AP | RawStory.com 

President Barack Obama announced Tuesday he was dispatching 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, accelerating a risky and expensive war buildup, even as he assured the nation that U.S. forces will begin coming home in July 2011. The first new Marines will join the fight by Christmas.

The escalation — to be completed by next summer — is designed to reverse significant Taliban advances since Obama took office 10 months ago and to fast-track the training of Afghan soldiers and police toward the goal of hastening an eventual U.S. pullout. The size and speed of the troop increase will put a heavy strain on the military, which still maintains a force of more than 100,000 in Iraq and already has 68,000 in Afghanistan.

“The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 the fastest pace possible so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers,” Obama was to say in his Tuesday night prime-time speech. The White House released excerpts in advance.

The increased troops, Obama said, “will increase our ability to train competent Afghan security forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight. And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans.”

Looking to America’s experience in Iraq, Obama put said a U.S. withdrawal would be executed “responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground.”

“We will continue to advise and assist Afghanistan’s security forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul. But it will be clear to the Afghan government and, more importantly, to the Afghan people that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country,” Obama said.

Obama also leaned heavily on NATO allies and other countries to join in escalating the fight.

“We must come together to end this war successfully,” the president said. “For what’s at stake is not simply a test of NATO’s credibility. What’s at stake is the security of our allies, and the common security of the world.”

Obama’s Tuesday evening speech to cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., to be broadcast nationally, ends three months of exacting deliberations that won praise from supporters and criticism from opponents. Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Obama was “dithering,” too inexperienced to make a decision on the troop buildup requested in September by commanding Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

Senior officials said Obama also would underscore his commitment to stabilizing Afghanistan and scouring corruption out of the government of President Hamid Karzai. Obama has vowed to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a safe haven for al-Qaida boss Osama bin Laden and his terrorist organization.

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Paul Joseph Watson | PrisonPlanet.com

The shadowy figure of Osama Bin Laden has popped up once again out of nowhere and right on time to re-energize the war in Afghanistan at the most politically opportune moment for the White House, strengthening deeply held suspicions that the terror leader has been dead for years and is merely being artificially resurrected as a sock puppet to rescue a failing geopolitical agenda.

Sky News reports today that in an audio tape, Bin Laden insists that Barack Obama is “powerless” to halt the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is an odd statement to make in light of the fact that Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan and only overseen a mirage of a withdrawal in Iraq.

This latest tape arrives on the back of the deadliest month ever for U.S. forces since the September 2001 invasion. According to CNN, the August death toll of 46 U.S. troops was the highest monthly toll of the eight year conflict.

Recent public opinion polls also show that “opposition to the war in Afghanistan is at an all-time high” on the back of an obviously rigged election that returned U.S. puppet President Hamid Karzai to power.

President Obama has come under increasing pressure as his hollow promise of “change” evaporates and the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan are rapidly expanded beyond anything the Bush administration even attempted. Cue the entrance of Bin Laden to provide the perfect justification for increasing the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and enabling the White House to dismiss critics as Al-Qaeda sympathizers.

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Against All Enemies 

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds dropped a bombshell on the Mike Malloy radio show, guest-hosted by Brad Friedman (audio, partial transcript).

In the interview, Sibel says that the US maintained ‘intimate relations’ with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, “all the way until that day of September 11.”

These ‘intimate relations’ included using Bin Laden for ‘operations’ in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China. These ‘operations’ involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner “as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict,” that is, fighting ‘enemies’ via proxies.

As Sibel has previously described, and as she reiterates in this latest interview, this process involved using Turkey (with assistance from ‘actors from Pakistan, and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia’) as a proxy, which in turn used Bin Laden and the Taliban and others as a proxy terrorist army.

Control of Central Asia
The goals of the American ’statesmen’ directing these activities included control of Central Asia’s vast energy supplies and new markets for military products.

