an Al-Qaeda suspect called Mohamed al-Kahtani, who may or may not be that sought-after 20th 9/11 hijacker – is crying in his chair. It is his 33rd day of continuous interrogation – a month with almost no sleep – and the interrogators have started up with the white noise again and are pouring water over his head.

Maybe the snarling dogs will come back too, or he’ll once more be humiliated by some woman pressing up against him while he’s told to stand or crouch naked for hours on end. He’ll be yelled at, shaved by force and made to act like a dog and will have instructions bellowed at him from a distance of 2in. He’ll be so terrified and exhausted that he’ll wet himself.

Happy Christmas, Mohamed. Good Christian men, rejoice.

Mohamed, who really is a bad ’un, believe me, does not know this yet but there’s only a fortnight more of this misery – torture, some would call it – to endure. Afterwards there’ll be a scandal about the way he and one or two others were being treated and the US government will say: okay, we’ll call off the dogs – it was just our people on the ground overreaching themselves, being a bit too zealous. We’re a democratic government; we don’t do stuff like that – despite the sort of provocation we have to endure. If only we had known, and so on.

The thing is – they knew.

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U.S. to Send 7,000 Extra Troops to Afghanistan

The US is drawing up plans to send 7,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan to combat a resurgent Taleban and al-Qaeda, at a time when Nato countries appear unwilling to contribute further forces.

The increase is being considered by the Pentagon after President Bush returned from a Nato summit in Romania last month disappointed by few pledges of extra troops by his European allies.

The plans, which have yet to be formalised or sent to the White House, would increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan to about 40,000, the largest American presence since the war began more than six years ago.

Last week Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, said that America may consider taking over Nato’s command in southern Afghanistan, where British, Canadian and Dutch forces are concentrated.

Nato members have been reluctant to send more combat troops to the region, which is the centre of intensifying violence. Mr Gates said that the US was prepared to send extra forces in 2009, but did not specify how many.

The likely increase is being driven by several factors.

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United States Plans to Strike Iranian Insurgency Camp!

The US military is drawing up plans for a “surgical strike” against an insurgent training camp inside Iran if Republican Guards continue with attempts to destabilise Iraq, western intelligence sources said last week. One source said the Americans were growing increasingly angry at the involvement of the Guards’ special-operations Quds force inside Iraq, training Shi’ite militias and smuggling weapons into the country.

Despite a belligerent stance by Vice-President Dick Cheney, the administration has put plans for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on the back burner since Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as defence secretary in 2006, the sources said.

However, US commanders are increasingly concerned by Iranian interference in Iraq and are determined that recent successes by joint Iraqi and US forces in the southern port city of Basra should not be reversed by the Quds Force.

“If the situation in Basra goes back to what it was like before, America is likely to blame Iran and carry out a surgical strike on a militant training camp across the border in Khuzestan,” said one source, referring to a frontier province.

They acknowledged Iran was unlikely to cease involvement in Iraq and that, however limited a US attack might be, the fighting could escalate.

Although American defence chiefs are firmly opposed to any attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, they believe a raid on one of the camps training Shi’ite militiamen would deliver a powerful message to Tehran.

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9/11 Conspiracy Connection To DC Madam Murder!

NSA analyst and Navy intelligence officer Wayne Madsen tells the The Alex Jones Show that one of the key motives behind the DC Madam's murder may have been the information her call girls picked up from Washington's top brass concerning foreknowledge and government complicity in the 9/11 attacks.

Madsen also connected another suspicious death - that of former CIA agent Roland Carnaby who was gunned down by Houston police last week - to another individual who was involved in both the 9/11 cover-up and the D.C. Madam scandal, disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Noting that Palfrey and her defense team had tried to invoke the Classified Information Procedures Act in the U.S. District Court in Washington, which is only used when classified information or the names of people who are intelligence officers needs to be discussed, Madsen said Palfrey, "Had information which could have a bearing on the 9/11 attacks that some of her employees may have picked up information beforehand that would have been very useful to the 9/11 investigation."

Host Alex Jones recalled that during interviews Palfrey had told him that her escort service was in fact being used as an intelligence operation to gather intelligence on individuals who used the service, particularly those connected to the military.

