William Glaberson | NYTimes.com 

A federal judge issued the Bush administration a sharp setback on Thursday, ruling that five Algerian men have been held unlawfully at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp for nearly seven years and ordering their release.

It was the first hearing on the government’s evidence for holding detainees at Guantánamo. The judge, Richard J. Leon of Federal District Court in Washington, said the government’s secret evidence in the case had been weak: what he described as “a classified document from an unnamed source” for its central claim against the men, with little way to measure credibility.

“To rest on so thin a reed would be inconsistent with this court’s obligation,” Judge Leon said. He urged the government not to appeal and said the men should be released “forthwith.”
The habeas corpus case was an important test of the administration’s detention policies, which critics have long argued swept up innocent men and low-level foot soldiers along with hardened fighters and terrorist commanders.
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ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI  | SeattleTimes.com 

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military since 2004 has used broad secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against al-Qaida and other extremists in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, say senior U.S. officials.

These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed in 2004 at the direction of President Bush, the officials said. It gave the military new authority to attack al-Qaida anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States.

In 2006, for example, a Navy Seal team raided a suspected extremists’ compound in the Bajur region of Pakistan, according to a former top CIA official. Officials watched the entire mission — captured by the video camera of a remotely piloted Predator aircraft — in real time in the CIA’s headquarters in Virginia 7,000 miles away.

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MotherJones.com

A new court filing by the lawyers for Lakhdar Boumediene and five other Guantanamo detainees suggests that the Bush administration ordered the Bosnian government to arrest and hold the men after an exhaustive Bosnian investigation had found them innocent of any terrorism related activity and had ordered their release, in order to use them as props in Bush’s January 2002 State of the Union speech.

The filing–”Lakhdar Boumediene, et al., Petitioners, v. George W. Bush, President of the United States, et al., Respondents, Petitioners’ Public Traverse to the Government’s Return to the Petition for Habeas Corpus”–lays out the case that the Bush administration threatened at the highest levels to withdraw diplomatic and military aid to the Balkan nation if Bosnia released the men, which its own three-month investigation had found innocent of any terrorism charges in the days leading up to Bush’s January 2002 State of the Union.
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BrassCheckTV.com

I was under the impression that Canada and Australia were sovereign countries.
I guess not. This video shows the heads of both these states reading the same exact statement - word for word - supporting the invasion of Iraq.

Who wrote this thing? Who distributed it?
Who compelled these obvious puppets to read it?
The Queen? The CIA? Who runs these people.
Note: Canada’s Harper was not yet Prime Minister when he made this speech selling out his country for god knows who - but he is now.

Tom Burghardt
Antifascist Calling…
October 7, 2008

Ten months before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved an updated version of the U.S. Army’s secret operational Continuity of Government (COG) plans.

A draft document published by the whistleblowing website Wikileaks entitled, “Army Regulation 500-3, Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources. Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program,” dated 19 January 2001, spells out changes in Army doctrine.

Issued by Headquarters, Department of the Army and signed off by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Secretary of the Army, the document is affixed with a warning: “Destruction Notice: Destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document.” The restricted document as published by Wikileaks states:

History. This regulation is a revision of the original regulation that was effective on 10 July 1989. Since that time, no changes have been published to amend the original.

Summary. This regulation on the Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program has been revised to update Army COOP policy and extend the requirement for all-hazards COOP planning to all Army organizations. Classified information contained in the 1989 version of this AR has been removed and placed in a classified HQDA Operations Plan (OPLAN).

Applicability. This regulation applies to the Active Army, the U.S. Army Reserve (USAR), and when federalized to the Army National Guard (ARNG). In the event of conflict between this regulation and approved OSD or JCS publications, the provisions of the latter will apply. (”Army Regulation 500-3, Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources. Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program,” 19 January 2001, p. 3) [emphasis added]

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The Capital Times
Shawn Doherty — 10/01/2008 12:25 pm

In February 2004, Benjamin Thompson was sent to Abu Ghraib to guard Iraqi prisoners. Two months after he arrived, photos of grinning American soldiers torturing and sexually abusing naked Iraqis were leaked to the world. Thompson saw nothing like that at Abu Ghraib. What he did see, he says, was worse.

“The public was told the problem was resolved when a few people were prosecuted,” the decorated war veteran told a recent gathering of anti-war activists in Madison. “But the culture and the political reality that turned Abu Ghraib into a concentration camp was never addressed. Nothing in the camp really changed.” Read the rest of this entry »

www.opednews.com
by Barbara Honegger

The author is a Senior Military Affairs Journalist, and former White House Policy Analyst and Special Assistant to the Assistant to the President in the first Reagan Administration. Ms. Honegger is the author of the 9/11 expose “The Pentagon Attack Papers” http://physics911.net/pdf/honegger.pdf and October Surprise (Tudor, 1989), the first book to reveal the true origins of the Iran side of the Iran/Contra scandal.

