http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/03/09/introducing-the-latest-orwellian-definition-of-terrorists-associates-of-associates/
Introducing the Latest Orwellian Definition of Terrorists: “Associates of Associates”
Am I the only one that finds it strange that, eleven years after 9/11, the government continues to hype up the never-ending “war on terror” more than ever in order to justify taking away more and more of our civil liberties? It seems that simply having to prove people are directly connected to Al Qaeda (our allies in Syria by the way), has become too much of a hassle for the hellfire missile happy Obama Administration, and they are now actively looking for easier ways to execute individuals without due process. The latest idea centers around the frightening concept of “associates of associates.” From theWashington Post:
A new generation of al-Qaeda offshoots is forcing the Obama administration to examine whether the legal basis for its targeted killing program can be extended to militant groups with little or no connection to the organization responsible for the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. officials said.
How convenient. When will Ron Paul supporters, OWS activists and hackers officially be classified as enemy combatants?
The Authorization for Use of Military Force, a joint resolution passed by Congress three days after the strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, has served as the legal foundation for U.S. counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda over the past decade, including ongoing drone campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen that have killed thousands of people.
But U.S. officials said administration lawyers are increasingly concerned that the law is being stretched to its legal breaking point, just as new threats are emerging in countries including Syria, Libya and Mali.
“The farther we get away from 9/11 and what this legislation was initially focused upon,” a senior Obama administration official said, “we can see from both a theoretical but also a practical standpoint that groups that have arisen or morphed become more difficult to fit in.”
The authorization law has already been expanded by federal courts beyond its original scope to apply to “associated forces” of al-Qaeda. But officials said legal advisers at the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies are now weighing whether the law can be stretched to cover what one former official called “associates of associates.”
Officials said they have not ruled out seeking an updated authorization from Congress or relying on the president’s constitutional powers to protect the country. But they said those are unappealing alternatives.
The debate comes as the administration seeks to turn counterterrorism policies adopted as emergency measures after the 2001 attacks into more permanent procedures that can sustain the campaign against al-Qaeda and its affiliates, as well as other current and future threats.
“You can’t end the war if you keep adding people to the enemy who are not actually part of the original enemy,” said a person who participated in the administration’s deliberations on the issue.
Administration officials acknowledged that they could be forced to seek new legal cover if the president decides that strikes are necessary against nascent groups that don’t have direct al-Qaeda links. Some outside legal experts said that step is all but inevitable because the authorization has already been stretched to the limit of its intended scope.
“The AUMF is becoming increasingly obsolete because the groups that are threatening us are harder and harder to tie to the original A.Q. organization,” said Jack Goldsmith, an expert on national security law at Harvard University and a former senior Justice Department official.
He said extending the AUMF to groups more loosely tied to al-Qaeda would be “a major interpretive leap” that could eliminate the need for a link between the targeted organization and core al-Qaeda.
So eleven years after 9/11, they are finally admitting that they want to make all the “emergency” measures permanent and that we aren’t fighting “Al Qaeda” anymore but rather “associates of associates” of Al Qaeda. You see where this is going? I do.
and.....
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/2013/03/10/-Deep-rifts-as-Syria-opposition-again-delays-talks-on-government-.html
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/2013/03/10/-Deep-rifts-as-Syria-opposition-again-delays-talks-on-government-.html
‘Deep rifts’ as Syria opposition again delays talks on government
AFP -
Syria’s National Coalition has for the second time in weeks postponed talks on the formation of an interim government, a senior member of the opposition grouping said Sunday, citing “deep rifts” on the issue.
The meeting was initially scheduled for last month in Istanbul but was postponed until Tuesday this week. It has now been delayed again, with a possible new date between March 18 and 20, said Samir Nashar.
He told AFP there were “deep rifts” within the opposition over the lineup of a future interim government and the selection of a premier.
“There are too many opinions... and this calls for more time and more consultations,” said Nashar.
“The new date has not been agreed but the next meeting could take place between March 18 and 20, most probably on the 20th,” he added.
The setback is due to divisions “on the idea of forming a (transitional) government,” said Nashar. He did not elaborate.
The opposition had been due to meet at the end of February in Istanbul to elect a prime minister for a government of opposition fighters-held zones, but the meeting was postponed amid pressure from the United States and Russia.
Washington and Moscow insisted that a transitional government emerge from talks between the Syrian regime and the opposition which for the past two years has been seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad.
Coalition members had stressed that Tuesday’s now-postponed talks were not expected to lead to the designation of an opposition prime minister.
The Arab League said last week it is prepared to hand Syria’s seat in the organization to the opposition if it sets up an executive body.
