1 June 2007

Rice: U.S. not preparing for war vs Iran
Anne Gearan, AP, San Jose Mercury News online

'Madrid, Spain — The U.S. is not preparing for war against Iran and Vice President Dick Cheney supports that policy, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says, taking a swipe at a U.N. official who says he's worried about "crazies' who want to start bombing.

'"The president of the United States has made it very clear what our policy is. That policy is supported by all the members of his Cabinet and by the vice president of the United States," Rice said Friday [today].

'"The president has made it clear we are on a diplomatic course," she said in regard to U.S. opposition to Iran's nuclear ambitions.

'Rice ... was asked about the comments of the chief of the U.N. nuclear watchdog[, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA]. Mohammed ElBaradei was quoted by the BBC as warning against the views of "new crazies who say 'let's go and bomb Iran.'"

'Cheney is frequently the administration's most hawkish voice on Iran, but Rice said she did not know to whom ElBaradei referred. The United States does not rule out military action, but says there is no plan or intention to attack Tehran.

'Cheney has not publicly advocated an assault on Iran, but he used the deck of an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf last month to warn Tehran that Washington would prevent the Islamic republic from dominating the Middle East. [My emphasis.] ...'

2 June 07

An alleged plot to blow up fuel supplies at JFK Airport, says the US "Justice Department". One of the "plotters" is an ex-member of the parliament of Guyana.

One of the "plot's" trackers was Michael Sheehan, formerly an FBI agent, and now a security analyst for NBC.

Tony Blair (is he in a competition for the most squalidly-abject arse-licker of the petro-imperialist powere elite?) backs up a UK military claim that Iran is arming the Afghan Taliban (See May 2007 diary, under 22 May 07) ...

Iran arming the Taliban against the West, says Blair
David Blair, Daily Telegraph (UK), 26 June 07

'... in order to stir "chaos" and inflict more casualties on Western troops. ...

'In a wide-ranging article in The Economist, Mr Blair also conceded that al-Qa'eda had successfully manipulated public opinion of those in the West into believing that their own governments were responsible provoking the terrorist threat. [Nah, delete "for provoking".] ...

'Iran's Shia regime was once an arch enemy of the avowedly Sunni Taliban.

'But common antipathy towards America, Britain and the West appears to have thrust them together. [And the latest intelligence indicates they are being joined by by a Nazi-Jewish alliance. :-)] ...'

3 June 07

Britain's incipient Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will attempt to reintroduce tougher terror laws, including 90 days' detention without charge for terror suspects.

4 June 07

Twenty-four percent of British Muslims don't believe that the four alleged 7/7 suicide bombers did it, a survey for British Channel 4 News reveals, and a similar number think the government and/or security forces were "involved".

5 June 07

Lewis "Scooter" Libby, US Vice President Cheney's former top aide, has been sentenced to 30 month's jail for something to do with the "outing" of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz had spoken on his behalf.

7 June 07

The existence of secret CIA prisons for "terror suspects" in Poland and Romania has been confirmed. Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty has published a 76-page report on the matter.

The highest-value internees were held at a Soviet-era military base in north-eastern Poland (near Szymany airport), where they were subject to "waterboarding" and other torture methods. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed" and Ramzi Binalshibh were among the internees there, along with 39 others. Others, from Iraq and Afghanistan, were held in Romania.

Those running the camps reported directly to the political heads of Poland and Romania. NATO gave blanket approval to "rendition flights" transporting prisoners to these destinations.

The inclusion of Omar Saeed Sheikh's alter ego Khalid Sheikh Mohammed puts a question mark over this expose ...

(British Channel 4 News at 7pm)

8 June 07

In the UK, the Association of Chief Police Officers, ACPO, has concluded its investigation into illegal CIA rendition flights (see yesterday, 7 June 07) by saying there weren't any.

Come on! This was a bit like asking police chiefs in Arrow Cross Hungary to investigate the deportation of Jews to Nazi concentration camps.

