Sunday, February 24, 2013

War Watch - February 24 , 2013 - Focus on Egypt , Syria and Afghanistan....

Hiding out tracks in Egypt , wonder what else we may be selling their without identifying documentation ?


http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/02/22-2


Stripped of 'Country of Origin' Label, US Agrees to Sell Tear Gas to Egypt

Canisters shipped without company's name, country of origin

- Andrea Germanos, staff writer
U.S.-made tear gas canister in Tahrir Square, on January 28, 2011. (Photo: Gigi Ibrahim / flickr)Egypt's Interior Ministry ordered 140,000 teargas canisters from the United States in January, which the US State Department only allowed to be exported without the company's name or any indication they were made in the U.S., the Egypt Independentreports Friday.
From letters between the Interior Ministry and Defense Ministry: "In light of the ongoing incidents and growing need for gas bombs to deal with rioters and preserve the nations safety, Al-Guindy Company for Imports and Exports, a representative of the US Combined System Company in Egypt, has been contracted to import 70,000 gas bombs and 70,000 long-range gas projectiles from the US to Egypt,” the letter stated.
From a memo written on January 28, 2013 by Major General Magdy al-Gohary, head of the Egyptian Department for Police Supply:
“The US government was stringent in issuing export permits for Egypt items that have been contracted since July, due to the unstable situation in Egypt and what was circulated by the media and rights groups about the US company’s effect on protesters while using [the gas canisters] against rioters in Egypt.”
“The permit from the US government was obtained after removing the company’s name and country of origin written on the items. While writing the memorandum on 28 January 2013, procedures were taken to ship the items via sea. They are expected to reach the Egyptian ports during the first half of April.”
The 140,000 gas canisters cost around $2,463,000.
On Thursday, US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland told the press, "Whether we’re talking about Egypt or any other country on the planet, frankly, we support the right of peaceful protest as one means for citizens to express themselves to their government. But protest has to be peaceful and the response to protest also has to be restrained and peaceful on the part of the government."


and after billion of dollars spent for training and arms - after a decade in country , we have just  produced a different group of corrupt warlords..........

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21566295

 24 February 2013 Last updated at 11:37 ET

Karzai orders US special forces out of Afghan province

File image of US soldier in Wardak province, AfghanistanUS forces see Wardak province, not far from Kabul, as strategically significant

Taliban Conflict

The Afghan president has ordered US special forces to leave Wardak province within two weeks.
The decision was being taken due to allegations of disappearances and torture by Afghans considered to be part of US special forces, said a spokesman for Hamid Karzai.
The strategically significant, central province of Wardak has been the recent focus of counter-insurgency operations.
A US statement said it took all allegations of misconduct seriously.
But the US could not comment specifically on this latest development "until we have had a chance to speak with senior government officials", the statement by a spokesman for US special forces said.
"This is an important issue that we must discuss with our Afghan counterparts," the statement said.

The Afghan president's office said the decision to order the expulsionof US special forces had been taken at a meeting of the National Security Council.
"After a thorough discussion, it became clear that armed individuals named as US special force[s] stationed in Wardak province engage in harassing, annoying, torturing and even murdering innocent people," it said.
Map
"A recent example in the province is an incident in which nine people were disappeared in an operation by this suspicious force and in a separate incident a student was taken away at night from his home, whose tortured body with throat cut was found two days later under a bridge.
"However, Americans reject having conducted any such operation and any involvement of their special force.
"The meeting strongly noted that such actions have caused local public resentment and hatred."
The presidential statement said Afghan forces were "duty bound" to put a stop to such behaviour, and urged local people to co-operate in bringing them to justice.
In a hastily convened news conference, a presidential spokesman suggested many of the allegations centred on Afghan citizens he alleged were working with US special forces.
"There are some individuals, some Afghans, who are working within these cells, within these [US] special forces groups" in Wardak province, said spokesman Aimal Faizi.