The meeting was initially scheduled for last month in Istanbul but was postponed until Tuesday this week. It has now been delayed again, with a possible new date between March 18 and 20, said Samir Nashar.
He told AFP there were “deep rifts” within the opposition over the lineup of a future interim government and the selection of a premier.
“There are too many opinions... and this calls for more time and more consultations,” said Nashar.
“The new date has not been agreed but the next meeting could take place between March 18 and 20, most probably on the 20th,” he added.
The setback is due to divisions “on the idea of forming a (transitional) government,” said Nashar. He did not elaborate.
The opposition had been due to meet at the end of February in Istanbul to elect a prime minister for a government of opposition fighters-held zones, but the meeting was postponed amid pressure from the United States and Russia.
Washington and Moscow insisted that a transitional government emerge from talks between the Syrian regime and the opposition which for the past two years has been seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad.
Coalition members had stressed that Tuesday’s now-postponed talks were not expected to lead to the designation of an opposition prime minister.
The Arab League said last week it is prepared to hand Syria’s seat in the organization to the opposition if it sets up an executive body.
http://rt.com/news/cia-blackwater-mossad-syria-037/
Mossad, CIA and Blackwater operate in Syria - report
Published time: March 07, 2012 09:28
Edited time: March 07, 2012 13:28
Edited time: March 07, 2012 13:28
Members of the Free Syrian Army patrol an area in Qusayr, 15 kms (nine miles) from Homs. (AFP Photo / STR / Ahmed Jadallah)
A security operation in Homs reveals Mossad, CIA and Blackwater are involved in the military violence in this part of Syria, as over 700 Arab and Western gunmen and Israeli, American and European-made weapons were detained in Baba Amr district.
Syrian security forces got yet further proof of Western powers’ military involvement in Syria’s internal conflict, reports Al-Manar, a news agency, affiliated with Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant group and political party.
Around 700 gunmen were recently arrested in the former rebel stronghold of Babar Amr.
“The captured gunmen held Arab nationalities, including Gulf, Iraqi, and Lebanese. Among them were also Qatari intelligence agents and non-Arab fighters from Afghanistan, Turkey, and some European countries like France,” the agency quotes Syrian expert in strategic affairs Salim Harba as saying.
Harba also confirmed to the agency that “a coordination office was established in Qatar under American-Gulf sponsorship. The office includes American, French, and Gulf – specifically from Qatar and Saudi Arabia – intelligence agents, as well as CIA, Mossad, and Blackwater agents and members of the Syrian Transitional Council.”
The Syrian expert also added the security forces have also seized Israeli-, European- and American-made weapons.
“The Syrian army also uncovered tunnels and equipments there,” he told to the agency, “advanced Israeli, European, and American arms that have not yet been tested in the countries of manufacture, in addition to Israeli grenades, night binoculars, and communication systems were confiscated by the security forces.”
Salim Harba however said the Syrian authorities are not planning to reveal all the obtained information now, but assured all the evidence is of high value.
“The Syrian security forces have documents and confessions that could harm everyone who conspired against Syria, and could make a security and political change, not just on the internal Syrian level, but also on the regional level,” he said.
The recent Stratfor leak and hacked email of the company’s director of analysis also suggest undercover NATO troops are already on the ground in Syria.
There have been previous allegations of a Western presence on the side of the rebels as 13 French officers were reportedly captured by the loyalist forces earlier in March.
President Bashar al-Assad has repeatedly claimed his regime is fighting not with peaceful protesters as claimed by the West, but with the military gangs supported by the West.
Western powers however have categorically denied any military involvement in Syrian internal conflict.
http://www.blacklistednews.com/US-British_Al_Qaeda_Airlift%3A_3%2C000_Tons_of_Weapons_Fuel_Syria%27s_Destruction/24648/0/38/38/Y/M.html
US-British Al Qaeda Airlift: 3,000 Tons of Weapons Fuel Syria's Destruction
March 8, 2013
Source: Tony Cartalucci, Land Destroyer
The primary reason, we are told, that the West must immediately begin wider operations to support the so-called Syrian rebels, is to head off extremists, namely Al Qaeda, from overrunning Syria. This narrative has been sold for nearly a year now, as it has become evidently clear that all major offensives in Syria against the Syrian people and their government have been led by Al Qaeda terrorist fronts, including most notoriously, Jabhat al-Nusra.It turns out, however, according the London Telegraph, that the US and Britain have already been arming terrorists operating in Syria for some time, including a massive airlift of 3,000 tons of weapons, sent across Syria's borders with Jordan and NATO-member Turkey. In the Telegraph's article titled, "US and Europe in 'major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels through Zagreb'," it is reported:
It claimed 3,000 tons of weapons dating back to the former Yugoslavia have been sent in 75 planeloads from Zagreb airport to the rebels, largely via Jordan since November
The story confirmed the origins of ex-Yugoslav weapons seen in growing numbers in rebel hands in online videos, as described last month by The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers, but suggests far bigger quantities than previously suspected.