In Milan, the in-absentia trial has begun of 26 Americans, 25 of them CIA operatives, regarding the abduction of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar in the city in 2003. Omar, an alleged terrorist inciter, was secretly flown to a US airbase in Germany, and from there to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.

The CIA agents are supposed to have worked using passports with false names. Another man, an Italian official who denies all wrongdoing, is on the same trial in person. The CIA expressed outrage, etc.

1,000 secret CIA flights revealed
Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian (UK), 27 April 06

and

Germany issues CIA arrest order
BBC News online, 31 Jan. 07, 10:42am GMT.

(Both mention Abu Omar.)

British Channel 4 News says that, contrary to claims by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) that they found no evidence of CIA torture flights through the UK, the police said they hadn't investigated the numerous flight records.

The UK government has hurried to back up the police claim.

10 June 07

A "civilian" aircraft (Casa 212?) seen recently at RAF Milford (?) (in fact a US refuelling stop) is a plane that has been used for CIA rendition flights. It is owned by Blackwater USA, Cofer Black's vehicle for carrying the petro-imperialist War Of Terror by privatized means.

A string of intelligence and government figures (John Scarlett, Sir ___ Dearlove, John Reid ...) failed to turn up at a parliamentary inquiry into these torture flights, with the exception of former Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon ...

(British Channel 4 News at 7:30pm)

11 June 07

A US court has ruled that President Bush lacks the power to detain indefinitely a Muslim "terror suspect" without trial. He has been kept on an oil rig off the American coast for the past four years.

"Kidnapped To Order", Channel 4's Dispatches programme (11 June 07 at 8pm BST), dealt with the CIA's rendition and disposal programmes for "Qaeda-associated terror suspects". The programme was "reported" by Stephen Grey (the author of Ghost Plane, about the rendition programme).

The first part dealt with Abu Omar, a preacher Kidnapped by the CIA in Milan and "rendered" to Egypt, where he says he was tortured. (Cf. above, under 8 June 07.)

The programme interviewed, amongst others, a "somewhat penitent" Tyler Drumheller, head of the CIA in Europe 2001-5. Someone said "30,000, 40,000, 50,000" were detained by the CIA under the process. In Pakistan, for example.

The second part dealt with secret CIA prisons in Europe, "since closed", as in Council Of Europe investigator Dick Marty's report. (See above, under 7 June 07.) A facility in southeastern Romania, which reported only to the Romanian president and two others (excluding the prime minister). Romania wanted to join the EU/NATO ...

A more important facility at Stary K____ty [northeastern Poland], where "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed", Ramzi Bin Al Shibh and Abu Zubaydah, (and about a dozen others, said Marty), were kept there. Waterboarding, noise, sleep deprivation, etc.

Rendition flights: false flight plans, Council of Europe obtained documents, Gulf Stream jet N379P.

In part three, the detention and transfer of people in African states (Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia). Wife and children of 1998 embassy bomber held as hostages.

Shaped explosive charges, of the type already used against "coalition" troops in Iraq, have turned up in Kabul, military sources have told BBC Newsnight. But the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan says its only an isolated instance.

12 June 07

Blair has attacked the opposition media (to the extent that it exists) in a speech, accusing it of the very things his own muppetocracy is guilty of.

The mirror crack'd from side to side.

Widespread fighting between Hamas and Fatah in the Gaza Strip. Former apparently attacking latter's bases and buildings. Some Palestinians fleeing to Egypt.

Hamas was, according to Labeviere (Dollars for Terror, pp.204-6), set up with Israeli help in the 1970s, as a rival to the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization.

("Hamas lays seige to Fatah strongholds", Daily Telgraph (UK), 13 June 07, p.16)

In tommorow's UK papers, The Guardian leads with a report on a UN report castigating the US diplomatic "failure" in the Middle East; while the Mirror has a story on upcoming trials by Evil John Reid's Home Office for the "chemical castration" of paedophiles. Convicts will be able to have their sentences shortened in return for accepting an injection.

