1 August 2007
The "Independent Police Complaints Commission" (IPCC), which has been investigating the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting, will report that the London Metropolitan Police's countertrrorism chief, Assistant Police Commissioner Andy Hayman, "deliberately misled" Met commissioner Sir Ian Blair (and hence the rest of us) about the shooting.
(British ITV News at 10:30pm)
Another Blair front-dummy?!
Are we likely to hear anything about London Underground security videos, taken by police and "found to be blank"? I doubt it.
2 August 2007
The UK's Daily Mail headlines police plans to take DNA samples from even those accused of petty crimes like speeding or dropping litter. (BBC Newsnight, paper reviews)
4 August 07
No confirmation about identity of Kafeel: Bangalore Police
The Times of India, 4 August 07, 14:10 IST, PTI
'... "We have not received any offical confirmation that the man who drove the burning jeep into Glasgow airman and died of burns on August 2 was Kafeel Ahmed," [Bangalore] City Police Commissioner N Achutha Rao said. ...'
(See July 2007 diary, under 18 July 07.)
6 August 07
The US military says that 200,000 guns it supplied to the Iraqi army have gone missing, and it is "feared" that some have ended up in the hands of insurgent groups. Which is a neat full-light-of-day cover for support of the pretext to prolong indefinitely the occupation of this oil-empire core.
A judge in Trinidad has agreed to extradite US three men accused of plotting to blow up JFK Airport. One at least is appealing the decision. The men are also accused of trying to get Iran's help to make an attack that "would dwarf 9/11".
And (aside from the obvious next-oil-target Iran) an attack dwarfing 9/11 is the only thing that would keep the petro-imperialist drive on message.
8 August 07
In the UK, investigators of the foot-and-mouth outbreak are focusing on the "American" laboratory Merial, near the infected farms. There are two labs at the Pirbright, Surrey, site: a government one, and Merial. The latter manufactures large-scale vaccines for foot-and-mouth. It is not known whether the infection was "deliberate or accidental".
(BBC 1 news at 8:00 am)
13 August 07
Karl Rove, President Bush's top adviser, has resigned (effective end of August).
14 August 07
One woman dead in Paisley, Scotland, from E Coli food poisoning, and another hospitalized in Ireland, apparently fromt he same outbreak. Believed to be from cooked meat sold at Morrisons supermarket in Paisley.
A quadruple car-bombing in a village near Mosul, northern Iraq, has killed at least 175 and injured 200. The attacks, one of which involved a petrol tanker, were on housing complexes inhabited by members of a pre-Islamic sect, the Azidi.
Major General Mixon, in charge of US forces in northern Iraq, conventionally blames "al-Qaeda", which, when pressed by the British Channel 4 News compere, turns out to be (Iraqi) "Sunni insurgents" (inspired by foreign "Qaeda" leaders).
18 August 07
"Ex" CIA operative (of course there's no such thing) Robert Baer allegedly replied, when asked if he was "of the opinion that there was an aspect of 'inside job' to 9/11 within the U.S. government", "There is that possibility, the evidence points at it." ("Robert Baer", Wikipedia, quoting Thom Hartmann interview, 9/11 Blogger.com, 9 June 2006).
But, in his recent novel Blow The House Down, Baer "imagines Iran as a player in the 9/11 plot". He makes further dark implications, and suggests that, in attacking Iraq, "the United States went to war against the wrong country in March 2003". ("Bad News Baer", Mother Jones, 5 July 2006)
Yeah, well we all know that Iraq wasn't the CIA's petro-target of choice. Baer, a no-such-thing-as-an-ex-CIA-agent, appears to be doing his bit to set up the next oil target.
20 August 07
British forces in Basra are confined to two enclaves, Basra Palace and Basra Airport, and are under constant fire. Within the last nine days two governors of southern provinces have been assassinated by roadside bombs.
22 August 07
The US Congress has released a 19-page summary of a 545-page CIA internal report into "intelligence failures" re. 9/11. The non-news reported from this is that the CIA knew the names of two fo the hijackers (presumably Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi), but failed to notify the FBI or anyone else. (We've known this at least since the Joint Inquiry of 2002/3.) Sixty CIA officers knew of the men.
(British Channel 5 TV News, 5:30 pm BST)
'Former intelligence director George J. Tenet and his top lieutenants failed to marshal sufficient resources and provide the strategic planning [!!] needed to counter the threat of terrorism in the years before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to a summary released yesterday [21 Aug. 07] of a long-secret CIA report.
'Despite promises of an all-out war against terrorism in the late 1990s, leaders of the spy agency allowed bureaucratic obstacles and budget shortfalls to blunt the agency's efforts to find and capture al-Qaeda operatives, said the report, by the CIA's inspector general. It also faulted agency leaders for failing to "properly share and analyze critical data."
'The 19-page document — a redacted [viz. censored] executive summary of a classified report given to congressional intelligence committees two years ago — called for the creation of a board to assess "potential accountability" for Tenet and other former CIA leaders. Its stark assessments triggered a sharp response, with Tenet and other former and current intelligence officials denouncing the inspector general's conclusions.
