Cheney Urging Strikes On Iran

Warren P. Strobel, John Walcott and Nancy A. Youssef
McClatchy Newspapers
August 9, 2007

President Bush charged Thursday that Iran continues to arm and train insurgents who are killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and he threatened action if that continues.

At a news conference Thursday, Bush said Iran had been warned of unspecified consequences if it continued its alleged support for anti-American forces in Iraq. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker had conveyed the warning in meetings with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad, the president said.

Bush wasn't specific, and a State Department official refused to elaborate on the warning.

Behind the scenes, however, the president's top aides have been engaged in an intensive internal debate over how to respond to Iran's support for Shiite Muslim groups in Iraq and its nuclear program. Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy.

The debate has been accompanied by a growing drumbeat of allegations about Iranian meddling in Iraq from U.S. military officers, administration officials and administration allies outside government and in the news media. It isn't clear whether the media campaign is intended to build support for limited military action against Iran, to pressure the Iranians to curb their support for Shiite groups in Iraq or both.

Nor is it clear from the evidence the administration has presented whether Iran, which has long-standing ties to several Iraqi Shiite groups, including the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Muqtada al Sadr and the Badr Organization, which is allied with the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, is a major cause of the anti-American and sectarian violence in Iraq or merely one of many. At other times, administration officials have blamed the Sunni Muslim group al Qaida in Iraq for much of the violence.

For now, however, the president appears to have settled on a policy of stepped-up military operations in Iraq aimed at the suspected Iranian networks there, combined with direct American-Iranian talks in Baghdad to try to persuade Tehran to halt its alleged meddling.

The U.S. military launched one such raid Wednesday in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite Sadr City district.

But so far that course has failed to halt what American military officials say is a flow of sophisticated roadside bombs, known as explosively formed penetrators, into Iraq. Last month they accounted for a third of the combat deaths among U.S.-led forces, according to the military.

Cheney, who's long been skeptical of diplomacy with Iran, argued for military action if hard new evidence emerges of Iran's complicity in supporting anti-American forces in Iraq; for example, catching a truckload of fighters or weapons crossing into Iraq from Iran, one official said.

The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk publicly about internal government deliberations.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice opposes this idea, the officials said. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has stated publicly that "we think we can handle this inside the borders of Iraq."

Lea Anne McBride, a Cheney spokeswoman, said only that "the vice president is right where the president is" on Iran policy.

Bush left no doubt at his news conference that he intended to get tough with Iran.
"One of the main reasons that I asked Ambassador Crocker to meet with Iranians inside Iraq was to send the message that there will be consequences for . . . people transporting, delivering EFPs, highly sophisticated IEDs (improvised explosive devices), that kill Americans in Iraq," he said.

He also appeared to call on the Iranian people to change their government.

"My message to the Iranian people is, you can do better than this current government," he said. "You don't have to be isolated. You don't have to be in a position where you can't realize your full economic potential."

The Bush administration has launched what appears to be a coordinated campaign to pin more of Iraq's security troubles on Iran.

Last week, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the No. 2 U.S. military commander in Iraq, said Shiite militiamen had launched 73 percent of the attacks that had killed or wounded American troops in July. U.S. officials think that majority Shiite Iran is providing militiamen with EFPs, which pierce armored vehicles and explode once inside.

Last month, Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a multinational force spokesman, said members of the Quds force had helped plan a January attack in the holy Shiite city of Karbala, which lead to the deaths of five American soldiers. Bergner said the military had evidence that some of the attackers had trained at Quds camps near Tehran.

Bush's efforts to pressure Iran are complicated by the fact that the leaders of U.S.-supported governments in Iraq and Afghanistan have a more nuanced view of their neighbor.

Maliki is on a three-day visit to Tehran, during which he was photographed Wednesday hand in hand with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Unconfirmed media reports said Maliki had told Iranian officials they'd played a constructive role in the region.

Asked about that, Bush said he hadn't been briefed on the meeting. "Now if the signal is that Iran is constructive, I will have to have a heart-to-heart with my friend the prime minister, because I don't believe they are constructive. I don't think he in his heart of hearts thinks they're constructive either," he said.

Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai differed on Iran's role when they met last weekend, with Karzai saying in a TV interview that Iran was "a helper" and Bush challenging that view.

The toughening U.S. position on Iran puts Karzai and Iraqi leaders such as Maliki in a difficult spot between Iran, their longtime ally, and the United States, which is spending lives and treasure to secure their newly formed government.

A senior Iraqi official in Baghdad said the Iraqi government received regular intelligence briefings from the United States about suspected Iranian activities. He refused to discuss details, but said the American position worried him.

The United States is "becoming more focused on Iranian influence inside Iraq," said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss private talks with the Americans. "And we don't want Iraq to become a zone of conflict between Iran and the U.S."

Proposals to use force against Iran over its actions in Iraq mark a new phase in the Bush administration's long internal war over Iran policy.

Until now, some hawks within the administration — including Cheney — are said to have favored military strikes to stop Iran from furthering its suspected ambitions for nuclear weapons.

Rice has championed a diplomatic strategy, but that, too, has failed to deter Iran so far.

Patrick Clawson, an Iran specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said a strike on the Quds camps in Iran could make the nuclear diplomacy more difficult.

Before launching such a strike, "We better be prepared to go public with very detailed and very convincing intelligence," Clawson said.

www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/18834.html

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=6997

Red Cross Confirms
Bush Administration And CIA
Used Torture In Interrogations

By Patrick Martin

A confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) suggests that Bush administration officials may have committed war crimes in the operation of CIA “secret prisons” overseas, according to a lengthy analysis published on the web site of the New Yorker magazine Sunday.

The Red Cross report concluded that the methods used in the CIA interrogation of alleged 9/11 terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other Al Qaeda prisoners were “tantamount to torture” and that Bush administration officials had likely committed “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions.

The article by Jane Mayer, entitled “The Black Sites,” is the product of a series of interviews with former CIA officers involved in operating the agency’s secret prisons overseas, agents who directly participated in torture sessions and apparently concluded that the methods they were employing were either immoral or counterproductive, or both.

The New Yorker has become one of the principal conduits for dissent within the military/intelligence apparatus directed against the policies of the Bush White House. Mayer’s colleague, Seymour Hersh, wrote the first extensive report on the abuse of prisoners at the US military prison at Abu Ghraib, near Baghdad, as well as a series of exposés about US preparations for a military strike against Iran.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured by Pakistani authorities in early 2003, just before the US invasion of Iraq, and held at secret CIA locations for nearly four years before his transfer to Guantánamo Bay. Last March, the Pentagon made public his “confession” to carrying out or planning no less than 31 separate terrorist atrocities, a statement widely hailed in official circles as proof that torture—or, in Washington-speak, “enhanced interrogation techniques”—was an effective and legitimate practice in the “war on terror.”

At the time, the World Socialist Web Site noted the dubious character of Mohammed’s self-incriminating statements, in which he claimed responsibility for an improbable number of spectacular plots, including purported plans to destroy the Sears Tower, the Empire State Building and London’s Big Ben, and to assassinate former US President Jimmy Carter and Pope John Paul II. (See: “Washington exploits Guantánamo ‘confession’ to justify its crimes”)

No politically literate observer doubted that Mohammed had been severely tortured, and many said so, among them journalist Nat Hentoff (“Was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed tortured?”) and Professor Anthony D’Amato of Northwestern University School of Law (“True Confessions: The Amazing Tale of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed”), who compared the 26-page “confession” to the self-indictments by prisoners in the Stalinist purge trials of the 1930s. Mayer’s article confirms, in fact, that the CIA actually employed torture techniques first developed by the Soviet KGB and copied by US intelligence agencies during the Cold War.

The International Committee of the Red Cross was given access to Mohammed late last year, after his transfer to Guantánamo Bay. The policy of the ICRC is to discuss its findings only with the government holding prisoners in custody, not with the press, in order to insure its continued access to prisoners. But, according to Mayer, the ICRC report on the 15 detainees held in the CIA’s secret prisons was circulated through the very highest levels of the White House, State Department and National Security Council, and to some congressmen on the House and Senate committees that oversee the intelligence agencies.

