Posts tagged CIA

Torture, A Brutal Tool Of Their Trade. 1:26 am / 01 May 2013 by ann arky, at annarky's blog.




        We know every state does it, some more subtle, some more brutal, but they all have their methods. I'm talking about torture, it is a tool of the state and it will do everything in its power to hold onto it in one form or another. The more we expose it the more difficult it becomes for them, they have to work harder at justifying it, or concealing it, or devising new methods. Torture will continue until we rid ourselves of that shackle on our freedom, the state. That doesn't mean we should ignore torture until that day arrives, we have to expose it and campaign against it, when ever we get any information regarding torture. Never forget, it is a human being that is being tortured, no matter the name the state puts on that being, it may be an autocratic institution that sanctions the act, but it is also human beings that implement those actions.
This interesting article from Human Rights First:

       The argument about whether torture works is still raging. Four years after President Obama ended the torture program, torture proponents continue to claim that torture saved American lives and was necessary to find criminals like Osama bin Laden. Just last week, Condoleezza Rice said that because of torture, “we have not had a successful attack on our territory.”
       I served the CIA for 23 years, and I was directly involved in the “enhanced interrogation” program. I know from experience that torture not only undermined our values and Constitution, it made us less safe.
        The Senate Intelligence Committee has produced the most comprehensive report on the post-9/11 CIA torture program, based on a review of more than 6 million pages of official records. Those who have read the report say that it shows the CIA torture program was much more widespread and cruel than we thought, and much less effective at gathering actionable intelligence than torture proponents claim.
      However, the Obama Administration is sitting on this report and has delayed its release. On Friday, Vice President Biden supported the report's release. Ask President Obama to work with Congress to declassify the torture report.
      Senator Dianne Feinstein, Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and national security experts (me included) have said publicly that torture did not lead to bin Laden or save American lives. But until this report is released, torture proponents will continue to argue that we should return to torture.
     Let’s be clear: torture is un-American, illegal, and immoral. Let’s end this debate once and for all. Urge President Obama to work with Congress to declassify the torture report.
Sincerely,
Glenn Carle
Former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Transnational Threats, National Intelligence Council
Author, The Interrogator

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Categories: Anarchism
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Priorities (cont’d) 6:27 am / 17 May 2012 by Rad Geek, at Rad Geek People's Daily

From CBS News, CIA sacrifices valuable intelligence source to foil underwear bomb plot

U.S. intelligence officials faced a difficult decision. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was looking for a suicide bomber. The target: an American jetliner. The only way for intelligence officials to ensure they controlled the plot was to have their own agent volunteer to be the bomber and then hand the bomb to the CIA. The tradeoff: They would lose a source penetrated deep inside the organization — but they would save lives.

— John Miller, CIA sacrifices valuable intelligence source to foil underwear bomb plot, in CBS News (9 May 2012)

The choice presented here is a choice between giving up some government spying, on the one hand, or standing by and knowingly leaving hundreds of people to be murdered, all for the sake of your military-political priorities. I suppose I should be glad they didn’t choose the latter. But I must point out that this is a tradeoff only if you think you have a right to trade in human lives. And it is a difficult decision only if you don’t value those lives very highly.

Also:

Categories: Politics, Smash the State
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A HIGH SCORE AT THE OFFICE TODAY?? 7:32 am / 13 March 2012 by ann arky, at annarky's blog.


     The march of the robotic war continues at a rapid pace, mostly unobserved in the West but we are the harbingers of the peopleless army. Most people tend to see CCTV cameras as a benign watch on criminals, but they are all part and parcel of the surveillance and control by a central authority and that authority spreads across the globe. the latest stage is the surveillance drones and their big brother, the killer drones.
      America has used drones to strike at and kill citizens in other countries, and since Obama came to power the use of drones as robotic assassins has grown enormously.  In Pakistan,Yemen, Somalia, the Obama administration is using drones to invade other nations sovereign territory and killpeople by remote control in those countries, while no state of war exist with the U.S.. Some of those killed have been American citizens. No charges,no jury, no judge. Just a CIA hit list.
            Once one state finds an efficient killing method others soon follow, now50 countries have drones. Of course drones are not just being used to invade others soveriegn territory but are used as means of surveillance in their own home land. They have been used in the UK for this purpose and in the US, no doubt other countries are fllowing suit. The implications are horrendous, as country after country builds up its peopleless army of spies and assassins. Soon war will become a 9 to 5 office job, you'll have kids sitting in front of what looks like a game consul in some government office, getting excited as they see there hits score go higher and higher. No doubt there will be bonuses for the highest scorers. They will probably boast to their friends and family about their high score, oblivious that each score is the death of a family or a village, or even worse as the drones get larger and carry a heavier payload of destruction and death.
       I wrote on this some time back and make no apologies for doing so again, it is a horror world we should not allow ourselves to sleepwalk into, it is a world that only suits the corporate state.

