Military Trials. Afghanistan. Powered by Google Docs. THE GIANT MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. Pew Study: Only A Third Of Veterans Who Joined After 9/11 Say Iraq And Afghanistan Were Worth Fighting. In a wide-ranging study surveying US veterans, the Pew Research Center documented the attitudes of service members who were involved in the conflicts associated with the War On Terror over the last ten years and those who served before it. The study unpacked data on veterans' perception of their missions abroad and their effectiveness, as well as their lives since returning to the US. The overarching perception seems to contain a disconnect between service members who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and those who served in previous wars: those from the post-9/11 era are more likely to report difficulty in re-entry to civilian life.
Pew surveyed over 1,800 US service members, over a third of which served during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the major results within the data was just how down veterans were on US involvement in those two countries. "Veterans are more supportive than the general public of U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq," reads the Pew report. Matt Taibbi on Rachel Maddow, the real Bush legacy of failure. Counterterrorism cooperation: High-tech vehicles gifted to FIA await clearance. Germany had undertaken to train, equip crime scene units in 2008-09. Germany had undertaken to train, equip crime scene units in 2008-09. LAHORE: Five state-of-the-art vehicles gifted by the German government to the Federal Investigation Agency for gathering evidence from sites of terror attacks are yet to be handed over to the Counterterrorism Wing, The Express Tribune has learnt.
The wing’s director Muhammad Khalid Qureshi has written to the FIA’s administration director, recommending that the vehicles must be distributed at the earliest. According to an official document available with The Express Tribune, the German government had undertaken to train and equip crime scene units in 2008-09. The wing, designed to specialise in counterterrorist investigations, has the mandate to arrest and prosecute high-profile terrorists. The wing replaced the Special Investigation Group (SIG) last year. Anwar al-Awlaki Is Killed in Yemen. Liam Fox 'proud' of UK arms and defence manufacturers. 13 September 2011Last updated at 16:54 Mr Fox will say he is "proud" of the companies and will also defend current export controls Defence Secretary Liam Fox is expected to give strong backing to the country's arms manufacturers in a speech later.
Mr Fox will say at an arms exhibition in London he is "proud" that the UK is the world's second biggest defence exporter and that helping the firms prosper is in the national interest. In April, a committee of MPs criticised the government for approving exports to states such as Libya and Egypt. The UK defence and aerospace sector employs an estimated 300,000 people. In a speech to mark the opening of the DSEI exhibition, Mr Fox will say the companies "play a key role" in promoting foreign policy objectives and furthering what he calls "enlightened international engagement". He is also expected to stress the industry's importance in stimulating economic growth.
Continue reading the main story Analysis Jonathan Beale Defence correspondent, BBC News. U.S. building secret drone bases in Africa, Arabian Peninsula, officials say. The U.S. military also has flown drones over Somalia and Yemen from bases in Djibouti, a tiny African nation at the junction of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. In addition, the CIA is building a secret airstrip in the Arabian Peninsula so it can deploy armed drones over Yemen. The rapid expansion of the undeclared drone wars is a reflection of the growing alarm with which U.S. officials view the activities of al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and Somalia, even as al-Qaeda’s core leadership in Pakistan has been weakened by U.S. counterterrorism operations. The U.S. government is known to have used drones to carry out lethal attacks in at least six countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.
The negotiations that preceded the establishment of the base in the Republic of Seychelles illustrate the efforts the United States is making to broaden the range of its drone weapons. “Because of operational security concerns, I can’t get into specifics,” said Lt. Cmdr. Reader’s Guide: Pakistan’s Terror Ties and the Shifting Relations Between Pakistan and the U.S. Pakistani military and police officials cordon off a street beside al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden's final hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 8, 2011. The U.S. raid that ended in bin Laden's death put the spotlight on U.S. -Pakistani relations. (Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images) Since 9/11, the United States has touted Pakistan as a “key ally” in the fight against terrorism, even though we’ve long suspected that some elements of the Pakistani government are working with the terrorist groups they claim to be fighting.
