source: Raw Story/AFP

The United States said Tuesday it will refrain this week from signing a treaty in Norway to ban cluster bombs, because the document is too broad and endangers US soldiers.

Some 100 countries will ban the use of such weapons when their delegates sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions on Wednesday in Oslo but major producers like the United States, China and Russia are shunning the pact.

“Although we share the humanitarian concerns of states signing the CCM, we will not be joining them,” the State Department said in a statement when asked for its views on the Oslo gathering.

“The CCM constitutes a ban on most types of cluster munitions; such a general ban on cluster munitions will put the lives of our military men and women, and those of our coalition partners, at risk,” it added.

The treaty, agreed upon in Dublin in May, outlaws the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions that primarily kill civilians.

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source: Associated Press/AP
picked up at: Huffington Post

by Pamela Hess

WASHINGTON — The United States can expect a terrorist attack using nuclear or more likely biological weapons before 2013, reports a bipartisan commission in a study being briefed Tuesday to Vice President-elect Joe Biden. It suggests the Obama administration bolster efforts to counter and prepare for germ warfare by terrorists.

“Our margin of safety is shrinking, not growing,” states the report, obtained by The Associated Press. It is scheduled to be publicly released Wednesday.

The commission is also encouraging the new White House to appoint one official on the National Security Council to exclusively coordinate U.S. intelligence and foreign policy on combating the spread of nuclear and biological weapons.

The report of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, led by former Sens. Bob Graham of Florida and Jim Talent of Missouri, acknowledges that terrorist groups still lack the needed scientific and technical ability to make weapons out of pathogens or nuclear bombs. But it warns that gap can be easily overcome, if terrorists find scientists willing to share or sell their know-how.

“The United States should be less concerned that terrorists will become biologists and far more concerned that biologists will become terrorists,” the report states.

The commission believes biological weapons are more likely to be obtained and used before nuclear or radioactive weapons because nuclear facilities are more carefully guarded. Civilian laboratories with potentially dangerous pathogens abound, however, and could easily be compromised.

“The biological threat is greater than the nuclear; the acquisition of deadly pathogens, and their weaponization and dissemination in aerosol form, would entail fewer technical hurdles than the theft or production of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium and its assembly into an improvised nuclear device,” states the report.

It notes that the U.S. government’s counterproliferation activities have been geared toward preventing nuclear terrorism. The commission recommends the prevention of biological terrorism be made a higher priority.

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Resources:

What is Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism a.k.a. The WMD Panel?

picked up at: 9/11 Blogger
source: Kevin Ryan’s Blog/American Buddhist

by Kevin Ryan

Learning about self-deception is important for all people today. That’s because many of our problems, both as individuals and as a society, are rooted in self-deception, and many of the ways in which others abuse us relate to our inherent tendency to self-deceive. We can overcome these problems, and have a decent chance at long-term survival as a species, only if we learn about such limitations, and strive to control them. One great way to rapidly learn about self-deception, and other forms of deception, is to learn about the events of September 11th.

It’s easy to see wide spread self-deception with regard to 9/11. For one thing, most people don’t know the actual official story, given by the 9/11 Commission and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). This is despite the fact that everyone, at least in the US, has invested essentially their entire future in that story, whether they know it or not.

Some have gone beyond simple avoidance of the facts, in an attempt to prevent themselves and others from looking closely at 9/11. These folks have gone to the extent of changing the definitions of common words, engaging in wild speculation and exaggerations, and suggesting that long strings of unprecedented events, including violations of the laws of nature, were possible on just that one day. These painful self-deceptions help some people dodge the emotional stress that accompanies careful examination of the events of 9/11.

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source: Washington Post

Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, December 1, 2008; Page A01

The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.

The long-planned shift in the Defense Department’s role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.

There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military’s role in domestic law enforcement.