Followed, no doubt, by brain fantasectomies for opponents of "the government's" (i.e. the US junta's) Mideastern policies. As in Germany in the late 1930s, policies to match concentration camps and mass gassing loom.

13 June 07

The prospect of a Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and a Fatah-run West Bank begins to emerge as Hamas continues to make military gains in the Strip.

A former UN envoy (?Alvarro ___) criticized the US for allowing this to happen through inaction.

14 June 07

Hamas continues to advance in Gaza, taking over the Fatah-controlled Preventive Security Service and intelligence buildings, and setting the Voice of Palestine radio on fire.

Later, moderate President Mahmoud Abbas's compound is taken over, and the president, apparently speaking from the West Bank, declares a state of emergency and dismisses the Hamas prime minister.

In the West Bank, Fatah fighters vandalize the Hamas HQ in Nablus.

Thus, a great Israeli plan to divide and destroy the Palestinians, apparently begun with the setting up of Hamas in the 1970s, moves into its late stages.

In the UK, some quango suggests "hit squads" to deal with problems in areas of "potential racial unrest". Language reminiscent of late 30s' Germany.

16 June 07

In Ramallah, Fatah fighters have stormed the Hamas-dominated parliament building.

18 June 07

The US and EU have recognized the Fatah government in the West Bank and promised aid. The Israelis are sealing off the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, where food supplies are running down.

An internet child-porn ring has been broken up and 700 suspects in 35 countries identified, including 200 in the UK. The ring was originally based in Toronto, Canada, then the USA, before moving to Britain, where the last head has been given an indeterminate sentence.

A 59-year-old policeman has been convicted of leaking "information" of planned Qaeda attacks in Iraq to The Sunday Times.

19 June 07

10,000 US troops are mounting a "major offensive against al-Qaeda" north of Baghdad. (Sky News ticker)

Seems an uneven fight. Do the Americans think they have a chance of winning? :-)

Some exposure of this murderous drivel below, under 26 June 07.

I'm reading ex CIA chief George Tenet's At the Center of the Storm: My years at the CIA (published April 07). Extract (from p.120):-

Once [Counterterrorist Center chief] Cofer Black had finalized his operational plan in the fall of 1999 to go after al-Qa'ida, [Charles] Allen [associate deputy director of central intelligence for collection] created a dedicated al-Qa'ida cell [!!] with officers from across the intelligence community. This cell met daily, brought focus to penetrating the Afghan sanctuary [of al-Qaeda], and ensured that [intelligence] collection initiatives were synchronized with operational plans. Allen met with me [Tenet] on a weekly basis to review initiatives under way. His efforts were enabling operations and pursuing longer-range, innovative initiatives around the world against al-Qa'ida. ...

The new unit was created more-or-less simultaneously with the SOCOM-DIA operation Able Danger — which liaison officer Anthony Shaffer also twice referred to as a "cell" ... (In his interview in Government Security News (2005).)

20 June 07

Continuing with ex-CIA boss Tenet's memoirs (pp.173-4) ...

Despite all the constraints on air travel in the United States [after 9/11], the British came over on September 12: Sir Richard Dearlove, the chief of MI-6; Eliza Manningham-Buller, the deputy chief of MI-5 [later to become notorious for her food-poisoning terror-agitprop]; and David Manning, Prime Minister Blair's foreign policy advisor. I still don't know how they got flight clearance into the country, but they came on a private plane, just for the night, to express their condolences and to be with us. [Wasn't that sweet!] We had dinner that night at Langley [the CIA's HQ] ...

21 June 07

2.2 million Iraqis are now refugees, most of them in Syria and Jordan. (What about in Iran?) (ABC News)

Added to an estimated (some time ago) two-thirds of a million dead, it means the cleaning out of the population of this first petro-imperialist target — necessary to secure petroleum supplies — is well under way.

24 June 07

Continuing with ex-CIA boss Tenet's memoirs (pp.260, 278-9). ... ...

