Leading international think tank for military affairs says the threat from al-Qaeda and the Taliban has been over exaggerated. CIA chief Leon Panetta admitted recently that there were no more than 50 members of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Obama has authorized 120,000 American soldiers to fight them.
THE London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), is the world’s leading think tank for military affairs. It represents the top echelon of defence experts, retired officers and senior military men, spanning the globe from the United States and Britain to China, Russia and India.I’ve been an IISS member for over 20 years. IISS’s reports are always authoritative but usually cautious and diplomatic, sometimes dull. However, two weeks ago the IISS issued an explosive report on Afghanistan that is shaking Washington and its Nato allies.
The report, presided over by the former deputy director of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency, MI-6, says the threat from al-Qaeda and Taliban has been “exaggerated” by the western powers. The US-led mission in Afghanistan has “ballooned” out of all proportion from its original aim of disrupting and defeating al-Qaeda. The US-led war in Afghanistan, says IISS, using uncharacteristically blunt language, is “a long-drawn-out disaster”.
Just recently, CIA chief Leon Panetta admitted there were no more than 50 members of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Yet US President Barack Obama has tripled the number of US soldiers there to 120,000 to fight Al Qaeda.
The IISS report goes on to acknowledge the presence of western troops in Afghanistan is actually fuelling national resistance. I saw the same phenomena during the 1980’s Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Interestingly, the portion of the report overseen by the former MI-6 Secret Intelligence Service deputy chief, Nigel Inskster, finds little Al Qaeda threat elsewhere, notably in Somalia and Yemen. Yet Washington is beefing up its attacks on both turbulent nations.
Abandoning its usual discretion, IISS said it was issuing these warnings because the deepening war in Afghanistan was threatening the west’s security interests by distracting its leaders from the world financial crisis and Iran, and burning through scarce funds needed elsewhere.
The IISS’s findings are a direct challenge to Obama, Britain’s new prime minister, David Cameron, and other US allies with troops in Afghanistan. This report undermines their rational used to sustain the increasingly unpopular conflict. It will certainly convince sceptics that the real reason for occupation of Afghanistan has to do with oil, excluding China from the region, and keeping watch on nuclear-armed Pakistan.
The report also goes on to propose an exit strategy from the Afghan War. Western occupation troops, IISS proposes, should be sharply reduced and confined to Kabul and northern Afghanistan, which is mostly ethnic Tajik and Uzbek.
Southern Afghanistan – Taliban country – should be vacated by Western forces and left alone. Taliban would be allowed to govern its own half of the nation until some sort of loose, decentralised federal system can be implemented. This was, in fact, pretty much the way Afghanistan operated before the 1979 Soviet invasion.
Meanwhile, the war in Afghanistan is turning against the increasingly wobbly western occupation forces. The US-installed Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, openly prepares for direct peace talks with Taliban and its allies – in spite of intense opposition from the US, Britain and Canada.
Pro-government Afghan forces are increasingly demoralised. Only the Tajik and Uzbek militias, and Afghan Communist Party, both supported by India, Russia and Iran, want to keep fighting the Pashtun Taliban.
Taliban leader Mullah Omar last week proclaimed the western occupiers were rapidly losing the war. He may well be correct. Nothing is going right for the US-backed Kabul regime or its western defenders. Even the much-ballyhooed US offensive at Marjah, designed to smash Taliban resistance, was an embarrassing fiasco. Civilian casualties from US bombing continue to mount.
Europeans are fed up with the Afghan war. Polls report 60% of Americans think the war not worth fighting.
The IISS bombshell comes on the heels of the most dramatic part of the British Chilcot Inquiry into the origins of the invasion of Iraq. Baroness Manningham-Buller the former head of Britain’s domestic security service, MI-5, testified that the Iraq War was generated by a farrago of lies and faked evidence from the Blair government. What we call “terrorism” is largely caused by the western invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, she testified.
The truth about Iraq and Afghanistan is finally emerging.
Afghanistan may again prove to be “the graveyard of empires”.
Eric S. Margolis is a contributing editor to the Toronto Sun chain of newspapers, writing mainly about the Middle East and South Asia. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
Two former CIA officials have admitted to creating a fake video in which intelligence officers dressed up as Osama Bin Laden and his cronies in an effort to defame the terrorist leader throughout the middle east.
The details are outlined in a Washington Post article by investigative reporter and former Army Intelligence case officer Jeff Stein.
Stein’s sources told him that during planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group considered creating a fake video of Saddam Hussein engaged in sexual acts with a teenage boy, then flooding Iraq with copies of the tape.
That idea, along with faking Iraqi news bulletins, never came to fruition according to the former CIA officials, because agreement on the projects could not be reached between the Iraq Group and CIA’s Office of Technical Services.
However, the two sources reveal that the agency did previously concoct at least one fake Bin Laden video:
The agency actually did make a video purporting to show Osama bin Laden and his cronies sitting around a campfire swigging bottles of liquor and savoring their conquests with boys, one of the former CIA officers recalled, chuckling at the memory. The actors were drawn from “some of us darker-skinned employees,” he said.