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Categories: Anarchism
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EX-CIA AGENT ON THE MIDDLE EAST. 1:53 pm / 16 November 2011 by ann arky, at annarky's blog.


       An interesting interview with an ex-CIA agent. He seems to talk with a load of common sense and in a way that so many of the ordinary people with a little political savvy talk. Of course I don't think that he will get much cover in our mainstream press.





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SHINING EXAMPLE OF WESTERN HYPOCRISY. 1:43 pm / 08 May 2011 by ann arky, at annarky's blog.


        So Osama Bin Laden is dead, after 10 years of war, several trillion dollars and the destruction of a country, and already they are talking about “Bin Laden” model 2. I suppose it is a matter of the king is dead, long live the king. The headlines in The Sunday Times, May 8, US launches drone airstrike on 'new Bin Laden' in Yemen. So how many will there be, at 10 years a time this could be the 100 years war and at the same time bankrupt the world. How far down the chain of command will they go, perhaps some guy in some quiet corner of the world looking at an Islamic move could be targeted and then maybe his pal down the road, just in case.
       Ten years and several trillion dollars to get rid of some guy the CIA trained, armed and funded to go out and fight the Russians. It seems like a very bad deal. Their little exercise in Afghanistan has left the country a far more dangerous place than ever it has been, plus they killed thousands of Afghan civilians in the process. This is how you bring democracy to the world, Western style.

      The manner in which he was executed is being applauded by all and sundry in the West, yet when the the Israeli's assassinated Hamas co-founder, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi in Gaza our former British foreign secretary, Jack Straw stated, “The British government has made it repeatedly clear that so-called 'targeted assassinations' of this kind are unlawful, unjustified and unproductive.” Come on Jack, let's hear it for Osama Bin Laden, and what's your view on the attempted assassination of Colonel Gaddafi?
      Think of a world where any country can send a band of armed killers into any other country and execute anybody they feel has harmed their country. This is the ideology of the Western power mongers, the so called leaders of the “free world”, but woe betide anyone outside their little club how tries it in their country. When you're the big bully you don't need to bother with the rules, hypocrisy, the main ingredient in Western democracy.
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Categories: Anarchism
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Change You Can Believe In (Vol. III, No. 4, April 2011) 11:15 pm / 30 April 2011 by Rad Geek, at Rad Geek People's Daily

The latest instalment in our ongoing monthly feature. You may be surprised to find that this month I am going to pass over the new fucking war that the Peace President has been kinetically pursuing against yet another Muslim country. Too obvious. Instead, we have…. Executive power In which Obama decides he’s in favor of [...]

Continue reading at Rad Geek People's Daily …

Categories: Politics, Smash the State
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Monday Lazy Linking 3:00 pm / 21 February 2011 by Rad Geek, at Rad Geek's Lazy Linking

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Afghan Villagers Claim Self-Defense in NATO’s Deadly Night Raid (Video) 6:31 am / 28 September 2010 by Little Alex, at Little Alex in Wonderland

Locals of the Laghman Province claim civilians were killed in a NATO raid, contrary to NATO claims, and that they are not “insurgents”, but people defending their home against NATO’s ‘broken promises’ to not raid their village (2:00):

The Kabul government has sent a “delegation” to Afghanistan’s eastern Laghman Province to investigate villagers’ claims that civilians were killed in a Saturday night raid by NATO, a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Tuesday, Reuters reported (via The New York Times).

At least 30 were killed in the “assault” and NATO claims that all were “insurgents”—a clever word to use because it only means that those who died were fighting back against the NATO raid. Even finding that non-combatants may have been killed would not tell the whole story.

NATO cannot prove that people with connections to the Haqqani or Quetta Shura Networks were killed and until they can, it’s most reasonable to assume, like most reports, that all casualties were civilians. And, as the report continues, the clever language-crafting still can’t prevent the rise of civilian casualties—as the U.S.-led coalition narrowly classifies “civilians”:

Civilian casualties caused by foreign forces hunting militants have long been a major source of tension between Karzai and the Western nations whose troops help support his government in the face of a growing insurgency.

A mid-year United Nations report painted a dark picture of security in Afghanistan in the first half of 2010, with violent civilian deaths jumping 31 percent, although the total number caused by aerial attacks fell 64 percent.