The shipments were allegedly paid for by Saudi Arabia at the bidding of the United States, with assistance on supplying the weapons organised through Turkey and Jordan, Syria's neighbours. But the report added that as well as from Croatia, weapons came "from several other European countries including Britain", without specifying if they were British-supplied or British-procured arms.
With so much admitted involvement in the violence aimed at overthrowing Syria's government by the West, it is inconceivable that Al Qaeda could be "overrunning moderate forces" in Syria, unless of course, no such moderate forces exist, and the West had planned from the beginning to use Al Qaeda as a mercenary force. And indeed, that is precisely what is happening. It has been established with documented evidence since at least 2007, and reaffirmed with this latest report.British military advisers however are known to be operating in countries bordering Syria alongside French and Americans, offering training to rebel leaders and former Syrian army officers. The Americans are also believed to be providing training on securing chemical weapons sites inside Syria.
Pulitizer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, in his 2007 New Yorker report titled, "The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?"stated explicitly that:
"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."Is there any doubt that the US has executed this plot in earnest, arming and funding sectarian extremists "sympathetic to Al Qaeda" on both Syria's northern and southern border? Where else, if not from the West and its regional allies, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, could extremists be getting their weapons, cash, and logistical support from?
And of course, Syria's borders with Jordan and Turkey have been long-ago identified by the US Army's own West Point Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) as hotbeds of sectarian extremist/Al Qaeda activity - hotbeds that the West is purposefully funneling thousands of tons of weaponry through, while disingenuously claiming it is attempting to prevent such weapons from falling into the hands of extremists.
The CTC's 2007 report, "Al-Qa'ida's Foreign Fighters in Iraq," identified Syria's southeastern region near Dayr Al-Zawr on the Iraqi-Syrian border, the northwestern region of Idlib near the Turkish-Syrian border, and Dar'a in the south near the Jordanian-Syrian border, as having produced the majority of fighters found crossing over into Iraq throughout the duration of the Iraq War.
....
These areas are now admittedly the epicenters of fighting, and more importantly, despite being historical hotbeds of Al Qaeda activity, precisely where the West is flooding with cash, weapons, and military "advisers." Just like in Libya where the West literally handed an entire nation to sectarian extremists, we are watching a verbatim repeat in Syria - where we are told Al Qaeda terrorists are "pro-democracy" "freedom fighters" that deserve US cash, weapons, and support, when it couldn't be any clearer they aren't. Not only has the US and UK lied to the world about their policy toward Syria and their current level of support for increasingly overt terrorists committing an array of atrocities - their latest act including the taking of over 20 UN peacekeepers hostage in the Golan Heights - but have revealed once again the manufactured facade that is the "War on Terror."
and.....
http://www.blacklistednews.com/West%27s_Legitimacy_Collapses_as_it_Props_up_Hostage-Taking_Terrorists_/24637/0/0/0/Y/M.html
Source: Tony Cartalucci, BlacklistedNews.com
(IOGSD-Cartalucci) - The so-called "Syrian rebels" have taken dozens of UN peacekeepers hostage, demanding the Syrian Army withdraw its troops from its own nation's territory. The UN has confirmed that their peacekeepers are indeed being held hostage by what they call "rebels," and has demanded their release.
Image: Several of over 20 UN peacekeepers taken hostage by terrorists operating in Syria - operating with Western cash, arms, and immense, continuous political and media support. The inability of the West to condemn and recognize the so-called "rebels" as intolerable terrorists, ravaging an entire nation, inflicting death, injury and suffering upon tens of millions, is indicative of a West that has resigned entirely its legitimacy, and even feigned interest in the impartial application of international law. Worst of all, the West had purposefully planned this orgy of terror since 2007, not for promoting "democracy," but specifically to undermine and destroy neighboring Iran.
Despite this overt, criminal act of terrorism directed at the UN, the West has spun, downplayed, and otherwise ignored the incident, an incident that had the Syrian Army been behind, would have invoked howling indignation, frothing condemnation, and in all likelihood, full-scale military intervention.
Instead, the US Secretary of State John Kerry awarded the terrorists a whopping $60 million in what he called "non-lethal aid." The UK's Foreign Secretary William Hague also pledged support, including sending armor, vehicles and even weapons directly to the hostage-taking terrorists. This substantial and continuous torrent of cash, equipment, and weapons is sent to Al Qaeda terrorists even as both the US and UK sink in unprecedented domestic budget crises.