"But they are part of US special forces according to our sources and according to our local officials working in the province," he said.
He said all special forces must leave Wardak within two weeks.
Gateway
All operations by international special forces in the province have also been ordered to stop with immediate effect.
Wardak is seen as a gateway for the Taliban to target Kabul, says the BBC's Karen Allen in the capital.
She says this move to expel US forces has come as something of surprise for the Americans.
There is not much clarity as to who these Afghans are, our correspondent says - not, it seems, the local police who have come in for criticism in the past.
The accountability of US forces and local militia working with them has been a growing source of friction in Afghan-US relations.
A week ago, Mr Karzai banned Afghan forces from calling in foreign air strikes on residential areas, following the deaths of 10 civilians in a night raid in eastern Kunar province.
Mr Karzai gave a blunt statement for the reasons for the ban.
"Our forces ask for air support from foreigners and children get killed in an air strike," he said.
The argument over accountability comes against a backdrop of long-term negotiations over which foreign forces will remain in Afghanistan after Nato's exit in 2014.
The bulk of Nato's 100,000 troops are due to leave by the end of that year.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/afghan-forces-are-just-like-criminals-8508260.html?printService=print

Afghan forces 'are just like criminals'

Murder, sexual abuse, drugs and extortion revealed in Panorama investigation
Jonathan Owen
Sunday, 24 February 2013
Shocking revelations of murder, sexual abuse of young boys, unarmed civilians being shot at, police officers high on drugs, and routine kidnaps and extortion are exposing the true state of Afghanistan's security forces in Helmand province.
An investigation has revealed how Afghan forces running bases that British soldiers fought to secure are barely able to function – let alone pose a challenge to the Taliban.
More than 100 British soldiers lost their lives in Sangin before handing over to the Americans in 2010. Foreign troops are due to leave their combat role in Afghanistan at the end of 2014 – passing security to the Afghan government.
But the despair of the US marines advising Afghan forces is laid bare in scenes being broadcast on BBC1's Panorama tomorrow evening.
It reveals how three boys were shot dead escaping from police commanders who were sexually abusing them. Major Bill Steuber meets the deputy police chief, who claims the children want to stay at the bases and "give their bodies at night". Eventually he agrees to take action, but the operation to rescue the other "chai boys" used as sex slaves does not happen.
Major Steuber angrily gestures to a nearby Afghan patrol base commander :"who we know is kidnapping boys and sexually molesting them, robbing the people. He treats the people of Sangin like a piggy bank that he can just shake and rob and, you know, that's really difficult, you know. How do you work with a guy like that?"
Ben Anderson, the reporter embedded with the US marines, has been visiting Afghanistan since 2007 and said: "The police are behaving like the worst criminals imaginable." He added: "Even going out there with very low expectations I was still shocked at how widespread the abuse is and how it's not really being tackled."
Reacting to the investigation, Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, cautioned that Afghan forces "will not be ready to take on the insurgency alone when coalition forces leave. Instead many areas of the country will suffer brutality, abuse and corruption as well as surreptitious collusion with insurgents."
Afghan forces are seen under the influence of drugs, indiscriminately firing into the air without regard for civilians, and US soldiers discover four men kidnapped by police and used to barter with the Taliban.
The scenes are in stark contrast to the Defence Secretary Philip Hammond's assurances during a visit to Helmand earlier this month that transition is "on track" and that the Afghans "will be able to maintain security as the Isaf draw down."
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said in a statement: "We are unable to comment on the specific incidents raised by Panorama" and insisted the Afghan security forces are a "professional and capable force" in the "vast majority of cases" but admitted "real challenges remain across Afghanistan, including proper adherence to the rule of law and respecting human rights".


Syria follows track of Libya as islamic militias commit war crimes and the West influence is misleading......


http://www.infowars.com/west-pours-arms-into-syria-as-al-qaeda-mass-slaughters-civilians/

West Pours Arms into Syria as Al Qaeda Mass Slaughters Civilians

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Tony Cartalucci
Infowars.com
February 24, 2013
Repeat a lie often enough, and hopefully people will begin to believe it. That is what a concerted effort by Western media houses hopes to achieve as they claim the recent flow of heavy weapons  from Western nations and their Arab-Israeli partners is boosting “moderate rebels” and “tilting” the balance of Syria’s conflict against the Syrian government.
The Washington Post in particular, sets the tempo for this coordinated propaganda campaign, claiming in their report, “In Syria, new influx of weapons to rebels tilts the battle against Assad,” that:
A surge of rebel advances in Syria is being fueled at least in part by an influx of heavy weaponry in a renewed effort by outside powers to arm moderates in the Free Syrian Army, according to Arab and rebel officials.
The report also states:
The officials declined to identify the source of the newly provided weapons, but they noted that the countries most closely involved in supporting the rebels’ campaign to oust Assad have grown increasingly alarmed at the soaring influence of Islamists over the fragmented rebel movement. They include the United States and its major European allies, along with Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the two countries most directly involved in supplying the rebels.
The Washington Post refuses to use the term, “Al Qaeda,” and instead labels the international, Persian Gulf financed, armed, and harbored terror organization as, “radical Islamists.” It quotes an unnamed Arab official as saying,:
“If you want to weaken al-Nusra, you do it not by withholding [weapons] but by boosting the other groups.”