By insisting that Bruce Ivins, a biowarfare scientist then with the Army’s Ft. Detrick laboratory, was behind the anthrax attacks, the Bush Administration has officially acknowledged that those attacks were perpetrated by a U.S. Government insider — and not by bin Laden or by Iraq.

Likewise, compelling evidence (1) has demonstrated that the mass murders of 9/11 themselves were perpetrated or enabled by U.S. Government insiders. And while it is well known that President Bush has admitted Iraq was not behind Sept. 11, it is less widely known that bin Laden has never been wanted by the FBI for 9/11 on the agency’s ‘Most Wanted Terrorists’ web page. FBI Director Mueller and his chief investigative spokesman, Rex Tomb, have publicly stated that the reason bin Laden isn’t officially wanted for 9/11 is because there is “no hard evidence” linking him to the Sept. 11 plot. (2) Read the rest of this entry »

GNN
Thu, 25 Sep 2008 07:53:31 -0500
The blonde who dropped the bombshell

By Norman Solomon

Katharine Gun versus the war machine

Of course Katharine Gun was free to have a conscience, as long as it didn’t interfere with her work at a British intelligence agency. To the authorities, practically speaking, a conscience was apt to be less tangible than a pixel on a computer screen. But suddenly — one routine morning, while she was scrolling through e-mail at her desk — conscience struck. It changed Katharine Gun’s life, and it changed history. Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, September 22, 2008

Why would “Al-Qaeda,” a group that is supposedly the prime target of the U.S. initiated war on terror, commit a terrorist attack against a country that has recently changed its government and all but renounced its role as a U.S. ally in the war on terror?

It seemed the “terrorists” did know that their prime objective was to completely wipe out the most influential players in a government that has seemingly vowed to break away from the years of Pervez Musharraf-mandated lapdog subservience to U.S. imperial whims.

The mass media has already blamed the Marriott Hotel bombing, which killed at least 53 people, on “Al-Qaeda,” a routine reflex action despite the lack of any real investigation and no claim of responsibility.

On Saturday morning, Newly elected Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari told his parliament, “We will not tolerate the violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity by any power in the name of combating terrorism.”

Hours later and hey presto! “Al-Qaeda” provides the perfect pretext for the U.S. to violate Pakistan’s territorial integrity in the name of….you guessed it….combating terrorism!

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Michael Chossudovsky |GlobalReasearch.ca 

Today’s “Global War on Terrorism” is a modern form of inquisition. It has all the essential ingredients of the French and Spanish inquisitions. 

Going after ” Islamic terrorists”, carrying out a Worldwide preemptive war to ” protect the Homeland” are used to justify a military agenda. 

“The Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) is presented as a “Clash of Civilizations”, a war between competing values and religions, when in reality it is an outright war of conquest, guided by strategic and economic objectives.  

The GWOT is the ideological backbone of the American Empire. It defines US military doctrine, including the preemptive use of nuclear weapons against the “state sponsors” of terrorism. 

The preemptive “defensive war” doctrine and the “war on terrorism” against Al Qaeda constitute essential building blocks of America’s National Security Strategy as formulated in early 2002. The objective is to present “preemptive military action” –meaning war as an act of “self-defense” against two categories of enemies, “rogue States” and “Islamic terrorists”, both of which are said to possess weapons of mass destruction. The logic of the  ”outside enemy” and the evildoer, allegedly responsible for American civilian deaths, prevails over common sense. In the inner consciousness of Americans, the attacks of September 11, 2001 justify acts of war and conquest: 

America’s Inquisition

The legitimacy of the inquisition is not questioned. The “Global War on Terrorism” justifies a mammoth defense budget at the expense of health, education, and virtually every single category of (civilian) public expenditure. The “Global War on Terrorism” requires “going after” the terrorists, using advanced weapons systems. It upholds a preemptive religious-like crusade against evil, which serves to obscure the real objectives of military action. The lies underlying 9/11 are known and documented. The American people’s acceptance of this crusade against evil is not based on any rational understanding or analysis of the facts.   