The West's Arab collaborators, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have led the Arab World in offering these verified Al Qaeda terrorists Syria's seat in the Arab League. The Arab League has given the green light (officially) to begin directly and openly arming the terrorists, though they have been arming them since at least 2007.
As the West coddles terrorists who are more overtly committing atrocities, both against the Syrian people, along Syria's peripheries, and even against international observers including the United Nations, they shed the remainder of their legitimacy. In fact, a US State Department, a British Foreign Office, and even a UN who refuses to condemn and entirely break off relations with an organization that takes hostages amidst a myriad of other atrocities documented over the past 2 years, already has absolutely no legitimacy.
The people of the West must realize their governments have descended into a dangerous psychosis and has abandoned even a face-value commitment to maintaining a rule of law. A nation not confined by law, or even attempting to pretend to be, is a nation capable of anything, on any scale, at any time.
The people of the West now reside in nations far beyond the red line. Now, more than ever, people must begin making hard decisions about their lifestyles and their patronizing of the West's corporate-financier monopolies. It is not the government or the individuals that constitute it that drive this agenda. It is the corporate-financier interests that create policy think-tanks, that literally write the scripts congressmen, presidents, secretaries and ministers read from - corporate-financier interests we patronize on a daily basis.
While we cannot change the current, perhaps terminal unraveling of Western civilization overnight, we can begin with small but significant steps in rolling back our dependency on corporate-financier monopolies by boycotting them and replacing them. Even a miniscule percentage of change in our lifestyles, month to month will have a profound, collective effect on usurping the unwarranted influence that has granted these insidious interests free reign over the planet and humanity. Decentralizing these monopolies is the ultimate goal, but will take hard work and patience - but it is a goal that most certainly can be achieved, and in many parts of the world it is already being achieved.
If we read the news of hostage-taking terrorists being showered with millions of our tax dollars and being allowed to destroy an entire nation after our own soldiers paid in blood to fight them in a 10 year faux "War on Terror" and are angered, searching desperately for a solution - getting self-sufficient, and decentralizing this war machine, thus returning the reins of power back to the people is that solution. That is real revolution.
The problems in Syria may seem distant, even if absolutely outrageous, but it is a symptom of a sickness our Western governments, amongst us, involved in our daily lives, suffer from. Refusal to treat the illness now, as it ravages Syria, will only allow it to get worse until it inevitably visits upon us the same unhinged hypocritical insanity it is now unleashing on the Syrian people. The fate of the Syrian people is indeed tied directly to our own wealth, prosperity, peace, and well-being. Failing to realize that is folly we shall pay for many generations to come.
(IOGSD-Cartalucci) - The so-called "Syrian rebels" have taken dozens of UN peacekeepers hostage, demanding the Syrian Army withdraw its troops from its own nation's territory. The UN has confirmed that their peacekeepers are indeed being held hostage by what they call "rebels," and has demanded their release.
Image: Several of over 20 UN peacekeepers taken hostage by terrorists operating in Syria - operating with Western cash, arms, and immense, continuous political and media support. The inability of the West to condemn and recognize the so-called "rebels" as intolerable terrorists, ravaging an entire nation, inflicting death, injury and suffering upon tens of millions, is indicative of a West that has resigned entirely its legitimacy, and even feigned interest in the impartial application of international law. Worst of all, the West had purposefully planned this orgy of terror since 2007, not for promoting "democracy," but specifically to undermine and destroy neighboring Iran.
....
Despite this overt, criminal act of terrorism directed at the UN, the West has spun, downplayed, and otherwise ignored the incident, an incident that had the Syrian Army been behind, would have invoked howling indignation, frothing condemnation, and in all likelihood, full-scale military intervention.
Instead, the US Secretary of State John Kerry awarded the terrorists a whopping $60 million in what he called "non-lethal aid." The UK's Foreign Secretary William Hague also pledged support, including sending armor, vehicles and even weapons directly to the hostage-taking terrorists. This substantial and continuous torrent of cash, equipment, and weapons is sent to Al Qaeda terrorists even as both the US and UK sink in unprecedented domestic budget crises.
The West's Arab collaborators, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have led the Arab World in offering these verified Al Qaeda terrorists Syria's seat in the Arab League. The Arab League has given the green light (officially) to begin directly and openly arming the terrorists, though they have been arming them since at least 2007.
As the West coddles terrorists who are more overtly committing atrocities, both against the Syrian people, along Syria's peripheries, and even against international observers including the United Nations, they shed the remainder of their legitimacy. In fact, a US State Department, a British Foreign Office, and even a UN who refuses to condemn and entirely break off relations with an organization that takes hostages amidst a myriad of other atrocities documented over the past 2 years, already has absolutely no legitimacy.