The relationship became even more strained after the United States discovered that Osama bin Laden was hiding in a town populated by Pakistan’s military elite, not far from the nation’s top military academy. Where do we stand with Pakistan right now? The location of bin Laden’s hideout has raised questions about whether the government knew of his whereabouts, though officials have denied for years that bin Laden was in Pakistan. The U.S. Demotix. Ten years after the invasion of Afghanistan, the Stop The War Coalition, CND and MAB held a lengthy mass rally in Trafalgar Square before marching to Downing Street to demand an end to the war. London, UK. 08/10/2011 Several thousand people came to Trafalgar Square at noon to show their support for the campaign to end the war in Afghanistan and other imperialist adventures by our government.
Since the war started 10 years ago, more than 550 British soldiers have been killed (382 in Afghanistan), and many maimed there in Iraq, where more than a million civilians have been killed. The NATO attacks on Libya, still continuing, are the third western war on a Muslim country. Among the speakers I did hear were Billy Hayes, rapper Lowkey, Lindsey German, Bruce Kent, John Pilger, Jemima Khan, Tony Benn, George Galloway and Julian Assange, who was at the centre of a huge media scrum both before and after his address.
Awlaki Killing Sparks Criticism on Left and Libertarian Right. For civil libertarians, the killing of the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was not a triumph for a military approach to terrorism but rather an example of its greatest shortcoming: a lack of due process. As my colleague Scott Shane reports, some legal authorities are deeply uneasy at the notion that the government can kill an American with no judicial process and far from a combat zone. That uneasiness was shared on Friday by those across the political spectrum, from Representative Ron Paul, the Republican of Texas who is running for president, to the liberal blogger Glenn Greenwald. “Al-Awlaki was born here, he’s an American citizen, he was never tried or charged for any crimes,” Mr.
Paul said, according to a CNN report. “To start assassinating American citizens without charges – we should think very seriously about this.” Mr. On his blog on Salon.com, Mr. Mr. In December 2010, a federal judge threw out a lawsuit by Mr. In a post after the Post report, Mr. Wikileaks cable corroborates evidence of US airstrikes in Yemen. US spies on Asia from secret bases. US spies on Asia from secret bases A file photo showing an American spy post in Australia. The United States uses a satellite base in Australia to gather information on military facilities of Asian states such as China, India and North Korea, a report says.
The Pine Gap satellite station, located in Australia's Outback, has been involved in the US-led wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans, AFP reported. Pine Gap -- one of Washington's biggest intelligence collection posts on the planet -- was designed by the US at the height of the Cold War. Representatives of America's most sensitive intelligence agencies are working at the station which is formally known as the "Joint Defence Space Research Facility. " Intelligence analyst David Rosenberg, who spent 18 years at the base, said that Pine Gap now aids the US-led "war on terror" and is also aimed at Asia's military boom. U.S. Official Defends Unilateral Pursuit Of Alleged Terrorists Abroad. CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (CNN) -- The United States reserves the right to pursue terrorists unilaterally in other countries, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said Friday night in a speech at Harvard Law School.
"The United States does not view our authority to use military force against al Qaeda as being restricted solely to 'hot' battlefields like Afghanistan, we reserve the right to take unilateral action if or when other governments are unwilling or unable to take the necessary actions themselves," Brennan told a conference on "Law, Security & Liberty After 9/11: Looking to the Future. " "That does not mean we can use military force whenever we want, wherever we want. International legal principles, including respect for a state's sovereignty and the laws of war, impose important constraints on our ability to act unilaterally -- and on the way in which we can use force -- in foreign territories.
" PKK launch deadly attack on Turkish police - Europe. Kurdish separatist fighters have attacked a police station in Turkey, killing five police officers and wounding nine in a clash in which three rebels were also killed, security sources said. They said Saturday's assault took place in the southeastern province of Siirt and fighting continued late into Saturday night. The attack comes at a time of heightened tension between the armed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Turkish military, which has launched air strikes and artillery barrages against suspected PKK bases in northern Iraq in retaliation for a spate of militant attacks inside Turkey. Earlier this month, Idris Naim Sahin, Turkey's interior minister, said Ankara was preparing a possible ground operation in northern Iraq, depending on the result of talks with Iraq. The semi-autonomous government of Iraq's Kurdistan region has voiced stiff opposition to the proposed incursion.