The former officials told Stein that the project was taken over by the military after it ground to a halt:
The reality, the former officials said, was that the agency really didn’t have enough money and expertise to carry out the projects.
“The military took them over,” said one. “They had assets in psy-war down at Ft. Bragg,” at the army’s special warfare center.
This latest revelation bolsters evidence that the intelligence agencies, and perhaps more significantly, the military have been engaged in creating fake Bin Laden videos in the past.
Those who have studied history know that nothing invigorates and empowers an authoritarian regime more than a spectacular act of violence, some sudden and senseless loss of life that allows the autocrat to stand on the smoking rubble and identify himself as the hero. It is at moments like this that the public—still in shock from the horror of the tragedy that has just unfolded before them—can be led into the most ruthless despotism: despotism that now bears the mantle of “security.”
Acts of terror and violence never benefit the average man or woman. They only ever benefit those in positions of power.
This is why Nero fiddled while Rome burned: it gave him a chance to throw the Christians to the lions and rebuild the capital of the Roman Empire in his own image.
This is why Hearst and the warmongers of the emerging American Empire were delighted by the destruction of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor: it gave them the excuse they needed in order to rouse the public into supporting the Spanish-American War.
This is why Israel attacked the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967 during the Six Day War, strafing and torpedoing it relentlessly for hours in a vain attempt to send it to the bottom: the Israelis believed that the loss of the Liberty could be blamed on Egypt and draw the Americans into war.
This is why there are hundreds of documented examples of governments staging attacks in order to blame them on their political enemies. In every civilization, in every culture, in every historical period, authoritarians have known that spectacular acts of violence help to further consolidate their own power and control. And sadly, throughout history there have been all too many willing to allow attacks to occur, to pretend that attacks have occurred or even to attack their own population in order to further their political agenda.
To think that such staged provocations and false flag attacks no longer occur would be as unrealistic as believing that human nature itself has changed, that powerful people no longer seek to increase their power, that influence is never used for deceit or manipulation, that lies are no longer told to satisfy greed or slake the thirst for control. It is to believe that our society is immuned from those things that we have seen in every other society in every other era. In short, it is a dangerous delusion.
The people are once again learning the power of this delusion. They are learning the extent to which they have been lied to. They are once again studying their history.
The Russians are learning how the FSB was caught planting bombs in Moscow in the 1990s during a terror scare that swept Putin into power and stirred the public into supporting the Second Chechen War. They are learning how their autocratic ex-President came to power campaigning on the graves of those his old FSB cronies had killed.
The Israelis are learning how Mossad has been caught time and again posing as the very Muslim terrorists they claim to be opposing. They are learning how Israel uses the specter of terror to further extend their (more…)
Jesse covers a wide range of topics in this hour long interview with Alex Jones.
Alex welcomes back to the show former Minnesota governor, retired professional wrestler and color commentator, Navy Seal veteran, actor, and the host of Tru TV’s popular series Conspiracy Theory, Jesse Ventura. Jesse’s latest book is American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies That the Government Tells Us. Ventura’s previous book is Don’t Start the Revolution Without Me!
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During the cold winter months, We Are Change takes 9/11 Truth to the hearts and minds of subway riders in New York City.
Video uploaded for nonprofit, educational purposes only under the “fair use” provision of U.S. Code, Title 17, section 107. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17…
ISLAMABAD – In order to achieve desired results as early as possible, Blackwater is said to have hired retired officials of Pakistan’s law-enforcement agencies at highest ever salary packages, TheNation has learnt reliably. To the surprise of many, the agency is said to have hired Pakistani officials at the rate of astonishing $60,000 per month salary package.
Most important thing is Blackwater has hired former CIA intelligence officer Steven Cash to operate as Commander In Charge of its operations in Peshawar. The Blackwater supervisory team in Peshawar includes James Bill William, Copper, Steven Cash, Roderick Christopher and Alisha Cambel.
According to the online edition of “ Pakistan Daily”, Blackwater has approached various journalists to implement the PSYOPs in newspapers and electronic media in Pakistan while offering them lucrative salary packages. They are pushing journalists to publish news stories of Taliban, as the Psychological Operations group of US Army has planned.
According to an article posted at website of “Pakistan Daily”, Blackwater is paying the recruited local journalists as high as $1000 per published news story in their relevant newspapers and online editions.
Meetings are being held in various houses rented in University Town, Peshawar and residents have reported jeeps with tinted glasses during late hours.
Steven Cash is a former senior US government official and served as an Intelligence Officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, first as an Assistant General Counsel, and then with the Directorate of Operations. He also served as Chief Counsel to Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, and as Minority Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security. From 2001 to 2003 he was a Professional Staff Member and Counsel for the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. It is pertinent to note that Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik has denied presence of Blackwater in Pakistan.
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