Mayer cited “congressional and other Washington sources familiar with the report,” writing that “one of the sources said that the Red Cross described the agency’s detention and interrogation methods as tantamount to torture, and declared that American officials responsible for the abusive treatment could have committed serious crimes. The source said the report warned that these officials may have committed ‘grave breaches’ of the Geneva Conventions, and may have violated the US Torture Act.” Mayer adds, “The conclusions of the Red Cross, which is known for its credibility and caution, could have potentially devastating legal ramifications.”

In other words, those US government officials who authorized and carried out the torture of CIA prisoners could face war crimes charges before either an American or international tribunal, as could those who subsequently became aware of what was taking place in the secret prisons and covered it up.

According to Mayer’s article, the CIA use of torture was not a “rogue” operation, but a massive bureaucratic enterprise involving systematic research and development to find the “best” methods for breaking down prisoners. CIA officials reviewed the techniques employed by the Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War as a model for the “war on terror.” The Phoenix Program involved the systematic assassination of an estimated 20,000 cadres, supporters and sympathizers of the National Liberation Front, as well as the widespread torture of prisoners.

The agency also sought interrogation advice from the secret police of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, all of which practice barbaric methods of torture against political prisoners. And one former military interrogator described the techniques of exerting total control over a prisoner’s environment as “the KGB model,” developed during the purges against political dissidents in the former Soviet Union, and subsequently mimicked by the CIA.

Among the techniques used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were prolonged sensory deprivation, continuous shackling while naked, use of a dog leash and female interrogators, forcible slamming into the walls of his cell, suspension from the ceiling of the interrogation room by his arms, and the now-notorious practice of waterboarding, the simulated drowning technique employed as torture since medieval times (when it became known as the “Chinese water torture.”)

One interrogation expert told Mayer, referring to the victims of the torture sessions: “People were utterly dehumanized. People fell apart. It was the intentional and systematic infliction of great suffering masquerading as a legal process. It is just chilling.”

The torture was so severe and systematic that it had a profound psychological effect on some of the torturers themselves, according to Mayer, who interviewed one of those who interrogated Mohammed. This interrogator described a fellow torturer who now “has horrible nightmares ... It really haunts him. You are inflicting something really evil and horrible on somebody.”

CIA officials repeatedly voiced concerns that the orders they were receiving from the White House, and particularly from Vice President Dick Cheney, might leave them vulnerable to criminal prosecution, particularly since they were instructed to keep prisoners like Mohammed alive and thereby preserve them as witnesses to their own abuse. As one official told Mayer, in a particularly chilling passage, “It would have been better if we had executed them.”

A former CIA official told Mayer that many agents had taken out liability insurance to help cover the anticipated legal bills when they face prosecution for prisoner abuse. There is a “high level of anxiety about political retribution,” he said, and “several guys expect to be thrown under the bus,” serving as fall guys for the decision-makers at the highest levels, including Bush, Cheney, former CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who, as White House counsel, supervised the process of giving a legal stamp of approval to torture.

Several leading congressional Democrats are well aware of the ICRC report, which was circulated to leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence committees, chaired by Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Congressman Sylvestre Reyes of Texas. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were likely “in the loop” as well.

This fact underscores the complicity of the congressional Democratic leadership, who only two days ago pushed through legislation that greatly expanded the domestic spying powers of an administration which they knew had been branded by the International Committee of the Red Cross as a serial perpetrator of war crimes.

Despite the sensational character of Mayer’s revelations, there has been relatively little comment on the subject in the American media. The Washington Post, in an article Sunday previewing the New Yorker account, confirmed the existence of the Red Cross report and its circulation at the highest levels in the US capital.

It cited “sources familiar with the document” as confirming that the detainees interviewed by the ICRC gave similar accounts of their torture even though they were held in isolation from each other and could not coordinate their stories. This reinforces the credibility of their testimony—as does the exporting of these methods from the CIA secret prisons and the Guantánamo Bay concentration camp to the US military prison in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, where digital photographs made public in 2004 caused worldwide revulsion at US torture methods.

http://www.wsws.org./articles/2007/aug2007/tort-a07.shtml

The West And Islam
Should Not Be Allowed
To Remain On The Warpath

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 9 (Bernama) -- The West and Islam should not be allowed to remain on the warpath, with each side recycling old prejudices to denigrate the other, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said.