The people of the West must realize their governments have descended into a dangerous psychosis and has abandoned even a face-value commitment to maintaining a rule of law. A nation not confined by law, or even attempting to pretend to be, is a nation capable of anything, on any scale, at any time.
The people of the West now reside in nations far beyond the red line. Now, more than ever, people must begin making hard decisions about their lifestyles and their patronizing of the West's corporate-financier monopolies. It is not the government or the individuals that constitute it that drive this agenda. It is the corporate-financier interests that create policy think-tanks, that literally write the scripts congressmen, presidents, secretaries and ministers read from - corporate-financier interests we patronize on a daily basis.
While we cannot change the current, perhaps terminal unraveling of Western civilization overnight, we can begin with small but significant steps in rolling back our dependency on corporate-financier monopolies by boycotting them and replacing them. Even a miniscule percentage of change in our lifestyles, month to month will have a profound, collective effect on usurping the unwarranted influence that has granted these insidious interests free reign over the planet and humanity. Decentralizing these monopolies is the ultimate goal, but will take hard work and patience - but it is a goal that most certainly can be achieved, and in many parts of the world it is already being achieved.
If we read the news of hostage-taking terrorists being showered with millions of our tax dollars and being allowed to destroy an entire nation after our own soldiers paid in blood to fight them in a 10 year faux "War on Terror" and are angered, searching desperately for a solution - getting self-sufficient, and decentralizing this war machine, thus returning the reins of power back to the people is that solution. That is real revolution.
The problems in Syria may seem distant, even if absolutely outrageous, but it is a symptom of a sickness our Western governments, amongst us, involved in our daily lives, suffer from. Refusal to treat the illness now, as it ravages Syria, will only allow it to get worse until it inevitably visits upon us the same unhinged hypocritical insanity it is now unleashing on the Syrian people. The fate of the Syrian people is indeed tied directly to our own wealth, prosperity, peace, and well-being. Failing to realize that is folly we shall pay for many generations to come.
and......
Joint US-Israel-Turkish-Jordanian HQ to operate in Syria in chemical war
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 8, 2013, 6:51 PM (GMT+02:00)
USS Truman on standby for chemical warfare
A new US-led contingency headquarters for joint US, IsraelU, Jordanian and Turkish operations will go into action inside Syria if any or all these allies should come under chemical or biological attack. Agreement to establish this headquarters was finalized at the talks US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel held with visiting Israeli defense Minister Ehud Barak at the Pentagon Tuesday, March 5.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Hagel spoke of a chemical war in Syria in terms of an imminent and realistic eventuality. Washington expected the Syrian rebels close to al Qaeda to initiate this type of warfare and the Syria army to fight back in kind. Such an exchange could quickly spill over the Syrian borders to its neighbors, it was likewise predicted.
The abduction of 21 UNDOP Filipino UN observers Wednesday, March 6, by the Islamist Martyrs of the Yarmouk, is now seen as tying in closely with the next plans of the Islamist militias of the Syrian rebel force, headed by Jabhat al-Nusra, which are to cement their grip on the Syrian Golan, eastern Syria and the Upper Euphrates, where the important towns of Deir Azor and Abu Kemal are situated.
The abduction of 21 UNDOP Filipino UN observers Wednesday, March 6, by the Islamist Martyrs of the Yarmouk, is now seen as tying in closely with the next plans of the Islamist militias of the Syrian rebel force, headed by Jabhat al-Nusra, which are to cement their grip on the Syrian Golan, eastern Syria and the Upper Euphrates, where the important towns of Deir Azor and Abu Kemal are situated.
Therefore, the parties involved in their release refute the optimistic accounts of the blue-helmeted hostages’ early release issuing from Damascus, UN headquarters in New York and Middle East capitals.
By strengthening their holdings in eastern Syria, the Islamist militias believe they would pave the way for the creation of an al Qaeda-dominated territorial entity, the first of its kind, ranging from the eastern outskirts of Damascus to the northern approaches to Baghdad.
Jabhat al Nusra, al Qaeda’s most effective combat force in Syria and Iraq, is determined to go through with this plan, even if it necessitates fighting with the chemical or biological weapons they have managed to get hold of.
The kidnappings of UN observers have attracted worldwide attention and put the Islamist camp now dominating the Syrian rebel movement on the map as a force to be reckoned with and respected – internally and internationally.
The US defense secretary warned his Israeli visitor that the intelligence data reaching him indicates that al Qaeda and its affiliates will prefer multiple chemical attacks inside Syria and across its borders for greater effect, rather than aiming for single targets. Each of the victimized countries will then have to decide whether to react at once, or wait for the member-governments under the new headquarters to get their act together for a collective response.