These are war crimes, along with the C.I.A. “drastically” increasing the frequency of drone strikes in Pakistan over the last month. Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt reported yesterday at The New York Times:

The 20 C.I.A. drone attacks in September represent the most intense bombardment by the spy agency since January, when the C.I.A. carried out 11 strikes after a suicide bomber killed seven agency operatives at a remote base in eastern Afghanistan.

According to one Pakistani intelligence official, the recent drone attacks have not killed any senior Taliban or Qaeda leaders. Many senior operatives have already fled North Waziristan, he said, to escape the C.I.A. drone campaign.

Over all the spy agency has carried out 74 drone attacks this year, according to the Web site The Long War Journal, which tracks the strikes. A vast majority of the attacks—which usually involve several drones firing multiple missiles or bombs—have taken place in North Waziristan.

The Obama administration has enthusiastically embraced the C.I.A.’s drone program, an ambitious and historically unusual war campaign by American spies. According to The Long War Journal, the spy agency in 2009 and 2010 has launched nearly four times as many attacks as it did during the final year of the Bush administration.

These include the deadly strikes over the weekend.


Filed under: Af-Pak War Tagged: Afghanistan, airstrikes, CIA, civilian casualties, COIN, CT, drone, extrajudicial assassination, FATA, Hamid Karzai, Haqqani Network, Laghman Province, NATO, night raids, North Waziristan, NWFP, Pakistan, Quetta Shura, War on Terror
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How Do You Become a ‘Suspected Militant’? 11:00 am / 27 September 2010 by Sayyid, at Little Alex in Wonderland

Die in a drone strike.

Being classified in the press as a “suspected militant” admittedly has nothing to do with actually being a militant, let alone a terrorist, let alone an international terrorist.

Jason Ditz at AntiWar News notes the media focus on 50 “militants” killed during a NATO airstrike on Pakistan—and the becoming-ridiculous Pakistani government posturing as if it doesn’t consent—is ignorant to this:

In fact, a series of attacks over the past three days has killed at least 15 people, none of whom has been conclusively identified but all of whom officials felt comfortable labeling “suspected militants” simply by virtue that they got hit with a C.I.A. missile.

Though the drone strikes in Pakistan began under President Bush, since taking office President Obama has dramatically increased the number of attacks and well over 1,000 have been killed. Of those, only a handful were ever conclusively linked to any militant group and well over 700 civilians were killed. Hundreds of others in more recent attacks remain unidentified, and as the Pakistani government does not generally allow media into the region, their identities will likely remain shrouded in mystery.

Officially the Pakistani government has criticized the drone strikes and the military incursions, though U.S. officials maintain that privately agreements exist allowing both. The Zardari government has been quite deceptive about the drone program, loudly taking credit on the rare occasions the drones actually kill somebody notable and feigning ignorance on the many, many occasions when they kill random tribesmen.

Remember when every brown person who died in Iraq or Afghanistan was “Al Qaeda”.

Then, they were all “terrorists”.

Then, they were all “insurgents”.

Then, they were all “militants”.

Now, they’re “suspected militants”.

Why? Because before a burden of proof is met, the classification is all suspect and the label used to justify such acts like kidnapping and killing are little more than authoritative assertion. (See Anwar al-Awlaki.)

The defense for targeting Mr. al-Awlaki is that he’s a suspect. Consent for the strikes on Afghans and Pakis coincides with manufacturing consent for the arbitrary extrajudicial assassinations of American citizens.

The War on Terror is a war of the few in the state apparatus against every human being on Earth with consent to remove from it.

Yes, when the C.I.A. and NATO drop 500-lb. bombs on villages in Pakistan and tell everyone that the burden of proof is on everyone else to show the dead weren’t militants, the war is against you.

When they get away with assassinating “suspected militants” after designating everyone as a suspect, you’re in the middle of the bulls-eye.


Filed under: Af-Pak War, International Affairs, Political Science Tagged: Af-Pak War, Afghanistan, airstrikes, Bush Administration, CIA, drones, extrajudicial assassination, Iraq War, ISAF, Jason Ditz, libertarian, NATO, Newspeak, NWFP, Obama Administration, Pakistan, War on Terror, Warfare and Conflict, Zardari
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Daily Briefing—14th Sept 2010 1:30 pm / 14 September 2010 by Editors, at Little Alex in Wonderland

News and views from around the web posted to the Wonderland Wire:


Filed under: Daily Briefing Tagged: Afghan elections, Afghanistan, Arab League, B'Tselem, black sites, Bush Administration, China, CIA, Civil Rights Movement, Cuba, FOREX, France, gold, illegal immigration, Iran, Iraq, Islamophobia, Israel, Kabul Bank, NPT, Poland, renminbi, Sarah Shourd, torture, USDCNY, USDJPY, yen
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