But the Bush administration and some in Congress have pushed for a heightened homeland military role since the middle of this decade, saying the greatest domestic threat is terrorists exploiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, dedicating 20,000 troops to domestic response — a nearly sevenfold increase in five years — “would have been extraordinary to the point of unbelievable,” Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, said in remarks last month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But the realization that civilian authorities may be overwhelmed in a catastrophe prompted “a fundamental change in military culture,” he said.

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source: Global Research

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source: AFP/Raw Story

Outgoing US President George W. Bush plans to open a presidential library in Texas and found a “Freedom Institute” to promote democracy, his wife Laura Bush confirmed to Peru’s El Comercio daily.

“The president will build a library in Dallas — where we will move to — and a Freedom Institute,” she said in an interview published Sunday, as her husband wrapped up his participation in a weekend summit in Lima by Asia-Pacific leaders.

“The institute will give us both the opportunity to work on issues that are very important to us,” she said, according to the Spanish-language translation by the newspaper.

Laura Bush, a former teacher, said she wanted to return to the field of education, as well as “working for human rights for women in Afghanistan.”

Bush, who joked during the APEC summit about his upcoming “forced retirement,” is due to hand over power to his Democrat successor Barack Obama on January 20, 2009.

US media have already quoted aides and Texas lawmakers on the plans for the presidential library — in fact more of a museum, with documents and gifts accumulated during Bush’s time in office — and the Freedom Institute.

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source: Informed Comment

by Hasht-e-Sobh

Friday, October 3, 2008
Document Type: OSC Translated Text

Afghan article says US Bin-Ladin hunt phoney

(Text of article, “Bin-Ladin on the run? The rumour which was fact”, by Afghan independent secular daily newspaper Hasht-e Sobh on 29 September)

So, the rumour was right: French soldiers trapped Usamah Bin-Ladin, but were not allowed by the Americans to arrest the apparent fugitive leader of Al-Qa`idah. A Bin-Ladin documentary just released by French documentary cinema examines this issue, an issue which has led to heated debate in the French media.

This French documentary shows how the Americans are interested in continuing the game, a bloody and expensive game whose victims are only the unprotected and local people of our dry and dusty country. It was last year that rumours spread about this report in Kabul, but it has not been taken seriously by the media. But watching this revealing French documentary changes the rumours into disturbing facts. “Bin Laden, the failings of a manhunt”, produced by Emmanuel Razavi and Eric de Lavarene, two French filmmakers and reporters, assesses and confirms the claims of French soldiers that they could have killed Usamah within two operations, but the American forces prevented them. This film has not been broadcast publicly yet and is to be broadcast by Planet, a French network.

Even though French soldiers have insisted on this in the battlefield many times, the Elysees Palace in Paris and the White House in America have rejected this, and the Afghan leadership does not have any information about it yet!

The main question that arises is the extent to which the “Bin Laden on the run” project is a problem for America and Afghanistan. Seven years of suicide bombing and explosions, blood and violence, unmanned fighter planes, and old vehicles full of explosives, all to catch a long-bearded Arab whom America apparently hates? And an Arab who worked for the CIA in the name of Allah, and who now, also in the name of that same Allah, has conducted a jihad against that same CIA?

Facing the facts in this Usamah film is a bitter and disturbing experience and will make you nervous and wish that what it is that you are watching is just a baseless rumour, or a figment of Hollywood’s imagination. But it is not. The pictures are real and you are facing a debate in documentary form. The only justification for the bloody presence of America in Afghanistan is the ambiguous existence of Usamah Bin-Ladin and the Al-Qa’idah terrorist network.

George Bush, with his “war on terror” project, has transformed the middle east and Afghanistan into an inflamed bomb ready to explode, but has not found out anything about his beloved lost Usamah Bin-Ladin so far.

What is seen, and the film also emphases this, is that all these slogans, this fighting and killing are a game, a painful and prolonged game whose end even the players do not know and which is running out of control. Apparently, it is a game of cat and mouse, just like “Tom and Jerry”, the famous cartoon. But it is a reality that the stubborn one from Texas does not want to catch the mouse - unlike credulous Tom - and that the long-bearded Wahhabi Arab does not want to hide - unlike the intelligent and roaming Jerry. Their prolonged game has made not only the audiences tired but has also transformed the playground into a big pool of blood.