"We need to develop new contexts for understanding each other. We need to lay a new foundation for a better future," he said in the Seventh Tun Razak Lecture souvenir book.

The lecture, entitled "The West and Islam: Rethinking Orientalism and Occidentalism" was delivered by Prof Dr Carl W. Ernst, a specialist in Islamic studies with focus on West and South Asia.

Najib was represented by Higher Education Minister Datuk Mustapa Mohamed at the function. Present were Universiti Malaya Vice-Chancellor Datuk Rafiah Salim, President of Ohio University Dr Roderick McDavis and Najib's brother, Datuk Nizam.

"It is equally important that people should correct the many wrongs done in the name of democracy and globalisation which, to all intents and purposes, have become the roots of today's international terrorism.

"For example, the West, equipped with its financial wherewithal, should do more to bridge the economic gap between itself and the Islamic world.

"With many Muslim countries still mired in poverty, and therefore a good breeding ground for all kinds of extremism, this is one way of arresting its growth," Najib said.

He said the negativism associated with those who preferred to look at Muslims and their religion in the light of their past showdowns with Islam smacked of orientalism at its worst.

"Orientalism may look like a thing of the past, but in reality, there are many researchers and writers, notably in the academia, who still draw sustenance from the uneasy relationship between the West and Islam based on their antagonistic encounters in the past," he said.

He said the "traders of knowledge" simply placed Islam in the political straightjacket by portraying it as a religion of violence.

"Muslims not only stand to suffer, but the whole of the international community too has to bear the consequences of their actions."

Najib said the occidentalists should not willy-nilly arrogate to themselves the right of judgment, including by making sweeping generalisations and wholesale condemnation of other civilisations.

-- BERNAMA
http://www.bernama.com

White House Preparing To Stage
New September 11 - Reagan Official

WASHINGTON, July 20 (RIA Novosti) - A former Reagan official has issued a public warning that the Bush administration is preparing to orchestrate a staged terrorist attack in the United States, transform the country into a dictatorship and launch a war with Iran within a year.

Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, blasted Thursday a new Executive Order, released July 17, allowing the White House to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies and giving the government expanded police powers to exercise control in the country.

Roberts, who spoke on the Thom Hartmann radio program, said: "When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order], there's no check to it. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule."

"The American people don't really understand the danger that they face," Roberts said, adding that the so-called neoconservatives intended to use a renewal of the fight against terrorism to rally the American people around the fading Republican Party.

Old-line Republicans like Roberts have become increasingly disenchanted with the neoconservative politics of the Bush administration, which they see as a betrayal of fundamental conservative values.

According to a July 9-11 survey by Ipsos, an international public opinion research company, President Bush and the Republicans can claim a mere 31 percent approval rating for their handling of the Iraq war and 38 percent for their foreign policy in general, including terrorism.

"The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists ... are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events," he said. "You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda is not going to do it, it is going to be orchestrated."

Roberts suggested that in the absence of a massive popular outcry, only the federal bureaucracy and perhaps the military could put constraints on Bush's current drive for a fully-fledged dictatorship.

"They may have had enough. They may not go along with it," he said.

The radio interview was a follow-up to Robert's latest column, in which he warned that "unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the U.S. could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran."

Roberts, who has been dubbed the "Father of Reaganomics" and has recently gained popularity for his strong opposition to the Bush administration and the Iraq War, regularly contributes articles to Creators Syndicate, an independent distributor of comic strips and syndicated columns for daily newspapers.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20070720/69340886.html

New US Accusations Against Iran

By Joe Kay

A US military official leveled new accusations against Iran on Monday, asserting Iranian government involvement in a January, 2007 attack that killed five American soldiers in Iraq. The charges are the latest in a campaign to increase pressure on Iran, while laying out a rationale for possible future military action.

Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, the lead spokesman for US forces in Iraq, said that interrogations of prisoners in Iraq had provided evidence of Iranian involvement in a January raid in the city of Karbala. He accused Iran of using the Lebanese group Hezbollah as a “proxy” to help train Iraqis to attack US forces.