Al Qaeda and the “Moderates” are One in the Same

Al-Nusra, of course, is Al Qaeda in Syria and is linked directly to the openly Western-created and backed “moderate” opposition. Moaz al-Khatib, leader of the so-called National Coalition, demanded the US take al-Nusra in particular off their list of sanctioned terrorist organizations. In December of 2012, Reuters quoted al-Khatib as saying:
“The decision to consider a party that is fighting the regime as a terrorist party needs to be reviewed. We might disagree with some parties and their ideas and their political and ideological vision. But we affirm that all the guns of the rebels are aimed at overthrowing the tyrannical criminal regime.”
In the same article, Reuters would admit:
The United States designated the Jabhat al-Nusra (Nusra Front) as a foreign terrorist organisation and said it was trying to hijack the revolt on behalf of al Qaeda in Iraq.
While the Washington Post tries to claim Al Qaeda is somehow a separate entity from the “Syrian opposition,” the West’s own opposition front openly defends and supports Al Qaeda’s ongoing violence, which most recently manifested itself in a car bomb targeting scores of civilians, including school children.

As the West simultaneously accuses Saudi Arabia and Qatar (and here) of being the primary financiers of Al Qaeda, it itself has admitted years before the so-called “Syrian uprising” began that it was itself funding and arming extremist groups with direct ties to Al Qaeda with the goal of fostering the very violence now taking place in Syria and along its peripheries. The purpose of now repeatedly lying about arming only “moderate” militants in Syria, is to cover up both past admissions that the West planned to overthrow both Syria and neighboring Iran by arming and funding Al Qaeda since at least 2007, as well as obvious evidence that they are in fact doing just that in Syria now.

Image: (Left) The US Army West Point Combating Terrorism Center’s 2007 report, “Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq” indicated which areas in Syria Al Qaeda fighters filtering into Iraq came from. The overwhelming majority of them came from Dayr Al-Zawr in Syria’s southeast, Idlib in the north near the Turkish-Syrian border, and Dar’a (Daraa) in the south near the Jordanian-Syrian border. (Right) A map indicating the epicenters of violence in Syria indicate that the exact same hotbeds for Al Qaeda in 2007, now serve as the epicenters of so-called “pro-democracy fighters.” The Washington Post now claims that arming militants near Dar’a (Daraa) will help keep weapons out of extremists’ hands, despite the US Army long-ago identifying it as one of many Al Qaeda hotbeds.

US Admissions to Arming Al Qaeda in Syria as Early as 2007

In 2007, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled, “To Check Syria, U.S. Explores Bond With Muslim Brothers” which stated:
On a humid afternoon in late May, about 100 supporters of Syria’s largest exile opposition group, the National Salvation Front, gathered outside Damascus’s embassy here to protest Syrian President Bashar Assad’s rule. The participants shouted anti-Assad slogans and raised banners proclaiming: “Change the Regime Now.”
Later in the article, it would be revealed that the National Salvation Front (NSF) was in contact with the US State Department and that a Washington-based consulting firm in fact assisted the NSF in organizing the rally: 
In the weeks before the presidential election, the State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative, which promotes regional democracy, and NSF members met to talk about publicizing Syria’s lack of democracy and low voter turnout, participants say. A Washington-based consulting firm, C&O Resources Inc., assisted the NSF in its planning for the May 26 anti-Assad rally at the Syrian embassy, providing media and political contacts. State Department officials stress they provided no financial or technical support to the protestors.
The article then admits:
One of the NSF’s most influential members is the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood — the decades-old political movement active across the Middle East whose leaders have inspired the terrorist groups Hamas and al Qaeda. Its Syrian offshoot says it has renounced armed struggle in favor of democratic reform.
Also in 2007, reported by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his New Yorker article, “The Redirection,” it was stated (emphasis added):
“To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”

Hersh’s report would continue by stating:

“the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations.” -The Redirection, Seymour Hersh (2007)
Further admissions of a joint US-Israeli-Saudi conspiracy against Syria included:
“…[Saudi Arabia's] Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s whothey throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.” -The Redirection, Seymour Hersh (2007)
In regards to sectarian extremism in particular it was forewarned that:
“Robert Baer, a former longtime C.I.A. agent in Lebanon, has been a severe critic of Hezbollah and has warned of its links to Iranian-sponsored terrorism. But now, he told me, “we’ve got Sunni Arabs preparing for cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the Christians in Lebanon. It used to be the French and the United States who would do it, and now it’s going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites” -The Redirection, Seymour Hersh (2007)
While the Western media now concedes that Al Qaeda is playing a primary role in Syria’s violence, it not only is pretending as if open, and repeated admissions by US, Saudi, and Lebanese officials as far back as 2007 to organize and arm Al Qaeda in the first place never happened, it continuously attempts to frame Al Qaeda as being somehow separate, even opposed to “moderate rebels” – despite these “moderates” defending and embracing Al Qaeda’s al-Nusra front by name.
However, the West most certainly did organize, arm, and fund Al Qaeda ahead of the so-called “uprising,” and for each time the Washington Post, CNN, the BBC, the Guardian, or any other corporate-financier propaganda organization attempts to repeat lies regarding the West’s role in fomenting Syria’s current crisis, the truth must likewise be repeated.

The West with its Israeli, Saudi, and Qatari partners, created and have since fueled Al Qaeda for over 3 decades using them both as the ultimate casus belli and as an inexhaustible mercenary force from Mali, Algeria, and Libya, to Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan. Al Qaeda linked extremists are finding themselves a lynchpin in the West’s geopolitical agenda even as far as Southeast Asia where so-called “fundamentalist” groups are linking up with Wall Street’s proxy Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia.

Ultimately, the Washington Post concedes that terrorists are failing in Syria, and that even with the influx of heavy weapons, regime change may still be a far fetched goal. By matching the West’s repeated lies, with the repeated truth, we can prevent the attempted rewriting of the West’s admitted and shameful role in creating this 2-year long bloodbath as far back as 2007. Similarly, we must identify the corporate-financier interests driving this agenda – interests we most likely patronize on a daily basis, and both boycott and permanently replace them to erode the unwarranted influence they have used to both plan and execute this assault on Syria’s people.

http://enenews.com/ynet-syria-rebels-present-iaea-with-demands-over-captured-nuclear-facility-were-willing-to-cooperate-if-our-conditions-are-met-special-security-parameter-set-up

Ynetnews (Israel’s most popular news and general content website), Feb. 24, 2013: A spokesman for the Free Syria Army hinted Sunday that the rebels would be willing to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors into the Al-Kibar nuclear facility, which they seized last week. [...] “We’re willing to cooperate with the IAEA if our conditions are met,” the FSA said in a statement. The London-based Arab newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat further quoted a commander of one of the rebel brigades as saying [...] the FSA has set up a special security parameter around Al-Kibar, to protect it. The spokesman said that an FSA officer has been made the liaison to the UN agency and will present it with the rebels’ demands [...] He refused to tell the newspaper whether anything was found on the premises to suggest that the facility was used for nuclear work. “Those details will be given only to the IAEA,” he said. [...]





and...





http://news.antiwar.com/2013/02/22/us-blocks-un-resolution-condemning-damascus-bombing/

US Blocks UN Resolution Condemning Damascus Bombing

UN Envoy Issues Personal Statement Calling Attack a 'War Crime'

by Jason Ditz, February 22, 2013
Yesterday’s massive bombing attack near the Ba’ath Party headquarters in Damascus, an attack which left 100 people dead and 250 others wounded, the vast majority civilians, was a “war crime,” according to UN Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.
In a personal statement, Brahimi said that “nothing could justify such horrible actions that amount to war crimes under international law,” and said that he “strongly condemns” the attack.
Brahimi’s personal statement is going to be the closest we get to a UN condemnation of the killings, however, as the US has blocked a Russian resolution from moving through the UN Security Council condemning the attack.
The US denied being opposed to a resolution as such but wanted an alternative resolution that focused on condemnations of the Syrian government, while mentioning the bombing as a secondary concern. They went on to accuse Russia of blocking that statement, even though it mentioned the bombing in passing, and insisted that was the real opposition to the condemnation.
and...

http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=304207


Syria opposition spurns US, Russia in protest


By REUTERS

02/23/2013 02:20

Invitations to negotiate regime change turned down in protest of "international silence" after killing and destruction in Aleppo.

Scene of destruction in Aleppo
Scene of destruction in Aleppo Photo: Reuters
CAIRO - The main Syrian opposition grouping has said it turned down invitations to visit Washington and Moscow to protest what it described as international silence over destruction of the ancient city of Aleppo by Syrian missile strikes.
A statement late on Friday by the Syrian National Coalition, an umbrella group of opposition political forces, said it also had suspended participation in a Friends of Syria conference of international powers due in Rome next month to protest the attacks it said have caused many civilian casualties.

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