There have always been questions that neither the politicians have been willing to answer, nor the independent western media to raise. If Usamah is not the lost one of the Americans, then who is? What are the Americans searching for in Afghanistan and who are they looking for? The main media in the West remained silent before the report of the Usamah Bin-Ladin arrest by French soldiers. And, through a news boycott, they reduced a certain fact to a rumour.

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source: Raw Story

by Stephen C. Webster

Even as President-elect Obama vowed “to regain America’s moral stature in the world” during Sunday’s 60 Minutes appearance, two of his senior advisers confessed there is no intent to pursue those in the Bush administration who engaged in torture.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to the Associated Press, the advisers said that the plan is to put a stop to current interrogation methods and to “look forward” as opposed to focusing on prior transgressions.

The Obama transition team did not offer a response before the report was published.

Human Rights Watch, a non-profit watchdog group, is lobbying the President-elect for fast action on the abuses of the Bush era.

“For far too long, the United States has undermined its ability to fight terror by adopting short-sighted policies that allowed torture and indefinite detention without charge,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, in a Sunday release. “The United States urgently needs President-elect Obama to live up to his commitment to right the wrongs of the last seven years, and to regain the moral high ground in the fight against terrorism.”

The group is pushing for Obama to bring Guantanamo detainees into the United States court system, and admit released prisoners into the country if it is feared they may be subject to torture upon returning home. They are also calling for an executive order to require the CIA to follow the US military’s interrogation rules, and the establishment of an investigatory “truth commission” with subpoena power to enforce standing laws against officials charged with war crimes.

However, if the top candidate for Obama’s Central Intelligence Agency is any indication, the activists may soon be disappointed. The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan, citing a report by Mark Ambinder that Obama is close to appointing John Brennon, who served under former CIA Director George Tenet, Sullivan decried it as, “change we cannot believe in.”

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source: Telegraph.co.uk
By Tim Shipman
George W Bush is considering issuing pardons for US spies embroiled in allegations of torture just before he leaves the White House.

Senior intelligence officers are lobbying the outgoing president to look after the men and women who could face charges for following his orders in the war on terrorism.

Many fear that Barack Obama, who has pledged to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and put an end to the policy of extraordinary rendition, could launch a legal witch hunt against those who oversaw the policies after he is sworn in on Jan 20.

Most vulnerable are US intelligence officers who took part in intensive interrogations against terrorist suspects, using techniques including water boarding, which many believe crossed the line into torture.

A former CIA officer familiar with the backstage lobbying for pardons, said: “These are the people President Bush asked to fight the war on terror for him. He gave them the green light to fight tough. The view of many in the intelligence community is that he should not leave them vulnerable to legal censure when he leaves.

“An effort is under way to get pre-emptive pardons. The White House has indicated that the matter is under consideration.”

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source: Raw Story

The US economic crisis could well make life easier for US military recruiters, who have struggled in recent years to meet their services’ enlistment goals in a time of war.

“We do benefit when things look less positive in civil society,” said David Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. “That is a situation where more people are willing to give us a chance.”

The army and marines, in particular, have had to mount extraordinary efforts in recent years to attract fresh recruits at a time when many prospective candidates were put off by an unpopular war in Iraq in which more than 4,000 troops have lost their lives.

Despite the challenges, the military recruited more than 300,000 men and women in the fiscal year ending October 1, meeting or exceeding targets set by the individual services.

In all, 185,000 people signed up for active duty, and 140,000 for the reserves, according to the Pentagon.

“This is probably the strongest recruiting year we’ve had overall, taking all elements into account, since fiscal year 2004,” Chu told reporters Friday.

“So what difficult economic times give us, I think, is an opening to make our case to people who we might not otherwise have. And if we make our case, I think we can be successful,” he said.

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