Our military sources add that the new headquarters places under one roof the American, Israeli, Turkish and Jordanian counter-WMD commands operating separately since last year in Tel Aviv, Ankara, Beirut, Amman and areas abutting Syria.
According to those sources, although US defense spending cuts have held up the overhaul and refitting of the USS Harry S. Truman carrier and its strike force and their departure for the Middle East, the ship and its air combat unit are nonetheless on standby for deployment in the event of chemical warfare raising its head in the Syrian conflict.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/03/friends-of-friends-qaida/
Low on Targets, Obama Considers Killing Friends of Friends of Al-Qaida
- 03.07.13
- 10:30 AM
Airmen load an AGM-114 Hellfire missile onto an MQ-9 Reaper drone at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, April 2009.Photo: U.S. Air Force
Thought the post-9/11 law that gave the president power to wage a global war against terrorists was expansive? Wait till you see the 2.0 upgrade.
According to The Washington Post, the Obama administration is reconsidering its opposition to a new Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, the foundational legal basis of the so-called war on terrorism. That short document, passed overwhelmingly by Congress days after the 9/11 attacks, tethered a U.S. military response to anyone who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.” Nearly all of those people are dead or detained.
There are two ways to view that circumstance. One is to say the United States won the war on terrorism. The other is to expand the definition of the adversary to what an ex-official quoted by thePost called “associates of associates” of al-Qaida.
And that’s the one the administration is mooting. “Administration officials acknowledged that they could be forced to seek new legal cover if the president decides that strikes are necessary against nascent groups that don’t have direct al-Qaeda links,” the Post reports. Examples of the targets under consideration include the extreme Islamist faction of the Syrian rebellion; the Ansar al-Sharia organization suspected of involvement in September’s Benghazi assault; and Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the one-eyed terrorist who broke with al-Qaida but is believed to be behind the January seizure of an Algerian oil field.
Ansar al-Sharia may be the hardest such case, since it attacked sovereign U.S. soil in eastern Libya. None of those organizations and individuals, however, are substantially tied to al-Qaida. Which raises the challenge of any new legal authority: defining an adversary in a rigorous way, such that it both encapsulates the scope of the actual threat posed to the U.S. by associates of associates of al-Qaida and sets up the U.S. to actually end that threat. The bureaucratic mechanisms of the war are already outpacing a new AUMF, as drone bases get established in places like Niger, far from any al-Qaida operations, and the Obama administration codifies its procedures for marking terrorist targets for death.
The current AUMF already authorizes broad war powers to the president. As Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) noted in his filibuster of impending CIA director John Brennan Wednesday, it establishes a “war with no temporal limits” or geographic ones. In Pakistan, the U.S. doesn’t just launch drone strikes and commando raids against core al-Qaida remnants, it also kills unknown individuals believed to fit a terrorist profile based on observed pattern-of-life behavior. The CIA and Joint Special Operations Command are also waging a campaign against al-Qaida’s Yemen-based affiliate, an “association” never mentioned in the AUMF, albeit against an organization that has unsuccessfully attempted to attack the U.S. at home. Even in Yemen, the U.S. also carries out so-called “signature strikes” against anonymous targets. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) recently said that the drone strikes have killed 4,700 people, orders of magnitude more than were involved in the 9/11 conspiracy and core al-Qaida.
But if these campaigns have strained the authorities underscored by the AUMF, practically no one in Congress has objected, either on legal or strategy grounds. In fact, as Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) pointed out in 2010, more than half the legislators who voted for the AUMF in 2001 are no longer even in Congress, yet the wars persist while the adversary morphs. Changing that dynamic to constrain the war will be a major test of the durability and influence of the civil-liberties coalition that Paul’s filibuster seemed to inspire.
Yet when McKeon suggested a new AUMF, both to take into account a changed al-Qaida and to allow Congress to bless or reject that war, the Obama administration balked. Jeh Johnson, then the Pentagon’s top lawyer, called the existing AUMF “sufficient to address the existing threats.” There was a complication: the administration was concerned that the GOP-led House would expand the war even further, while simultaneously requiring the administration to expand the detainee population at Guantanamo Bay, undercutting a major administration initiative. The new-AUMF effort ultimately went nowhere.
Now, even if the administration and Congress still disagree on Gitmo, it would appear that at least some in the administration have reached consensus with McKeon’s point. That point, however, favors expanding and entrenching a war that the U.S. has shown no capacity to successfully end. Ironically, revisiting the AUMF arguably weakens the U.S. capacity to win the war, since it shows that when the U.S. reaches the end of its “kill lists,” it just shifts the goal posts and targets new terrorist organizations.