... Bin Ladin may have provided the spiritual guidance to develop WMD [weapons of mass destruction], but the program was personally managed at the top by his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. ...

Another key al-Qa'ida connection to biological weapons was Yazad Sufaat, the Jemaah Islamiya associate who hosted the first operational meeting of the 9/11 hijackers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000. ... Sufaat was ... the self-described "CEO" [Chief Executive Officer] of al-Qa'ida's anthrax program. U.S. educated and with a Malaysian military background ... In 2000 had been introduced to Ayman al-Zawahiri personally, by Hambali, as the man who was capable of leading al-Qa'ida's biological weapons program.

... In 1999 al-Zawahiri had recruited another scientist, Pakistani national Rauf Ahmad, to set up a small lab in Kandahar, Afghanistan, to house the biological weapons effort. In December 2001 a sharp WMD analyst at CIA found the critical lead on which we would pull and, ultimately, unravel the al-Qa'ida anthrax networks. We were able to identify Rauf Ahmad from letters he had written to Ayman al-Zawahiri. Later, we uncovered Sufaat's central role in the program. We located Rauf Ahmad's lab in Afghanistan. we identified the building in Kandahar where Sufaat claimed [!] he isolated anthrax. We mounted operations that resulted in the arrests and detentions of anthrax operatives in several countries.

The most startling revelation from this intelligence success story was that the anthrax program had been developed in parallel to 9/11 planning. As best as we could determine, al-Zawahiri's program had been wrapped up in the summer of 2001, when the al Qa'ida deputy, along with Hambali, were briefed on the progress he had made to isolate anthrax. The entire operation had been managed at the top of al-Qa'ida with strict compartmentalization. [My emphasis.] Having completed this phase of his work, Sufaat fled Afghanistan in December 2001 and was captured by authorities trying to sneak back into Malaysia. Rauf Ahmad was detained by Pakistani authorities in December 2001. Our hope was that these and our many other actions had neutralized the anthrax threat, at least temporarily.

The investigation came only-too-close to the truth, with the emergence of suspect/scapegoat Steve Hatfill, before the developing purge of the FBI put an end to further possibility of investigation.

William Capers Patrick, former head of the US bioweapons program in the 1960s, was commissioned by Steve Hatfill et al to write a report on the methods a terrorist might use for anthrax mailing attacks. Hatfill was at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) at the time. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, the leading bioweapons expert at the Federation of American Scientists, says Patrick wrote the report "under a CIA contract to SAIC". Hatfill had indeed worked in a bioweapons capacity for the CIA, amongst others.

The report was commissioned after ther had been a number of hoax anthrax mailings. Patrick wrote it in February 1999, and predicted the amount of anthrax powder an envelope might contain — 2.5 grams — without being suspiciously bulky. The quantity in the letter sent to Senate Democrat majority leader Tom Daschle (in October 2001) was 2 grams. Patrick also suggested a maximum concentration of 50 billion spores/gram — a 20th of the actual concentration of 1 trillion spores/gram (the latter figure only known to have been matched in the US bioweapons program prior to its official abolition in 1969).

After the attacks, and because of the report, Hatfill became a subject of FBI investigation, though it denied he was a suspect; and Attorney General John Ashcroft named him as a "person of interest".

26 June 07

More exposure of the murderous lies of the petro-imperialist "war" on its Qaeda fantasy enemy ...

[Iraqi] village disputes story of deadly attack
BBC News online

'A group of villagers in Iraq is bitterly disputing the US account of a deadly air attack on 22 June, in the latest example of the confusion surrounding the reporting of combat incidents there. The BBC's Jim Muir investigates:

'On June 22 the US military announced that its attack helicopters, armed with missiles, engaged and killed 17 al-Qaeda gunmen who had been trying to infiltrate the village of al-Khalis, north of Baquba, where operation "Arrowhead Ripper" had been under way for the previous three days.