'"The IG is flat wrong," Tenet said in a lengthy statement.
'The CIA reluctantly released the report summary after Congress demanded that it be made public. Congressional leaders had requested the study specifically to determine whether individual CIA officials should be held accountable for intelligence failures before Sept. 11 or, alternatively, rewarded for outstanding service [Gee, Tenet, Cofer, thanks everso for flying airliners into key buildings so we had the excuse to invade Persian Gulf oil! Here's a billion bucks from the oil revenues .... well, we couldn't allow for a grand Dubya cockup of the scheme.]
'"Agency officers from the top down worked hard" against al-Qaeda but "they did not always work effectively and cooperatively," the investigators concluded. While finding no "silver bullet" or single intelligence lapse that might have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks, the report identified numerous "failures to implement and manage important processes" and "follow through with operations."
'The report says Tenet bears "ultimate responsibility for the CIA's lack of a unified, strategic plan for fighting al-Qaeda. The intelligence community "did not have a documented [!], comprehensive approach" to al-Qaeda, the document said, and Tenet "did not use all of his authorities" to prepare one. [On the contrary, Tenet's grand Plan (inaugurated September 1999) worked all too well.]
'Congress requested the investigation after a 2002 joint House-Senate intelligence probe that examined intelligence failures leading to [!] the Sept. 11 attacks. Members of a joint panel asked the CIA inspector general to review the panel's own findings and to begin a narrow investigation of the issue of accountability.
/The report, overseen by CIA inspector general John Helgerson, states that Tenet became "actively and forcefully engaged" in counterterrorism efforts before Sept. 11 and had even declared in 1998 that "we are at war" with global terrorism. But neither Tenet nor his deputies followed through by pushing for adequate resources and sharing of information among intelligence and law enforcement agencies, it said. Helgerson, a 36-year CIA veteran, was appointed inspector general by Tenet in 2002.
'Tenet said that the report is factually inaccurate and that it does not place his actions in the context of the times. In his statement, Tenet emphasized his repeated efforts to sounds alarms about al-Qaeda before Congress and inside the White House in the months before the attacks.
'"There was in fact a robust plan, marked by extraordinary effort and dedication to fighting terrorism, dating back to long before 9/11," said Tenet, who served as CIA chief from 1997 to 2004 ...
'CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, in a statement addressed to the agency's employees, said he had opposed releasing the inspector general's report, fearing that it would "distract officers serving their country on the frontlines of a global conflict." [That now cliched excuse.]
'"It will, at a minimum, consume time and attention revisiting ground that is already well plowed," Hayden said. Both he and predecessor Porter J. Goss have rejected calls for an "accountability board" to assess the responsibility of individual CIA officials. [Is this one area of Goss's responsibility?] ...
'The report also reveals that CIA analysts, before Sept. 11, had trained their sights of Khalid Sheik[h] Mohammed, who was later determined to be chief planner of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. [When he takes his beard off, does he change his name to Cofer Black?] At the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, the man known as "KSM" became a high priority for capture because of his connections to the organizer of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. But CIA analysts did not recognize that he was also a senior al-Qaeda planner [hadn't "promoted" him yet?], despite "reporting from credible sources," the investigators concluded.
'The report also sheds light on the agency's failures to identify Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, two al-Qaeda operatives who became part of the Sept. 11 hijacking plot. In the early months of 2000, as many as 60 intelligence officials saw agency cables concerning the two men's travels. [My emphasis.]
'Yet they were never placed on a watch list that might have resulted in their capture before the attacks, the report states.'
Retired US General Jack Keane (who oversaw the recent troop upsurge in Iraq) suggests that US troops ("special forces") may replace British troops withdrawing from Iraq. Like Fascist troops replaced by Nazis in 1943 Italy.
For the first time US President Bush has compared Iraq with Vietnam.
27 August 07
US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has resigned ...
28 August 07
Iranian president Ahmadinejad has declared that Iran is now nuclear, and US president Bush will talk about Iran in an upcoming speech, according to UK Sky News.
... "I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities" was a key soundbite of Dubya's speech.
French President Sarkozy made a speech supportive of this attitude.
A number of people from an Iranian ministry working in Iraq were later arrested.
The petro-imperialist beast, wounded but not extinct, and cornered by expiring administration time ...
Bush: Iran 'the world's leading supporter of terrorism
Haroon Siddique, The Guardian, 28 August 07
'George Bush stepped up the rhetoric over Iran today as he threatened to confront the regime "before it's too late" [for you, chum].
'The US president — speaking hours after the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said his regime was ready to fill the power vacuum in Iraq — accused the Tehran government not only of being behind Shia insurgents in Iraq but also of supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
'Mr Bush said Iran's nuclear programme would cast the Middle East "under a shadow of nuclear holocaust" and said the regime was the "world's leading supporter of terrorism".
'I will take all actions necessary to protect our troops," he said. "I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities." ...'
29 August 07
In Iraq, Moqtadr al-Sadr has called for a six-month suspension of activity by his Mahdi Army. The call comes a day after 52 were killed in clashes with the rival Badr Brigades militia in Karbala/Kerbala.
ITV Teletext news online BBC News online