All of which contradicts the claim in Obama’s second inaugural address that “enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war” — which the Post reports makes Obama himself uncomfortable. It also undercuts the major points of a 13-hour filibuster that has Washington, and especially conservatives, enthusiastic. Political trends fade, but the war on terrorism manages to endure.
Let's see how our War on Terror has gone so far , looking at Iraq and Afghanistan ...
Military Decides You Shouldn’t See Key Data on Afghan Insurgency
- 03.06.13
- 10:15 AM
U.S. and Afghan forces discuss wartime detention operations at Pol-e-Charki, Afghanistan, January 2013. Photo: International Security Assistance Force/Flickr
One of the major metrics for the decade-long Afghanistan war is seriously flawed. Rather than fix the problem, the U.S.-NATO military command in Kabul has decided that you simply shouldn’t see the data.
Late last month, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) conceded that it misreported the 2012 statistics on Taliban attacks. Its explanation was that a data-entry error had discounted attacks reported by Afghan forces — so much so that a statistically insignificant change in the level of so-called “enemy initiated attacks” became a 7 percent decline from 2011 levels.
ISAF’s response, the Associated Press recounts, is to end public reporting on enemy-initiated attacks. It’ll still record attack levels, according to spokesman Jamie Graybeal, but it won’t publish any of the data it collects — all because it’s losing confidence in the veracity of its information. As Afghan forces take increasing control of the war, ISAF will cede control of overseeing the attack data collection. “We have determined that our databases will become increasingly inaccurate in reflecting the entirety of enemy initiated attacks,” Graybeal told the Associated Press’ Bob Burns, who broke the story.
This means ISAF is denying you a major metric for assessing the durability and the lethality of the insurgency, as well as, by inference, its freedom of movement. When U.S. officials in the future claim that they’re making progress, you will not be able to access the data underlying their claims. Indeed, ifISAF has lost confidence in its “increasingly inaccurate” attack data, then those generals themselves will have little basis for their own assessments. And all this data vanishes at the awfully convenient moment when the U.S. is increasingly handing over the majority of the fighting to a dubiously capable Afghan force.
Graybeal told Burns that a measurement ISAF used to tout as significant actually isn’t that significant. “At a time when more than 80 percent of the [attacks] are happening in areas where less than 20 percent of Afghans live, this single facet of the campaign is not particularly accurate in describing the complete effect of the insurgency’s violence on the people of Afghanistan,” Graybeal argued. But that assumes a confidence in the overall attack reporting data that ISAF itself is saying it lacks, and will increasingly lack as time goes on. As more of those sparsely-populated areas come under the control of Afghan forces, how will ISAF be confident in the attack data from those regions?
There are ways of assessing the Afghanistan war’s vectors that do not rely on ISAF attack reporting. One is to look at civilian casualties, independently reported by the United Nations team on the ground. The most recent data on civilian deaths and injuries found that the Taliban is responsible for the vast amount of such violence, and that for the first time since 2007, those numbers have declined. Another is to look at the extent of territory that U.S. forces hand over to their Afghan proteges, and how those Afghan soldiers and police hold the ground they’re entrusted with. But those are poor proxies for understanding the Taliban’s pattern, frequency and intensity of attack, none of which is robustly captured in either metric.
Abandoning the attack data represents a vote of no confidence in the Afghan forces that the U.S. is spending billions annually to finance. ISAF doesn’t trust the Afghans to represent faithfully when they come under attack, despite entrusting them with securing Afghanistan. Even if it’s the case that the Afghan National Security Forces, many of whom are illiterate, keep poor records, ISAF has the option of intensifying its training on data entry; making its reporting system easier for Afghans to use; or changing its procedures for auditing the Afghan security apparatus it plans to sponsor for years to come.
Perhaps ISAF will reverse its call. Until then, U.S. commanders are positioning themselves to misunderstand the war they’re waging. And the American public and the Congress will have even less basis for assessing the progress of the longest war in their history.
and Iraq - how is did those billions for reconstruction help there ? Billions lost , stolen or missing in action !
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/03/iraq-waste/
Over $8B of the Money You Spent Rebuilding Iraq Was Wasted Outright
- 03.06.13
- 6:30 AM
The never-completed Khan Bani Sa’ad Prison in Diyala, Iraq. Ultimately, the U.S. spent $40 million on the aborted project. Photo courtesy of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction
The legacy of all the money the U.S. wasted in Iraq might be summed up with a single quote. “$55 billion could have brought great change in Iraq,” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently told the U.S.’s Iraq auditor. In fact, the U.S. spent $60 billion in its botched and often fraudulent efforts to rebuild the country it invaded, occupied and recast in its image.
