Rupert Murdoch pressured Tony Blair over Iraq, says Alastair Campbell | Media. Rupert Murdoch joined in an "over-crude" attempt by US Republicans to force Tony Blair to accelerate British involvement in the Iraq war a week before a crucial House of Commons vote in 2003, according to the final volumes of Alastair Campbell's government diaries. In another blow to the media mogul, who told the Leveson inquiry that he had never tried to influence any prime minister, Campbell's diary says Murdoch warned Blair in a phone call of the dangers of a delay in Iraq. The disclosure by Campbell, whose diaries are serialised in the Guardian, will pile the pressure on Murdoch in light of his evidence to the Leveson inquiry.
The Cabinet Office released information on Friday that raised doubts about Murdoch's claim that Gordon Brown pledged to "declare war" on News Corporation after the Sun abandoned its support for Labour in September 2009. Murdoch tweeted in response: "I stand by every word is aid [sic] at Leveson. " Campbell said he had mixed views about Brown. Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal. Bush Convicted in Absentia: IT’S OFFICIAL - George W Bush is a war criminal. In what is the first ever conviction of its kind anywhere in the world, the former US President and seven key members of his administration were today (Friday) found guilty of war crimes. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisers Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo were tried in absentia in Malaysia. The trial held in Kuala Lumpur heard harrowing witness accounts from victims of torture who suffered at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They included testimony from British man Moazzam Begg, an ex-Guantanamo detainee and Iraqi woman Jameelah Abbas Hameedi who was tortured in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. At the end of the week-long hearing, the five-panel tribunal unanimously delivered guilty verdicts against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their key legal advisors who were all convicted as war criminals for torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.
The court heard how. Rumsfeld scrapped raid - 6 years before calling OBL kill 'easy call' (Reuters) My colleague Mackenzie Weinger just posted a comment from former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld questioning just how tough a call President Obama made when he gave the kill order to the SEAL team targeting Osama bin Laden. “You mentioned there was a tough decision,” Rumsfeld said on Tuesday night on Fox News. “I don’t think it was a tough decision. We’ve seen a lot of instances where presidents over the years have had to make decisions like that.” But six years ago, Rumsfeld himself called off a major raid in Pakistan, citing many of the same factors that Obama administration officials complicated the OBL mission.
In 2007, Mark Mazetti of the Times reported: A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials. Al Qaeda Porn Video: Terrorist Attack Plot Hidden In Pornographic Movie File. Documents reveal al Qaeda's plans for seizing cruise ships, carnage in Europe. German officials discovered al Qaeda documents encoded on porn videoCNN obtained access to details of the documentsMany shed light on future plots the terror group had planned, including on cruise ships Editor's note: This story is based on internal al Qaeda documents, details of which were obtained by CNN. German cryptologists discovered hundreds of documents embedded inside a pornographic movie on a memory disk belonging to a suspected al Qaeda operative arrested in Berlin last year.
The German newspaper Die Zeit was the first to report on the documents. (CNN) -- On May 16 last year, a 22-year-old Austrian named Maqsood Lodin was being questioned by police in Berlin. He had recently returned from Pakistan via Budapest, Hungary, and then traveled overland to Germany. His interrogators were surprised to find that hidden in his underpants were a digital storage device and memory cards. Buried inside them was a pornographic video called "Kick Ass" -- and a file marked "Sexy Tanja. " Major questions surrounding the Afghan war. A look at major questions surrounding the decade-long Afghan war: Why is the U.S. in Afghanistan? The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 because the Taliban were harboring al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden, who masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks. After the Taliban regrouped in 2005 and 2006, President Barack Obama ramped up U.S. involvement in the war after taking office in 2009. He said the goal was to reverse Taliban gains and "disrupt, defeat and dismantle" al-Qaida and its extremist allies who were allied with the Taliban.
How many U.S. forces have been killed? 1,796 U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan according to an Associated Press count. How many forces are still there? There were about 91,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan at the end of 2011. What is the status of the Afghan government? The Afghan government is almost completely funded by foreign donors, primarily the U.S. government. The central government has limited power outside of the capital.
What is the goal? U.S. support for attacking Iran would be illegal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington has provoked a broad debate over the military and political wisdom of an attack on Iran. But so far, there has been little attention to the legal issues involved, which are crucial. American support for a preemptive strike would be a violation of both international law and the U.S. Constitution. Article II of the Constitution requires the president to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed," and Article VI says that treaties are part of the "supreme law of the land. " Since the Senate overwhelmingly ratified the United Nations Charter as a treaty in 1945, the president is constitutionally required to abide by Article 51 of the charter. This provision allows states to use military force in self-defense only when responding to an "armed attack.
