Drone Attacks, Generals & Corporations, Gulf Money & Al Qa'ida
December 30th, 2010 The CIA sends in the drones in an off the books war against the Pakistan bases of the Taliban. Civilians are killed and the populace of Pakistan is angered at the US incursions into their land.
Retired generals get fat paychecks as consultants for military industrial complex corporations. Stoking the machinery that keeps the contractors on the Defense Department gravy train. Wars are required to justify the expenditures.
Meanwhile Al Qa'ida gets donations from the wealthy citizens of Saudi Arabia to fund their war against the west. There is a fundamental sense of the righteous battling the decadent western imperialists in this conflict. It is one where radical conservative values are mixed in with pan-Sunni solidarity. Cynical rich sheiks party western style while they promote militant conservative values for the masses. Keep them poor and looking for God's will rather than spreading the wealth. Better to attack the western imperialist's dog soldiers, than the local plutocrats.
It is convenient that the Muslims have provided the US military machine an enemy just as the old Russian bear has been put to sleep. But then in a world where war is peace, there has to be a conflict at all times, if only to keep the money flowing to the contractors. But then the multinational corporations must have a dependable military force to protect their interests. The American tax payer and the poor kid who goes into the military pays. The poor Muslim kid who goes to the Madrassa for an education and winds up as a suicide bomber pays. The innocent bystander blown up in some Afghan or Iraqi village pays when the drone or the suicide bomb blows them to hell.
From Space Daily
US missile attack kills at least 15 in Pakistan
Miranshah, Pakistan (AFP) Dec 27, 2010
- US missiles killed at least 15 militants in Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt where the United Nations said Monday it was suspending food handouts in one district after a suicide attack. The missiles destroyed a vehicle and compound in North Waziristan, reputedly the country's most impregnable Taliban and Al-Qaeda fortress where US officials want Pakistan to launch a ground offensive to eliminate the militant threat. Local security officials said unmanned US aircraft struck Mir Ali village, 25 kilometres (16 miles) east of Miranshah, the tribal district's main town. The identities of the dead were not immediately known, but officials believed that most were Pakistani, rather than Afghan or Arab fighters. The Mir Ali area is a renowned stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban.
Intelligence officials and a local government official said the elders from a district of South Waziristan were summoned by the Taliban to Razmak, a town in neighbouring North Waziristan, on December 17 and are yet to return. Washington says wiping-out the militant threat in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt is vital to winning the nine-year war against the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan and defeating Al-Qaeda. The United States does not confirm drone attacks, but its military and the Central Intelligence Agency operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy the aircraft in the region. The covert campaign has doubled missile attacks in the tribal area this year where around 100 drone strikes have killed more than 640 people since January 1, compared to 45 killing 420 people in 2009, according to an AFP tally. Pakistan tacitly cooperates with the bombing campaign, which US officials say has severely weakened Al-Qaeda's leadership, but has stalled on launching an offensive in North Waziristan, saying its troops are overstretched.
Obama's other 'surge': US drone war in Pakistan
by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) Dec 23, 2010
As the United States pressed ahead with a grinding campaign in Afghanistan in 2010, President Barack Obama dramatically escalated another war across the border in Pakistan, using robotic planes to pound Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
The effect of the expanding covert war remains unclear and some skeptics have warned civilian casualties from the strikes could ultimately feed extremism in Pakistan's tribal areas. But US officials say Al-Qaeda's leadership has been severely weakened.
Coinciding with an influx of US troops in the Afghan war, Obama has pursued the "surge" in CIA bombing raids in Pakistan's northwest, despite criticism from rights groups that the strikes amount to extrajudicial killings.
As of December 17, Predator and Reaper drones armed with Hellfire missiles and precision-guided bombs carried out 113 strikes against Islamist militants in Pakistan, double the number in 2009 and more than the total number of raids conducted in the previous six years, according to a tally by the independent New America Foundation.
The covert bombing raids are backed up by a clandestine CIA-run paramilitary force of 3,000 Afghans, reportedly carrying out sensitive cross-border operations in Pakistan.
Unlike the nine-year-old conflict in Afghanistan, the drone war has steadily expanded with little US public debate while American officials avoid openly discussing the CIA raids.
"By the old standards, this would be viewed as a war," Peter Singer, author of a book on robotic weapons, "Wired for War," told a congressional hearing in March.
"But why do we not view it as such? Is it because it is being run by the CIA, not by the military and thus not following the same lines of authority and authorization?" he asked.
"Is it because Congress never debated it?"
Officials credit the drone strikes with knocking out hundreds of insurgents, including some senior figures, with media reports putting the toll as high as 897 militants.
The drone raids, and the civilian casualties associated with them, are deeply unpopular in Pakistan, placing the Islamabad government in an uncomfortable position.
The overwhelming majority of the raids are carried out in North Waziristan, and US officials have pressed Islamabad for permission to expand the drone war to other areas, according to the new book "Obama's War" by the Washington Post's Bob Woodward.