Secretary Clinton Delivers Remarks at the Launch of the Global Counterterrorism Forum. More:Global Counterterrorism Forum Documents On September 22, 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered remarks at the launch of the Global Counterterrorism Forum at the United Nations in New York. The Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) is a new multilateral counterterrorism body with 30 founding members (29 countries plus the EU) from around the world. During today's launch, Secretary Clinton said: "All of us are here because we recognize the threat that terrorism poses to people everywhere. "Ten years ago, I was a senator from New York, and so I have a very personal and longstanding, searing set of memories from what happened just a few blocks from here in New York with the attacks on the World Trade Center. "From London to Lahore, from Madrid to Mumbai, from Kabul to Kampala, it's innocent civilians who have been targeted.
"Now, in recent years, together we have made real progress against violent extremism. You can also read the Secretary's remarks here on state.gov. How Obama's destabilizing the world - War Room. It’s a story that should take your breath away: the destabilization of what, in the Bush years, used to be called “the arc of instability.” It involves at least 97 countries, across the bulk of the global south, much of it coinciding with the oil heartlands of the planet. A startling number of these nations are now in turmoil, and in every single one of them — from Afghanistan and Algeria to Yemen and Zambia — Washington is militarily involved, overtly or covertly, in outright war or what passes for peace.
Garrisoning the planet is just part of it. The Pentagon and U.S. intelligence services are also running covert special forces and spy operations, launching drone attacks, building bases and secret prisons, training, arming, and funding local security forces, and engaging in a host of other militarized activities right up to full-scale war. “Freedom is on the march in the broader Middle East,” the president said in his speech. An arc of freedom. Flooding the Arc The Arc of History. US and Pakistan agree to limit troops. Add Haqqani group to terrorist list: US senator. Senator Feinstein urges Hillary Clinton to formally designate Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist group. Despite being one of the most lethal militant groups operating in Afghanistan, the Haqqani network is not on the official State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. PHOTO: FILE WASHINGTON: The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee urged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday to formally designate the Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist group, after US officials accused it of high-profile strikes including last week’s attack on the US Embassy in Kabul.
“There is no question that the Haqqani network meets the standards for designation” as a foreign terrorist organization, Senator Dianne Feinstein wrote in a letter to Clinton. “I repeat my request that the Haqqani network should be listed as an FTO, and ask that you respond in writing,” Feinstein wrote. Any such talks now seem unlikely at best.
Sarkozy urges timetable on peace for Israel and Palestinians. Mullen - Pakistan’s Spy Agency Supported U.S. Embassy Attack. Autonomous Kill Bots Continue A Trend. An American team has developed software that enables an armed UAV to seek out, identify and attack (with a missile) targets, without any human intervention. While this created some alarming headlines, this capability is nothing new and first appeared during World War II. Work on these robotic weapons has continued since then, much to the joy of journalists looking for a scary story. Two years ago the U.S. Air Force released a report (Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047) in which they predicted the eventual availability of flight control software that would enable UAVs to seek out and attack targets without human intervention.
This alarmed many people, especially those that didn't realize this kind of software has been in service for decades. It all began towards the end of World War II, when "smart torpedoes" first appeared. Another post-war development was the "smart mine. " However, smart airborne weapons have also been in use for decades. Robert Fisk: It's not the brutality that is 'systematic'. It's the lying about it - Robert Fisk, Commentators. "What do you think I should do? " Daoud asked me. Get a lawyer, I said. Tell Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. Let me write about it. I had spent years in Belfast, listening to the same kind of arrogant, vicious, indifferent reaction to the Army's brutality. Hundreds of thousands of fine British soldiers behaving with exemplary courage and courtesy, in danger of their lives 24 hours a day – you will read this stuff in the usual newspapers today.
Where did all these "bad apples" come from, I used to ask, along with their complacent, complicit officers? It wasn't the brutality that was "systematic". Even the moment of Baha Mousa's arrest has never been truly investigated. The soldiers had found some weapons – perfectly normal in Basra where almost every household contained guns – but what the British didn't want to talk about just then was that Baha had told his father that several British troops had opened the hotel safe and stuffed currency into their pockets.
A bit systematic, perhaps?