Madsen, who spoke personally to Palfrey on numerous occasions, recalls one conversation at dinner about a month a go with Palfrey and her asset forfeiture lawyer where Palfrey told him, 'I have information that would have been of great interest to the 9/11 Commission - there's information that they have (her call girls) that would have been very important for the 9/11 Commission to know having to do with intelligence they picked up about 9/11 before it happened'.

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Cash-Strapped States to Release Felons Early

By Keith B. Richburg and Ashley Surdin / Washington Post

Reversing decades of tough-on-crime policies, including mandatory minimum prison sentences for some drug offenders, many cash-strapped states are embracing a view once dismissed as dangerously naive: It costs far less to let some felons go free than to keep them locked up.

It is a theory that has long been pushed by criminal justice advocates and liberal politicians -- that some felons, particularly those convicted of minor drug offenses, would be better served by treatment, parole or early release for good behavior. But the states' conversion to that view has less to do with a change of heart on crime than with stark fiscal realities. At a time of shrinking resources, prisons are eating up an increasing share of many state budgets.

"It's the fiscal stuff that's driving it," said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group that advocates for more lenient sentencing. "Do you want to build prisons or do you want to build colleges? If you're a governor, it's kind of come to that choice right now."

Mauer and other observers point to a number of recent actions, some from states facing huge budget shortfalls, some not, but still worried about exploding costs.

To ease the overcrowding and save California about $1.1 billion over two years, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has proposed freeing about 22,000 prisoners convicted of nonviolent, nonsexual offenses 20 months earlier than their scheduled release dates. He also wants to place them on unsupervised parole, saving the state the cost of having all parolees assigned to an agent.

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For Immigrants Who Died in U.S. Custody, Few Details Provided

By NINA BERNSTEIN / NY Times

Word spread quickly inside the windowless walls of the Elizabeth Detention Center, an immigration jail in New Jersey: A detainee had fallen, injured his head and become incoherent. Guards had put him in solitary confinement, and late that night, an ambulance had taken him away more dead than alive.

But outside, for five days, no official notified the family of the detainee, Boubacar Bah, a 52-year-old tailor from Guinea who had overstayed a tourist visa. When frantic relatives located him at University Hospital in Newark on Feb. 5, 2007, he was in a coma after emergency surgery for a skull fracture and multiple brain hemorrhages. He died there four months later without ever waking up, leaving family members on two continents trying to find out why.

Mr. Bah’s name is one of 66 on a government list of deaths that occurred in immigration custody from January 2004 to November 2007, when nearly a million people passed through.

The list, compiled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after Congress demanded the information, and obtained by The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act, is the fullest accounting to date of deaths in immigration detention, a patchwork of federal centers, county jails and privately run prisons that has become the nation’s fastest-growing form of incarceration.

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U.S. Government Intensifies Mortgage Investigation

U.S. government agencies are intensifying a criminal investigation of the mortgage industry and focusing on whether some lenders turned a blind eye to inflated income figures provided by borrowers.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the criminal division of the Internal Revenue Service have formed a task force to examine mortgages that were made with little or no proof of the earnings or assets of borrowers, a government official who had been briefed on the matter said Sunday.

The group also includes federal prosecutors in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Dallas and Atlanta, said the official, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

The task force, which was established in January, stepped up its investigation in recent weeks as the financial industry disclosed billions of dollars in additional write-downs from bad mortgage investments. The latest inquiry is broader and deeper than a separate FBI investigation of mortgage lenders that is also under way.

While the new task force is focusing on the role of mortgage lenders and brokers in low- or no-documentation loans, it is also examining how the loans were bundled into securities.

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Somalia: U.S. Assassination Adds To Humanitarian Disaster

On May 1st, the US assassinated Aden Hashi Eyrow, one of senior leaders of Somalia’s Islamist movement, in an air strike that killed at least 10 other people. Somalia has a United Nations-backed transitional government that had little local legitimacy and controlled only one town at the time of the Ethiopian invasion. The transitional government has lost almost all support by Somalis following its continued support for the Ethiopian occupation, even after several well documented atrocities.