Critics question the tactic, saying militant networks are able to replace fallen leaders and that countering Islamist extremists requires prevailing in a broader struggle for the hearts and minds of Muslims.
The drone raids are akin to "going after a beehive, one bee at a time," former CIA officer Bruce Reidel told the New Yorker last year, and "the hive will always produce more bees."
But there are no other good options, he said.
"It's really all we've got to disrupt Al-Qaeda. The reason the administration continues to use it is obvious: it doesn't really have anything else."
For more of this article
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Obamas_other_surge_US_drone_war_in_Pakistan_999.html
From the Boston Globe
From the Pentagon to the private sector
In large numbers, and with few rules, retiring generals are taking lucrative defense-firm jobs
By Bryan Bender
Globe Staff / December 26, 2010
WASHINGTON — An hour after the official ceremony marking the end of his 35-year career in the Air Force, General Gregory "Speedy'' Martin returned to his quarters to swap his dress uniform for golf attire. He was ready for his first tee time as a retired four-star general.
But almost as soon as he closed the door that day in 2005 his phone rang. It was an executive at Northrop Grumman, asking if he was interested in working for the manufacturer of the B-2 stealth bomber as a paid consultant. A few weeks later, Martin received another call. This time it was the Pentagon, asking him to join a top-secret Air Force panel studying the future of stealth aircraft technology.
Martin was understandably in demand, having been the general in charge of all Air Force weapons programs, including the B-2, for the previous four years.
He said yes to both offers.
In almost any other realm it would seem a clear conflict of interest — pitting his duty to the US military against the interests of his employer — not to mention a revolving-door sprint from uniformed responsibilities to private paid advocacy.
But this is the Pentagon where, a Globe review has found, such apparent conflicts are a routine fact of life at the lucrative nexus between the defense procurement system, which spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and the industry that feasts on those riches. And almost nothing is ever done about it.
The Globe analyzed the career paths of 750 of the highest ranking generals and admirals who retired during the last two decades and found that, for most, moving into what many in Washington call the "rent-a-general'' business is all but irresistible.
From 2004 through 2008, 80 percent of retiring three- and four-star officers went to work as consultants or defense executives, according to the Globe analysis. That compares with less than 50 percent who followed that path a decade earlier, from 1994 to 1998.
In some years, the move from general staff to industry is a virtual clean sweep. Thirty-four out of 39 three- and four-star generals and admirals who retired in 2007 are now working in defense roles — nearly 90 percent.
And in many cases there is nothing subtle about what the generals have to sell — Martin's firm is called The Four Star Group, for example. The revolving-door culture of Capitol Hill — where former lawmakers and staffers commonly market their insider knowledge to lobbying firms — is now pervasive at the senior rungs of the military leadership.
For more of this article
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/12/26/defense_firms_lure_retired_generals/
War News Radio Site
http://warnewsradio.org/
From sify news
Saudi and Gulf States major sources of terror funding
2010-12-06 16:40:00
Last Updated: 2010-12-06 16:52:23
Riyadh: Saudi Arabia and oil-rich Gulf States continue to be major sources of funding for radical Islamist terror groups like al Qaeda and LeT and militant groups are suspected to be receiving hefty donations during the annual pilgrimage of Haj, leaked US documents have said.
"Private donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide", a leaked memo from the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in December 2009 reads.
While acknowledging that Saudi Arabia has made "crucial progress" in aggressively trying to close the terrorist funding tap, the document says that while Riyadh is serious about threat from terrorism to the Kingdom, "it is a challenge to persuade Saudi officials to tackle terror funding outflow from its soil".
Much of the terror funding outflows are from the private donors, according to the leaked cables with most of the Gulf States cracking down on terrorist sympathisers, but not running foul of Islamic charitable institutions, so as not to be seen as American stooges before their skeptical public.
US officials have complained that wealthy individuals in the Saudi Kingdom and Gulf States are making direct donations during the Haj or in the religious month of Ramzan and abundant informal money transfers done through hawala networks.
Though the US officials acknowledge that Saudi Arabia is now taking concrete steps to combat terror financing emanating from its soil, the Clinton cables draw a different picture of the situation in other Gulf States like Kuwait, Qatar and UAE.
The leaks said, Kuwait like Saudi is taking action against terror outfits that threaten the country, but "is less inclined to take action against financiers and facilitators based in the country plotting attacks outside.
Kuwait is described in the leaked cables as a "key transit point" for terror fundings as it lacks regulatory framework needed to monitor such activities.
A still grimmer picture is painted of the UAE, which the US cables say is a growing global financial centre, but has weak regulatory mechanism which makes it vulnerable to abuse by terrorist financiers and facilitation networks.
UAE has been identified as also a safe haven for corrupt Afghani officials looking to hide funds in the banks in the country.
http://www.sify.com/news/saudi-and-gulf-states-major-sources-of-terror-funding-news-international-kmgqEdijggd.html?tag=Qaeda
No comments:
Post a Comment