With the 10-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion looming, Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, considers $8 billion of that money wasted outright. And that’s a “conservative” estimate, Bowen tells Danger Room.
“We couldn’t look at every project — that’s impossible — but our audits show a lack of accountability,” Bowen says. “We are not well structured to carry out stability and reconstruction operations.”
That isn’t nearly the whole story of the Iraq War’s expense. Bowen is only looking at reconstruction money, not the cost of military operations in Iraq, which totaled over $800 billion. But on Wednesday, Bowen’s office released a mammoth, final report into the botched reconstruction, which cost the U.S. taxpayers, on average, $15 million every day from 2003 to 2012 — all for dubious gain.
It turns out there wasn’t just one way to waste all that money. Some projects got started and never finished, like a prison in Diyala province, shown above, that languishes unbuilt nearly nine years after the government spent $40 million to build it. Other contracts went to cronies: the top contracting officer in Hilla awarded $8.6 million to a contractor, Philip Bloom, in exchange for “bribes and kickbacks, expensive vehicles, business-class airline tickets, computers, jewelry, and other items.” Still others got needless cash infusions: one unspecified school requested $10,000 for refurbishments and got $70,000. Government contracting databases didn’t even have “an information management system that keeps track of everything built,” Bowen recounts.
“You can fly in a helicopter around Baghdad or other cities,” Iraq’s acting interior minister told Bowen, “but you cannot point a finger at a single project that was built and completed by the United States.” Shoveling money into a chaotic warzone created a “triangle of political patronage” that ensured corruption would be an “institution unto itself in Iraq,” in the view of the acting governor of the Iraqi central bank. (Iraq consistently ranks at the bottom of Transparency International’s index on corruption.) By contrast, David Petraeus, the U.S. general who led the 2007-2008 troop surge, told Bowen that reconstruction provided “colossal benefits to Iraq.”
Even projects that seemed like success stories ultimately under-delivered. Nine major reconstruction projects for Iraq’s energy infrastructure cost around $1.19 billion. By and large, they were each completed within two years of their original schedule, and are a major reason why Iraq’s energy supply stands at over 8,000 megawatts, compared to around 3,000 megawatts at the time of the invasion. The problem is, Bowen’s report finds, the estimated demand for electricity in the new Iraq is around 14,000 megawatts.
Lots of factors contributed to the misspent or missing cash. Rarely was it clear which of the alphabet soup of government agencies was in charge of the disbursement. The U.S. was overeager to hand over construction projects to Iraqis that lacked the capacity to finish them. Contractors flooded Iraq — there were nearly 174,000 contract personnel in Iraq in 2009, a larger force than the U.S. military ever fielded — but a persistent “lack of sufficient contracting personnel in Iraq weakened acquisition support, hampering project outcomes,” Bowen’s report concludes. The report considers the 2003 purge of Sunnis from the Iraqi government to be the bureaucratic equivalent of the Baghdad looting that occurred in the occupation’s early days.
Some U.S. reconstruction cash ended up being wasted during attempts to mitigate waste. A case in point was an effort the military loved, called the Commanders Emergency Response Program. As the name indicates, the program was basically walking-around-money, distributed at the discretion of military commanders, to hire Iraqis to work on short-term, high-value projects, thereby bringing economic dynamism — and an alternative to insurgency — to impoverished Iraqis.
To this day, Bowen finds, it’s impossible to say what the $4 billion program actually bought. Commanders’ record-keeping was inexact and incomplete. “This renders suspect commander narratives, academic studies, and other analyses that claim success based on that data,” the report concludes. (That includes $370 million that commanders famously used in 2007 and 2008 to pay Sunni insurgents not to fight.) Yet the program was exported to Afghanistan.
The legacy of the Iraq War, and the reconstruction effort, will be debated endlessly. One argument holds the U.S. should not attempt to destroy and then rebuild a foreign country it doesn’t understand. Bowen doesn’t go that far — “unrealistic,” he says. Agnostic on the wisdom of open-ended nation-building missions, Bowen contends that the U.S. can’t afford to do them in ad hoc ways, as experience teaches they require much greater structural oversight over the dumptrucks full of cash that they require.
But that hasn’t happened. “The U.S. government is not much better prepared for the next stabilization operation than it was in 2003,” his report laments. A bureaucratic reform Bowen pushed earlier in the Obama administration to consolidate reconstruction efforts went nowhere.
“If we don’t reform our approach to stability and reconstruction operations,” Bowen warns, “we can expect to confront once again the very significant challenges we saw in Iraq, albeit on a smaller scale.”
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