These allegations are based on statements Bergner said were made by Qais Khazali and Ali Musa Daqduq, both of whom were captured in Iraq by the US military in March.

Bergner said that Khazali has admitted to planning the Karbala attack, and that Daqduq admitted to being a member of Hezbollah. Bergner said that the two prisoners “state that senior leadership within the Quds force knew and supported planning for the eventual Karbala attack that killed five coalition soldiers.”

He added, “Our intelligence reveals that the senior leadership in Iran is aware of this activity.” When asked by a reporter, “Do you think it’s possible that [Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] doesn’t know?”, Bergner replied, “I think that would be hard to imagine.”

Bergner said that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Force has “funded, trained and armed” Shiite groups operating in Iraq. “Quds Force, along with Hezbollah instructors, trained approximately 20 to 60 Iraqis at a time” at camps near Tehran, he said. “The Iranian Quds force is using Lebanese Hezbollah essentially as a proxy, as a surrogate in Iraq.”

The US has been escalating accusations against Iran for several months, but the statements by Bergner represent the first time that top Iranian leaders have been accused so directly of helping plan specific attacks on US forces. The statement also represents the first time that Hezbollah has been directly accused of involvement in Iraq. [www.wsws.org 3 July 2007]

To read the detailed article, please click:

http://www.wsws.org./articles/2007/jul2007/iran-j03.shtml


IAEA Chief Declares
Any Attack On Iran
“An Act Of Madness”

By Peter Symonds

The latest meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which ended on Thursday, has set the stage for a new round of punitive measures against Iran over its nuclear programs. Washington is pressing for a third round of UN Security Council sanctions, but the presence of two US aircraft battle groups in the Persian Gulf is a constant reminder that the Bush administration is keeping “all options on the table”.

In his concluding remarks, IAEA director general Mohammed ElBaradei ominously warned that the use of force against Iran would be “an act of madness ... [that] would not resolve the issue.” Having witnessed firsthand the Bush administration’s use of lies about WMDs to justify military aggression against Iraq, ElBaradei is well aware that US “diplomacy” is also providing the pretext for war against Iran.

ElBaradei bluntly told the BBC a fortnight ago: “I wake up every morning and see 100 Iraqi innocent civilians are dying. I have no brief other than to make sure we don’t go into another war or that we go crazy into killing each other. You do not want to give [an] additional argument to the new crazies who say ‘let’s go and bomb Iran.’” Asked who the “new crazies” were, the IAEA chief refused to be drawn, simply saying: “Those who have extreme views and say the only solution is to impose your will by force.”

It is not difficult to identify who ElBaradei is referring to: the dominant sections of the American establishment. While the Bush administration publicly maintains the fiction that it wants a “diplomatic solution”, Vice President Dick Cheney and his supporters barely disguise their support for military action. All bar one of the Republican presidential candidates declared their willingness in a televised debate on June 5 to use nuclear weapons to destroy Iran’s atomic facilities. As for the Democratic contenders, most have publicly backed the US campaign of diplomatic bullying, economic sanctions and military threats that is preparing the ground for war against Iran. – [www.wsws.org 16 June 2007]

To read the detailed article, please click:

http://www.wsws.org./articles/2007/jun2007/iran-j16.shtml

Al-Qaeda, the Eternal Covert Operation:
British "Terror" Incident
Latest Product Of "War on Terror" Propaganda

by Larry Chin
Global Research

It is a well-established and deliberately unaddressed historical fact that the CIA created "radical Islam" and Islamic "terrorism" during the Cold War. It is also a documented fact that the US, its allies, and their intelligence agencies (CIA, Pakistan’s ISI, Britain’s MI-6, etc.) have -- from the 1970s to the present day -- continued to use and guide terrorist groups, including "Al-Qaeda," as intelligence and propaganda assets. "Islamic terrorism" is a manufactured weapon of Western geostrategy, serving Anglo-American interests.

Planned covert operations and false flag operations using "terrorists" in direct and indirect military-intelligence roles are of imperial design. Such operations (exemplified by 9/11), and their predictable propaganda results ("the war on terrorism") are now routine events.