The Americans had a problem, though. They needed to keep their fingerprints off these operations to avoid a) popular revolt in Central Asia ( Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan), and b) serious repercussions from China and Russia. They found an ingenious solution: Use their puppet-state Turkey as a proxy, and appeal to both pan-Turkic and pan-Islam sensibilities.

Turkey, a NATO ally, has a lot more credibility in the region than the US and, with the history of the Ottoman Empire, could appeal to pan-Turkic dreams of a wider sphere of influence. The majority of the Central Asian population shares the same heritage, language and religion as the Turks.

In turn, the Turks used the Taliban and al Qaeda, appealing to their dreams of a pan-Islamic caliphate (Presumably. Or maybe the Turks/US just paid very well.)

According to Sibel:
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Reuters | YahooNews

Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari said on Monday that the whereabouts of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden remained a mystery and there was a suspicion that he could be dead.

Speaking to international media, Zardari said U.S. officials had told him that they had no trace of the al Qaeda chief, although they habitually say he is most likely in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s own intelligence agencies were no wiser, either, Zardari said.

“There is no news,” the president said. “They obviously feel that he does not exist anymore but that’s not confirmed, we can’t confirm that.”
Al Jazeera aired excerpts of an audio recording in March in which the speaker’s voice sounded like earlier messages from bin Laden, who has eluded all efforts to catch him since al Qaeda carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Bin Laden, if he is still alive, turned 52 on March 10, but he is known to suffer from ill-health.

There have been reports that he had died of natural causes in the past, but they have never been corroborated, and security analysts believe intelligence agencies monitoring jihadi websites on the Internet would have picked up some chatter.

Pepe Escobar | AsiaTimes.com 

For those who harbored any doubts, the Barack Obama administration’s adoption of the George W Bush framework of the “war on terror” - it does feel like a back-to-the-future “continuity” - here are two key facts on the ground. 

• Obama has officially started his much-touted Afghanistan surge, authorizing the deployment of 17,000 US troops (8,000 marines, 4,000 army and 5,000 support) mostly to the Pashtun-dominated, southern Helmand province. Justification: “The situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan demands urgent attention.” The marines start arriving in Afghanistan in May. Their mission is as hazy as it is hazardous: eradication of the poppy culture, the source of heroin (which accounts for almost 40% of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product). There are already 38,000 US troops in Afghanistan, plus 18,000 as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 50,000 contingent. 

• Obama administration nominees, in confirmation testimony that seemed to have disappeared in a black hole, stressed they are in favor of continuing the Central Intelligence Agency’s extraordinary rendition practices and detaining - ad infinitum - “terror” suspects without trial, even if they were captured far, far away from a war zone. (Considering the Pentagon’s elastic definition of an “arc of instability”, this means anywhere fromSomalia to Xinjiang.) That has prompted New York Times writers to come up with a delightful headline: “Obama’s War on Terror May resemble Bush’s in some Areas.”

When in doubt, bomb ‘em

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Scott Ritter | TruthDig.com 

It was early in October 2001, and I had been invited to New York City on behalf of The History Channel for a show in which I was to discuss the situation in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. I was pitted against a seasoned American diplomat who had made his reputation negotiating peace accords in difficult corners of the world. I felt a little out of place, since my area of expertise was arms control and disarmament, and specifically how arms control was being implemented in Iraq. I had written a few scholarly articles about Afghan-Soviet relations, with a focus on the ethnic and tribal aspects of Afghan politics, and in the mid-1980s I had been an analyst with the Marine Corps component of the rapid deployment force, following very closely the Soviet war against the Afghan mujahedeen, so I wasn’t totally out of my element.

I fully expected to play second fiddle to the veteran diplomat, and appreciated the opportunity to hear his insights into what clearly was a very difficult situation facing the Bush administration. Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida organization had used their status as guests of the Taliban government of Afghanistan to formulate and implement their terrorist attacks against the United States. The question confronting the Bush administration was how best to respond. I had spent some time thinking over the problem and came down firmly against the idea of direct military intervention. History had shown that, since the time of Alexander the Great through the Soviet invasion and occupation, outside forces had fared poorly when they tried to impose their will on the diverse grouping of tribes and ethnic groups that made up Afghanistan.