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By Asif Haroon Raja

21/09/08 “Asian Tribune” — The US and its allies succeeded in toppling Taliban regime in November 2001 and replacing it with a puppet regime, but the Taliban were neither militarily defeated nor eliminated from the system. But for effective encirclement of Afghanistan from all directions and massive air support provided by USA, the Northern Alliance could not have made any progress. Once the Taliban realised that they were no more in a position to offer resistance particularly after Pakistan ditched them, they considered it prudent to carry out a tactical withdrawal from Kabul and most took shelter in Pashtun dominated southern and eastern Afghanistan. Some trickled into FATA and Baluchistan where they had their kith and kin and some moved into Iran. They remained inactive till 2002 but utilised this time to regroup and refit themselves to be able to strike back at the invading forces that had devastated their country. Bush and his teams of neo-cons felt complacent that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda had been taken care of and only the remnants had to be flushed out. It was this smugness which impelled them to invade and occupy Iraq in March 2003. Read the rest of this entry »

by Jeremy R. Hammond / September 20th, 2008

The IAEA’s latest report on Iran’s nuclear program was circulated to the Board of Governors this week. It has not been released to the general public, but it is widely being hailed as a damning condemnation of Iran by the mainstream media.

The Washington Post headline read, “U.N. Agency at ‘Dead End’ as Iran Rejects Queries on Nuclear Research.” The article states, “The apparent standoff was detailed in a report that also described substantial gains by Tehran in its efforts to make enriched uranium, the fuel used in commercial nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons.” The Post fails to point out that the IAEA has also confirmed that Iran has produced only low-enriched uranium, not the highly-enriched uranium required for nuclear weapons. Read the rest of this entry »

ArmyTimes.com 

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas.

But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.

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Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan

by Aaron Glantz
Reviewed by Dahr Jamail

MARFA, Texas, Sep 16 (IPS) - Aside from the Iraqi people, nobody knows what the U.S. military is doing in Iraq better than the soldiers themselves. A new book gives readers vivid and detailed accounts of the devastation the U.S. occupation has brought to Iraq, in the soldiers’ own words.

“Winter Soldier Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupation,” published by Haymarket Books Tuesday, is a gut-wrenching, historic chronicle of what the U.S. military has done to Iraq, as well as its own soldiers.

Authored by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and journalist Aaron Glantz, the book is a reader for hearings that took place in Silver Spring, Maryland between Mar. 13-16, 2008 at the National Labour College.

“I remember one woman walking by,” said Jason Washburn, a corporal in the U.S. Marines who served three tours in Iraq. “She was carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading toward us, so we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher, and when the dust settled, we realised that the bag was full of groceries. She had been trying to bring us food and we blew her to pieces.”

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Star Tribune
Last update: September 18, 2008 - 8:57 PM

You don’t have to listen closely to hear those sabers rattling. The question is which do you prefer, cold war 2 or world war III? It seems … read more to me like we will get one then the other. Lucky us. And for all you “mystics” out there, the timing is right for something to go down on Dec 21st 2012.

LONDON - Seeking to reassure countries grown fearful of Russia, Western defense ministers will consider the creation of a rapid-response force that could be sent into nations feeling threatened by possible aggression, a senior U.S. Defense official said Thursday. Read the rest of this entry »

By StopTheWarCoalition 18/09/08 “StopTheWarCoalition” – - George Bush has signed a secret order allowing US troops to operate in Pakistan, without permission from the Pakistani government or agreement by the United Nations, contravening numerous international laws and conventions. Bush says the recent ground assault by US commandos and the big increase in the number of US missiles fired from unmanned aircraft are directed at al-Qaeda leaders, but the Pakistani government and local observers say that most of the dozens killed in these attacks have been civilians, the majority of them women and children. The Guardian newspaper suggests a different interpretation for these attacks: “Bush is thought to be in a desperate push for a trophy strike…before he leaves office.” No doubt part of the calculation is the hope that this will boost the electoral chances of John McCain in his campaign to succeed Bush as president.

Since 1945, American has bombed 25 countries round the world, killing many millions of people (some estimates put the figure as high as 20 million). But George Bush has a message for all the families grieving as a result of his contribution to this horrendous scale of mass slaughter. He recently expressed his sorrow, following the US attack in Afghanistan which killed 90 civilians: “I am a partner in your loss and that of the Afghan people.”

And, of course, all those grieving families will be comforted by an earlier Bush pronouncement: “America is a Nation with a mission — and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace — a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.”

By Robert Baer

17/09/08 “Time” - — - As Wall Street collapsed with a bang, almost no one noticed that we’re on the brink of war with Pakistan. And, unfortunately, that’s not too much of an exaggeration. On Tuesday, the Pakistan’s military ordered its forces along the Afghan border to repulse all future American military incursions into Pakistan. The story has been subsequently downplayed, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, flew to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, to try to ease tensions. But the fact remains that American forces have and are violating Pakistani sovereignty You have to wonder whether the Bush administration understands what it is getting into. In case anyone has forgotten, Pakistan has a hundred plus nuclear weapons. It’s a country on the edge of civil war. Its political leadership is bitterly divided. In other words, it’s the perfect recipe for a catastrophe. Read the rest of this entry »