Official "war on terrorism" disinformation is repeated ad nauseum, accepted as fact by the mass populace, and used as the justification for ever-expanding Anglo-American war and ever-deepening criminality. Virtually no attention is paid to the Anglo-American support and management of "Al-Qaeda" and other "terror" groups. Little or no attention is devoted to the criminally fabricated nature of modern "terrorism" or the fact that every major "terrorism" event in recent times has been a US or US-allied covert operation, followed by political manipulation and cover-up.

September 11 was a false flag operation. The Mumbai transit bomb attack was a covert operation carried out by terror cells directly connected to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, the ISI (a virtual branch of the American CIA), and the same (alleged "Al-Qaeda") apparatus. The London 7/7 attack was the work of

British intelligence, as well as Pakistan's ISI. Previously foiled London terror incidents pin the responsibility on "homegrown" terrorists with ties to Pakistan and "Al-Qaeda," and London 7/7 .

While new details continue to emerge, the botched July 30, 2007, Glasgow Airport and June 28, 2007, London nightclub incendiary attacks bear a marked resemblance to every other post-9/11 "terrorism" false flag operation.

The political choreography of the Glasgow/London incident

Regardless of the actual case evidence to come, what is clear and obvious is the propaganda and political effect that has already been achieved by the aggressive Anglo-American response to the events (violence that may have involved their own intelligence agencies and proxies).

Even before the fires at Glasgow Airport were put out, official accounts and worldwide media reports had already forcefully declared the event to be the work of "Al-Qaeda" and "Islamic extremists." The new British prime minister, Gordon Brown, quickly declared, "We are dealing, in general terms, with people who are associated with al Qaeda," and immediately enacted a draconian "security" agenda in the UK. The Telegraph attributed the incident to an "unknown Al-Qaeda terrorist cell thought to be preparing to launch a series of Baghdad-style car bombings."

An ABC account of the foiled London night club attacks suggests that there was foreknowledge (a typical aspect of all recent false flag events), and that warnings were issued by unnamed intelligence operatives weeks in advance, and that "Al Qaeda had targeted nightclubs and other soft targets" using cars laden with gasoline and propane cylinders. The ABC report concludes: "All of this comes just three weeks after what was described as an al-Qaeda graduation ceremony for suicide bombers at a training camp in Pakistan. A video obtained by ABC News shows commanders sending teams of 50 to 60 men to the United States, Canada, Germany and Great Britain."

Another piece from the Telegraph suggests that the US was already involved in steering British authorities towards an "Al-Qaeda" conclusion. The article states: "reports from the US that the three men had been identified and known to be an associate of Dhiren Barot [a British Al-Qaeda detainee - LC], a suspected terrorist who had planned to set off bombs across London, were dismissed by government officials."

While the worldwide propaganda and "war on terrorism" policy effect has been largely uniform and aggressive, as of this writing, the actual case details have been wildly inconsistent, speculative, and even contradictory. According to the official narrative, on June 30, 2007, according to British security officials, two men crashed a Jeep containing propane and gasoline into the main terminal of the Glasgow Airport in Scotland. This botched suicide car attack came in the wake of the foiled London nightclub attacks of June 28, 2007, an incident that authorities have attempted to link to Glasgow.

At least eight arrests have been made, including at least six medical workers: Bilal Abdullah (an Iraqi doctor), Mohammed Asha, a Jordanian physician (of Palestinian origin) and his wife, and Khalid Ahmed (a doctor and colleague of Abdullah’s), Mohammed Haneef (an Indian doctor). Foreign nationals from Iraq, Jordan, India and Saudi Arabia have been rounded up and arrested in connection with the case. Asha’s family insists that he is innocent. Friends, family and colleagues of many of the suspects are also expressing shock and doubt. Prime Minister Brown has begun a sweeping profiling operation of all Muslim medical personnel.

According to the July 4 Los Angeles Times, "officials have still not determined whether a foreign terrorist group sent them to Britain or if they were recruited here (London)." The same piece declares, "one of more of the detainees may have been radicalized and in touch with extremist networks before arriving, while others may have been radicalized only after establishing themselves in Britain."