Our fight, in any case, wasn’t against the people of Afghanistan. To a certain extent, it wasn’t even against the Taliban, since it was al-Qaida, not the Taliban, that had attacked us. Some, including leaders of the Bush administration, were making the case that the Taliban was directly implicated in the attacks since it had provided al-Qaida with a safe haven to plan the events of 9/11. It had yet to be proved that the Taliban was a witting host, however. As a student of the region, I believed that the United States would do well to use tribal concepts of honor to isolate and disenfranchise bin Laden and his Arab outsiders from their Taliban host. If the United States, working through the offices of the Pakistani intelligence services, could convince the Taliban that its hospitality had been abused by al-Qaida—in that the murder of innocents had been committed while under its protection—then Afghan tribal custom and honor and, even more important to the fundamentalist Taliban, Islamic law, dictated that the Taliban revoke the protections and privileges afforded bin Laden and al-Qaida.

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Robert Baer | Time.com

In a talk at the Atlantic Council this week, CIA director-general Michael Hayden said Osama bin Laden is alive. I’ll take his word for it. But bin Laden’s strange disappearance makes one wonder what exactly happened to him. The last relatively reliable bin Laden sighting was in late 2001. A video that he apparently appeared in last year shows him with a dyed beard. More than a few Pakistani intelligence operatives who knew bin Laden scoff at the idea he would ever dye his beard. They think the tape was manipulated from old footage, and that bin Laden is in fact dead. But then again, they would have an interest in making Americans believe bin Laden is dead, since it would relieve U.S. pressure to find him by any means necessary, including going into Pakistani territory.
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Paola Totaro | TheAge.com.au 

OSAMA bin Laden is planning an attack against the United States that will “outdo by far” September 11, an Arab newspaper in London has reported.

- bin Laden ‘planning US attack’
- Goal to ‘outdo’ September 11
- al-Qaeda reinforces training camps

And according to a former senior Yemeni al-Qaeda operative, the terrorist organisation has entered a “positive phase”, reinforcing specific training camps around the world that will lead the next “wave of action” against the West.

The warning, on the front page of an Arabic newspaper published in London, Al-Quds Al-Arabi - and widely reported in the major Italian papers - quotes a person described as being “very close to al-Qaeda” in Yemen.

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Paul Schemm |Yahoo/AP 

CAIRO, Egypt – The son of al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden was questioned at the Cairo airport by Egyptian officials on Saturday after his application for asylum in Spain was rejected, said an airport security official.

Omar Osama bin Laden sought asylum in Spain, claiming he wound not be safe if returned to an Arab country. Spain said his application did not meet its requirements. Bin Laden, 27, and his wife were then sent back to Egypt, where they have lived for the past year.

Egyptian officials said they were opening an investigation to determine what prompted the couple to seek political asylum in Spain.

The Egyptian airport official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said a decision had not yet been made to allow them in the country.

Zaina Alsabah, the younger bin Laden’s 52-year-old British wife, told the Associated Press by phone that the couple had applied for asylum in Spain because their residency permits in Cairo were not renewed and they had been threatened.

“We knew we weren’t safe, if we stayed (in Egypt) we would be imprisoned,” she said. “Our lives are in danger, we’ve been threatened already. We’ve been threatened by two princes in the Bin Laden family.”

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MASSIMO CALABRESI | Time.com

Which is closer to dying: Osama bin Laden or the CIA’s effort to catch him? Nothing has characterized the fruitlessness of the hunt for the al-Qaeda leader so much as the recurrent — and mostly inaccurate — reports that he is seriously ailing, or even at death’s door. In 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said bin Laden had kidney disease, and that he had required a dialysis machine when he lived in Afghanistan. That same year, the FBI’s top counterterrorism official, Dale Watson, said, “I personally think he is probably not with us anymore.” Since then, of course, bin Laden has appeared on multiple videos looking healthier than ever.