'The item was duly carried by international news agencies and received widespread coverage, including the BBC News website.

'But villagers in largely-Shia al-Khalis say that those who died had nothing to do with al-Qaeda. They say they were local village guards trying to protect the township from exactly the kind of attack by insurgents the US military says it foiled.

'They say that of 16 guards, 11 were killed and five others injured — two of them seriously — when US helicopters fired rockets at them and then strafed them with heavy machinegun fire.

'Minutes before the attack, they had been co-operating with an Iraqi police unit raiding a suspected insurgent hideout [which turned out to be a false alarm], the villagers said. ... '[The BBC's Jim Muir asks:] How many other coalition reports of successes against "al-Qaeda fighters" are based on similar mistakes, especially when powerful remote weaponry is used? [Shush, don't poop on the petro-imperialist party!] ...

'The incident also highlights the problems the news media face in verifying such combat incidents in remote areas where communications are disrupted, where direct independent access is impossible because of the many lethal dangers they would face [there are enough reporters "accidentally" blown away to verify this], where only the official military version of events is available. [My emphasis.]'

27 June 07

Tehran introduced petrol rationing for private motorists, in apparent anticipation of sanctions over its nuclear programme.

Iran is the world's fourth-largest petroleum exporter, but is a net importer of gasoline, as it lacks sufficient refining capacity.

Two petrol stations were burnt down by protesters.

In the US, the Senate's judiciary committee has ordered the White House to give up documents related to the surveillance of domestic terror suspects. Leahy, one of the anthrax-attack targets, and current chairman of the committee, is a prime mover here. He accused the administration of "a consistent pattern of evasion and misdirection" over the issue.

28 June 07

On the first day of the new Gordon Brown administration in the UK ...

Three British soldiers are killed in an attack in Iraq.

The Cabinet contains, "for the first time since Wellington", a former military bigwig, an admiral who is said to regard Brown as soft on Iran.

29 June 07

On the second day of Gordon Brown's administration ...

A "massive car bomb" (propane-gas cylinders, petrol, nails; a small explosive charge later denied) (discovered at 1am BST) is defused outside a West-End London nightclub ("TigerTiger" in the Haymarket). About five hundred people in the club at the time. The "bomb's" discovery apparently owed something to "luck" ... (Brown appeared to be distancing his new administration somewhat from the American petro-imperialists ...)

Later today, a second similar "car-bomb" is discovered nearby.

Both were found more-or-less "by chance". The first by a passing ambulance crew, who noticed fumes in the car. The second was towed away [!] by traffic wardens. Apparently both cars were illegally parked.

30 June 07

Up to 60 civilians were killed by a NATO airstrike on an Afghan village in Helmand province, local accounts say.

Six more killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli airstrikes, after Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel.

On the third day of Gord's administration ...

The UK has been put on the highest state of alert — "critical" — after a car with two men in it, either already on fire or bursting into flames on impact, drove into terminal doors at Glasgow Airport, behind which hundreds of people were waiting to catch planes. The two men tried to stop emergency crews dealing with the blaze caused. We didn't learn how. One of the men, on fire, "tried to run away".

A man "on fire from head to foot", according to a witness, crying "Allah! Allah!" and "throwing punches at" a policeman, was restrained by police on the ground (they apparently put him out, judging by a fire extinguisher next to him. And the reader may well imagine that he would behave "fanatically", too, if he were on fire from head to foot. [He had doused himself with petrol and set himself alight, according to an ITV News bulletin, 1 July 07 at 5:30am — a claim not repeated in BBC and Sky bulletins.]

But an "explosive belt" apparently worn by the man, turned out to be a false alarm. Well, it could have contained some of that oh-so-hard-to-detonate high explosive made from chapatti flour and hair bleach.

Four people have now been arrested in connection with the London and Glasgow "car bombs".

(BBC News 24)

The man on fire is "critically ill" in Paisley Hospital.

"Anti-terror raids" spread, and we can expect increased police surveillance at public places and events, etc.

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