Amnesty International has accused Ethiopian soldiers of killing 21 people, including an imam and several Islamic scholars, at a Mogadishu mosque and said seven of the victims had their throats slit. According to eye-witnesses, the eleven killed inside the mosque were unarmed civilians taking no active part in hostilities. Amnesty International has documented a pattern of these ‘throat-slitting’ executions, which often occur in security sweeps after attacks on Ethiopian forces in Somalia. Amnesty International also expressed concern that approximately 41 children, estimated to range from 9 to 18 years of age, were taken by the Ethiopian military from the Al Hidya mosque where they were attending religious classes.

Asha Haji Ilmi, head of Save Somali Women and Children, a Mogadishu-based NGO, reports that the situation had never been this bad in 17 years of civil war, and that the transitional government is making the humanitarian situation worse by waging an economic war in Mogadishu. “The destruction and looting of Bakara market and the printing of fake currency has led to hyperinflation,” seriously affecting the population’s ability to cope, she said.

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Geraldo At Large On DC Madam With Alex Jones!

Fox News' Geraldo has Alex Jones on to examine the evidence that shows that DC Madam Deborah Jean Palfrey was murdered-- despite the official claim that she committed suicide.

Jones points out the numerous statements Palfrey made in refutation of suicide, as well as the criminology that women rarely hang themselves, generally preferring pills.

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Stop-Loss Likely to Last into Fall 2009

Last year’s surge of five combat brigades into Iraq helped drive a 43-percent increase in soldiers being barred from leaving the service under stop-loss orders, and Army leaders predict the policy will remain in place at least through next year. However, they expressed optimism that the numbers will ebb as surge forces redeploy.

More than 12,230 soldiers are under stop-loss orders, compared to 8,540 in May 2007, during the surge. But the 30,000 combat troops that were part of the surge are in the process of coming home, and the Army is returning to 12-month deployments Aug. 1. Because soldiers are placed under stop-loss as members of deploying units, reducing the numbers sent to war reduces the numbers involuntarily held.

“As the [war zone] demand comes down, we should be able to get us weaned off stop-loss,” said Lt. Gen. James Thurman, the Army G-3.

Under stop-loss policies, active-duty soldiers within 90 days of retirement or obligated service are barred from leaving the Army if they are in units alerted for deployment. Reservists and National Guard members are barred from leaving if their units have been alerted for mobilization.

Thurman said he hoped the Army could end stop-loss by fall 2009. In March 2005, 15,758 soldiers fell under stop-loss orders, the most for any month between November 2004 and March 2008, according to Army data. The numbers stayed between 10,000 and 13,000 for about two years after that and fell to an all-time low of 8,540 in May 2007. But the trend reversed the next month as the last of the five surge brigades flowed into Iraq and soldiers settled into 15-month tours.

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Blackwater shooting highlights a U.S., Iraq culture clash

He refused to take the Americans' blood money.

Mohammed Hafidh Abdul-Razzaq had been summoned by U.S. Embassy officials who wanted to make amends for the killing of his 10-year-old son. The boy died during a shooting involving employees of Blackwater Worldwide, the U.S. security firm.

Deputy Chief of Mission Patricia A. Butenis told him that she was sorry for what had happened, Abdul-Razzaq recalled. She gave him a sealed envelope. It had his name written on it. Abdul-Razzaq pushed it away.

"I told her I refuse to receive any amount," the auto parts dealer said. "My father is a tribal sheik, and we're not used to taking any amount unless the concerned will come and confess and apologize. Then we will talk about compensation."

In September, Blackwater contractors protecting an embassy mission killed 17 Iraqis, including Abdul-Razzaq's boy, and injured at least two dozen in a widely publicized incident in west Baghdad's Nisoor Square. Blackwater officials have said their workers feared they were under attack; Iraqi officials and witnesses called it a massacre.

U.S. officials say the investigation of the shooting continues, though they have been tight-lipped about details. An FBI report is due this year. In April, the State Department renewed Blackwater's contract for another year, a move that enraged many Iraqis affected by the killings.

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