A July 3 article from the Los Angeles Times breathlessly speculates: "Although Islamic terror cells are often ethnically and sociologically diverse, the doctors’ background breaks with a pattern in a string of recent terror cases in England, including last year’s plot to bomb US-bound jets and the London transport bombings of 2005 . . . In contrast, the Middle Eastern angle could point at the Iraqi war theater, where a constellation of extremist networks operate -- among them an al Qaeda offshoot dominated by foreign fighters."

This coverage, like most Western media reporting, accepts official declarations without question, and strongly suggests the guilt of all suspects.

Of course, no mention is made regarding the key issue at the heart of every "terror" event, and at the heart of the entire post-9/11 world crisis: Anglo-American military-intelligence connections to "Al-Qaeda" and other "radical Islamic terror" groups.

Beneficiaries: Washington and London

What is clear and predictable is that the British incidents, like all post-9/11 "terror," benefits the political agendas in Washington and London at a key moment, while undermining all political opposition to Anglo-American foreign and domestic policies:

Bush-Cheney (and the equally complicit Democratic Party leadership) is provided another justification to ramp up the "war on terrorism," and expand its intensifying world war and resource conquest, and step up of the pace of installing a police state within US borders. The Bush administration and its allies around the world have been planning a new 9/11 (blamed on "terrorists") that could create both a justification and an opportunity to retaliate against selected targets.

Britain’s incoming Gordon Brown government has been provided with a fresh London 7/7-9/11-style crisis around which it can now impose draconian police state measures upon the British people.

Brown seamlessly inherits the "war on terrorism" agenda from war criminal and liar Tony Blair, and ups the ante. It is not clear if Brown’s ham-fisted actions are completely of his own design, to "appear tough" to his new constituents, or the result of pressure from Blair and Bush (who is "pleased" with Brown’s forceful response).

A violent "wag the dog" distraction from ongoing US domestic political scandals, notably Bush’s commuting of the sentence of Scooter Libby in the CIA/Valerie Plame affair, benefits Bush-Cheney.

Spreading Al-Qaeda everywhere

The British incidents come in the wake of a crescendo of "Al-Qaeda"-related events all over the world. Bush-Cheney’s "Al-Qaeda terror" propaganda is at full pre-Iraq invasion fervor.

A recent news search demonstrates the fact that "Al-Qaeda" activity is mushrooming, in Egypt, Pakistan-Iran, Spain, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza/Palestine, Afghanistan, Lebanon, as well as within the United States and the UK.

Given the true nature of "Al-Qaeda" as Anglo-American assets, this is a clear signal that Anglo-American covert operations are intensifying -- and that targets for the next round of Anglo-American wars are being lined up.

Al-Qaeda: eternal intelligence asset

The central issue of our time cannot be overemphasized: extensive historical (but ignored and covered-up) documentation establishes the fact that Al-Qaeda and Islamic "terrorism" are the creation as well as key instruments of Anglo-American military-intelligence, and Western geostrategy, managed and guided by the CIA, Pakistan’s ISI, Britain’s MI-6 and MI-5, etc.

No "terror" event, current or past, can be understood without a full inquiry against this context.

Books such as Michel Chossudovsky’s America's "War on Terrorism" and Michael C. Ruppert’s Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the end of the Age of Oil exhaustively detail this milieu.

As written by Michel Chossudovsky in America's "War on Terrorism", while "Islamic terrorists" are featured by the Bush administration and its allies as eternal threats, and blamed for every terror event including and since 9/11, "these same Islamic organizations constitute a key instrument of U.S. military-intelligence operations" all over the world.

"According to the CIA," writes Chossudovsky, "an ‘intelligence asset’ -- as distinct from a bona fide ‘intelligence agent’ -- need not be committed to the pursuit of U.S. interests. Rather, it is meant to act and/or behave in a way that serves U.S. foreign policy pursuits . . .

Intelligence assets are invariably unaware of the precise functions and roles they are performing on behalf of the CIA on the geopolitical chessboard. In turn, for these covert operations to be ‘successful,’ the CIA will use various proxy and front organizations such as Pakistan’s extensive military intelligence apparatus (the ISI)."