" Preemptive attacks are another matter. In 1981, the United States joined in the U.N. Today, we are at a crucial legal turning point. U.S. Soldier Opens Fire On Civilians In Afghanistan. (Adds details about suspect) * One or more U.S. troops opens fire on civilians * Witnesses say women and children killed in homes * Killings further inflame ties between Kabul and West By Ahmad Nadem and Ahmad Haroon KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, March 11 - A U.S. soldier was detained after 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, were shot dead in what witnesses described on Sunday as a night-time massacre near a U.S. base in Afghanistan's violent south.
While U.S. officials rushed to distance the apparent rogue shooting from efforts by a 90,000-strong U.S. force in Afghanistan, the incident is sure to fan Afghan anger after U.S. soldiers inadvertently burnt copies of the Koran at a NATO base last month. The soldier in custody was described by one U.S. official in Washington as a staff sergeant who was married with three children. Other officials in Washington said he was from a unit based in Washington state and may have originally been from the area. U.S. The U.S. The U.S. Is The Army Responsible for the Afghan Massacre. With the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan already at unprecedented lows, news on Sunday threatened to push U.S. -Afghanistan relations to a new crisis: a U.S. Army staff sergeant stationed in southern Kandahar, a married father of two children, had allegedly shot and killed 16 civilians, including 9 children, during a harrowing house-to-house killing spree.
American and Afghan authorities are scrambling to ensure this tragedy does not derail the planned departure of NATO forces in 2014, and it is smart to keep looking forward, but we must also not flinch from looking back as well: every war crime committed by U.S. forces calls for a reassessment and examination into how the tragedy could have been prevented. President Obama has the Pentagon moving swiftly and would “spare no effort in conducting a full investigation.”
(MORE: Rising Anger over an American’s Rampage, but Also Fear of U.S. Let us hope that that’s the case. (PHOTOS: The Afghan Massacre) MORE: Post-Massacre: Whither Afghanistan? US soldier kills 16 Afghans, deepening crisis. BALANDI, Afghanistan (AP) — An American soldier opened fire on villagers near his base in southern Afghanistan Sunday and killed 16 civilians, according to President Hamid Karzai, who called it an "assassination" and furiously demanded an explanation from Washington. Nine children and three women were among the dead. The killing spree deepened a crisis between U.S. forces and their Afghan hosts over Americans burning Muslim holy books on a base in Afghanistan last month. The Quran burnings sparked weeks of violent protests and attacks that left some 30 dead. Six U.S. service members have been killed by their Afghan colleagues since the burnings came to light, and the violence had just started to calm down. "This is an assassination, an intentional killing of innocent civilians and cannot be forgiven," Karzai said in a statement.
President Barack Obama phoned Afghan President Hamid Karzai to express his shock and sadness at the killing and wounding of Afghan civilians. Panetta arrives in Afghanistan amid uproar over killings of civilians. NEW: The suspect in the Afghan killings has been flown to Kuwait, a defense official saidObama vows to avoid a "steep cliff" when Afghans take full responsibility in 2014Cameron: We are in the "final phases" of the military mission An Afghan suffered severe burns in an incident, as Panetta arrived Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- The U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 civilians during a weekend rampage has been transferred out of Afghanistan while awaiting charges, the NATO command said late Wednesday. The still-unidentified Army staff sergeant was transferred on the recommendation of advisers to Gen. John Allen, the commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, and because "we do not have the proper facility in Afghanistan to detain him for longer than he is being held," said Capt.
John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman. The NATO command in Kabul said "some Afghan officials" were alerted about the transfer before it was carried out. The news came as U.S. Bombings greet Panetta in Afghanistan. Afghan official: Video shows soldier surrendering. KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The U.S. soldier suspected of killing 16 Afghan villagers on a rampage was caught on surveillance video that showed him walking up to his base, laying down his weapon and raising his arms in surrender, according to an Afghan official who viewed the footage.
The official said Wednesday there were also two to three hours of video footage covering the time of the attack that Afghan investigators are trying to get from the U.S. military. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. U.S. authorities showed their Afghan counterparts the video of the surrender to prove that only one perpetrator was involved in Sunday's shootings, the official said.
The shootings, which claimed the lives of nine children among the 16 dead, has further strained already shaky relations between the U.S. and Afghanistan. Some Afghan officials and residents in the villages that were attacked have insisted there was more than one shooter. U.S. U.N. Afghanistan. Suspect in killing of Afghan civilians identified. CIA seeks new authority to expand Yemen drone campaign. The practice has been a core element of the CIA’s drone program in Pakistan for several years. CIA Director David H. Petraeus has requested permission to use the tactic against the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, which has emerged as the most pressing terrorism threat to the United States, officials said.
If approved, the change would probably accelerate a campaign of U.S. airstrikes in Yemen that is already on a record pace, with at least eight attacks in the past four months. For President Obama, an endorsement of signature strikes would mean a significant, and potentially risky, policy shift. The administration has placed tight limits on drone operations in Yemen to avoid being drawn into an often murky regional conflict and risk turning militants with local agendas into al-Qaeda recruits. A senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations, declined to talk about what he described as U.S.
A quickening pace.