Now the CIA has produced a report saying that bin Laden has long-term kidney disease and may have only months to live, two U.S. officials familiar with the report told TIME. The agency ostensibly managed to get the names of some of the medications bin Laden is taking. One U.S. official familiar with the report, which came out between six and nine months ago, says it concluded, “Based on his current pharmaceutical intake, [we] would expect that he has no more than six to 18 months to live and impending kidney failure.”

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Pentagon Would Use Special Forces to Nab Bin Laden in Pakistan, New York Times Says

MARTHA RADDATZ |ABCNews.com

The Pentagon has drafted a secret plan that would send U.S. special forces into the wild tribal regions of Pakistan to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, but the White House has balked at giving the mission a green light, The New York Times reported today.

The Bush administration, which has seven months left in its term, gave the go-ahead for the military to draw up the plan to take the war on terror across the Afghan border and into the mountains of Pakistan where bin Laden is believed to be hiding, according to the newspaper.

Intelligence reports have concluded that bin Laden has re-established a network of new training camps, and the number of recruits in those camps has risen to as many as 2,000 in recent months from 200 earlier this year.

Although the special forces attack plan was devised six months ago, infighting among U.S. intelligence agencies and among White House offices have blocked it from being implemented, the Times reported.

The Bush team would like to leave office next January having put bin Laden, the man behind the Sept. 11 attacks, behind bars or in his grave.
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Good Morning America gets more than it bargained for in a feature on young people in Pakistan
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, Dec 4, 2007

An ABC news piece that ran yesterday morning attracted attention after four Pakistanis who were being interviewed about the attitudes and life of young people in Pakistan declared Osama Bin Laden to be a creation of western intelligence and stressed that Islamic extremist attitudes towards the west were virtually non existent in their country before 9/11.
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It’s been out for a few days now. Putting prior versions to rest, Final Cut is definitive proving beyond a resonable doubt the official story can not be true. Demand a new investigation
Official Site.

The Evidence
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Runnin’ Scared
Rudy’s Pants On Fire
Secret testimony shows that Rudy’s stump speech is inflated, at best
by Wayne Barrett/VillageVoice.com
October 23rd, 2007 9:25 PM

In a recent broadside deriding the Clinton administration’s response to Al Qaeda, Rudy Giuliani told an audience at Pat Robertson’s Regent University: “Bin Laden declared war on us. We didn’t hear it. I thought it was pretty clear at the time, but a lot of people didn’t see it, couldn’t see it.” Other tenets of his standard stump speech include the assertion that he’s been “studying terrorism” for more than 30 years, and that “the thing that distinguishes me on terrorism is that I have more experience in dealing with it” than the other presidential candidates.
However, in private testimony before the 9/11 Commission in 2004, Rudy gave a very different version of how much he knew about terrorism when the World Trade Center was attacked. That testimony isn’t scheduled to be released publicly until after the 2008 presidential election, but the Voice has obtained a copy of it. And it reveals a New York mayor who was anything but an “expert on terrorism.”
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original article
August 7, 2007, 5:46 pm
Chad Bray reports.

Airplane maker Boeing, major airlines and several airport operators, which face litigation from victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, sued the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday in a bid to question current and former FBI and CIA employees.

In separate lawsuits, the airlines and others are challenging decisions by the FBI and the CIA that prevent them from conducting depositions of those employees. The airlines include American Airlines, United Airlines, US Airways, Delta Air Lines, Continental Airlines and AirTran. The operators of Logan airport in Boston, and Ronald Reagan National and Dulles airports in Washington, D.C., also are plaintiffs.

The lawsuits, filed in federal court in Manhattan, are related to ongoing negligence litigation over the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

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