A recently declassified French intelligence report details the extent to which "Al-Qaeda" and Osama bin Laden ran operations for the CIA. "Al-Qaeda" has also served multinational oil interests. Washington’s support and management of the "Militant Islamic Network", including "Al-Qaeda," has been continuous since the Carter administration, through the Bosnia/Kosovo/Macedonia NATO wars of the Clinton administration, and in full flower beginning with and since 9/11. "Al-Qaeda" as well as Al-Qaeda "foreign fighter hordes" propaganda is a key component of the Pentagon’s Iraq occupation and pacification program.

Also see: "Who is Osama bin Laden?" and "Al-Qaeda: the database"

As written by Mike Ruppert in Crossing the Rubicon, "Great Britain -- one of the major players supporting the KLA in Kosovo -- also maintained secret relationships with bin Laden and al Qaeda that served its interests." Britain’s MI-6 funded and worked with Al-Qaeda to assassinate and overthrow Libya’s Muammar Qaddafy in 1996. Since 9/11, bin Laden was a guest of British intelligence, even as a wanted man. As noted by Ruppert, "a November 2002 UPI story by Arnaud de Borchgrave indicated not only that Pakistani ISI had helped Osama bin Laden escape from Afghanistan but also that the American government had deliberately paid little attention to offers from an Afghan warlord to pinpoint and capture the alleged mastermind of 9/11."

The eternal cycle of real and manufactured murder and destruction since 9/11, from the false flag operations to the genocidal wars justified by "terrorism," has escalated beyond the ability of criminal governments to control and manage. It is now difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish assets of planned government covert operations from "homegrown" resistance and opposition to Anglo-America policy.

The idea of "blowback," the notion that terrorist assets have turned on their sponsors, is, however, bogus: Western intelligence has not severed its ties to "terrorists." The true "root cause" of "Islamic terrorism" remains Western manipulation and political guidance of "terror."

Al-Qaeda propaganda

As pointed out by Michel Chossudovsky in "The Anglo-American War of Terror: An Overview", the continuing US-led "war on terrorism" agenda rests squarely upon the perpetuation of the "Al-Qaeda" deception and the 9/11 lie, the perpetual threat of a fabricated outside enemy.

"Terrorism," from violent attacks against civilians to bogus "resistance movements" (made up of sponsored "Islamic terrorists") to pervasive propaganda and disinformation, undermines public support for all political opposition to Anglo-American foreign policy, and creates divisions within antiwar and peace movements.

More importantly, absolute control of mass populations is made possible by fear. Based on Pavlovian reactions to every new "terror" incident, the fear of "terrorists" and bone-deep racism inspired by Bush-Cheney’s manufactured 9/11 false flag operation remain tragically potent.

The imperial hand behind "radicalism"

Who or what is truly behind "Islamic terrorism" and "terror" catastrophes? Who or what created it, and funds, manages, nurtures and wields "terror"? Whose geostrategic interests have been exclusively served by "terror"? Whose political goals have been permanently destroyed? Cui bono? The answers lead directly t0 the highest levels in Washington, London, Tel Aviv, Islamabad, etc.

"Islamic terrorism" is a covert operation and a geostrategy. "Al-Qaeda" is a military-intelligence asset and a leading brand of war propaganda.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6223

Sudan Official

Dies In Car Crash

A close political adviser to Sudan's president has died in a car accident.

Adviser Majzoub al-Khalifa and his brother were killed in the accident in northern Sudan, and several other people were injured.

Khalifa headed the government negotiating team in talks which led to last year's signing of a peace deal with rebels in the Darfur region.

The agreement has failed to halt the four-year Darfur conflict which has made some 2m people homeless.

Chadian President Idriss Deby has cancelled his scheduled visit to Sudan following the announcement of the deaths.

A statement from the president's office read on state television described Khalifa as a "distinguished figure in Sudan".

He served as a minister of agriculture and information under President Omar al-Bashir.

The burial is due to take place on Wednesday.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/6244884.stm
Published: 2007/06/27

Note:

The above news item was e-mailed to me today with this remark: Murdered by M16 and CIA because he (Majzoub al-Khalifa) had evidence that the conflict in Darfur was done by M16 and CIA. But, through the world media, M16 and CIA managed to blamed the killings in Darfur on Sudanese government. – Ruhanie Ahmad