http://www.amazon.com/Rotted-Garden-Paradise-Iran-Zamin/dp/1439239444
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Dariush EGHBALI and SAVAK
Justice for All
Freedom, Justice, Honor, Courage
************************************************************************
Saturday July 18th, 2009
Dariush EGHBALI and SAVAK
Dariush EGHBALI appeared on Tapesh television program and alleged that SAVAK accosted him, and throw acid on his face. As usual liars like him have short memory, and would not remember everything. EGHBALI many times had said that when he was a young man in Iran, one married woman with two children, who was one of his fan, fell in love with him, and after he had fun with her, and no longer required her service, and wanted to go on his way. She throw acid on his face. In addition, EGHBALI had made anti-semitic remark.
As a result, EGHBALI lacked any kind of solidarity and credibility that he felt pain of Iranian or was on side of Iranian. He was on side of his pocket.
Thank you
Long Live Pure Divine Motherland of Iran
Peyman
Pawn
Googoosh {Faegheh ATASHIN} and Akbar GANJI
Justice for All
Freedom, Justice, Honor, Courage
************************************************************************
Saturday July 18th, 2009
Googoosh {Faegheh ATASHIN} and Akbar GANJI
It has come as shock and awe for Iranian community that Googoosh {Iranian pop singer} has decided to go to city of New York to meet Revolutionary Guard Akbar GANJI, and fast for three days in front of the United Nations in order to protest June 12th, 2009 result election of Iran that reform candidate Mir Hussein MOUSAVI was not elected to the President's Office in Iran.
Iranian community MUST not be shock that Googoosh is working with element of the regime in the US like Akbar GANJI. As a matter of fact, former selected president of Mullah, Mohammad KHATAMI granted permission to Googoosh to leave Iran so she would work as an eye and ear of the mullah regime outside of Iran.
Quite frankly, the Western media has not been so naïve about shamble reform movement in Iran like Maclean's Magazine on page 24 to 25 “New Rules of Engagement” clearly stated that it does not matter a reform candidate to be appointed to the president's office or a hardliner candidate to be elected to the office because there is an issue of nuclear proliferation of the regime in Iran which is lingering on international community.
Now, Googoosh and Akbar GANJI would do their little dance in front of the United Nations, but it is too late.
Thank you
Long Live Pure Divine Motherland of Iran
Peyman
Pawn
Friday, July 17, 2009
News from Senator Barrasso's Office
Dear Friends, The current health care proposals in Congress cost too much, cover too few and cause too many people who are happy with their insurance to lose the coverage they want to keep. I'd like to hear from you. Share your health care reform ideas on the “Senate Doctors Show,” where the U.S. Senate’s only two doctors -- Senator Coburn (R-OK) and I -- discuss health care policy and answer questions from across America about proposals being debated in Congress. The show airs online every Tuesday and Thursday at 2 p.m. (MT). Click here to watch previous shows and share your thoughts.I’ve been hearing some great ideas these past weekends from people at home in Wyoming. Please keep them coming. After all, the commonsense ideas haven’t been coming out of Washington, D.C. -- they have been coming from people like you.
Best wishes,U.S. Senator John Barrasso
Senator Barrasso meets with Wyoming students attending a conference this week in Washington, D.C.
Senator Barrasso TV
Barrasso talks with Greta Van Susteren of FOX NewsBarrasso on FOX News with Trace GallagherSenate Doctors Show, Episode 3
Barrasso on CNBC with Larry KudlowSenate Doctors Show, Episode 2
Barrasso on FOX Business talking about Senate Doctors ShowBarrasso on FOX News with Trace GallagherSenate Doctors Show, Episode 1Barrasso Speech on Equal Access Health Care Bill for Rural AmericansBarrasso on MSNBC with Ed SchultzBarrasso Floor Speech on Washington Takeover of Health CareBarrasso on FOX News with Gregg Jarrett
News from Senator Barrasso's Office
Barrasso: Mining Proposal Will Hurt Wyo. JobsMining reform proposals will push American mining jobs overseas
July 14, 2009
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) blasted new mining reform proposals that would ship Wyoming jobs overseas during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Hearing.
Click here to read more...
Senate Republicans to Launch the “Senate Doctors Show”LIVE. ONLINE. TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS.
July 8, 2009
WASHINGTON – Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) announced today a new, live, online show – “Senate Doctors” – broadcasting here every Tuesday and Thursday at 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. The first show will air tomorrow, Thursday, July 9, 2009 at 4:00 p.m.
Click here to read more...
“Culture of Intimidation” Rules EPABarrasso calls for a Senate Investigation into EPA activities
July 7, 2009
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) has called for a Senate investigation into the silencing of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials and Small Business Administration lawyers by the Administration.
Click here to read more...
Senator Barrasso in the News
Sen. Barrasso rising national GOP TV starWednesday, July 15, 2009
Rawlins Daily Times
Bill SniffinAs the national Republican Party reels from South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s gambits, Nevada Sen. John Ensign’s mistress mess and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s surprise resignation, it appears that the Grand Old Party may be looking for some fresh leadership.And Wyoming’s junior Sen. John Barrasso may be just the man.
Click here to read more...
Sen. Barrasso Makes a Name for Himself Fighting EPA, Climate BillJuly 15, 2009New York TimesWaving a handful of papers in the air at a recent Environment and Public Works Committee hearing, a Republican senator told the head of U.S. EPA that the nine-page memo he brandished proves her agency made political, not scientific, findings on possible regulations of carbon dioxide emissions.Click here to read more... Barrasso says proposals threaten Wyo industryJuly 15, 2009Casper Star Tribune
WASHINGTON -- An Obama administration plan to reform the nation's 137-year-old hardrock mining law could cripple Wyoming's bentonite and uranium mining industries, U.S. Sen. John Barrasso asserted Tuesday.Click here to read more... GOP Senators Start Online "Doctor" ShowJuly 9, 2009CBS NewsIt was no surprise when President Obama turned to his vast online resources to try and win support for his health care agenda. Now Republicans are trying to tap into the potential of the Internet to push their own health care ideas. Two Republican senators -- senators who happen to have medical degrees -- launched an online show today called "Senate Doctors."Click here to read more...
News from Senator Barrasso's Office
Dear Friends, The current health care proposals in Congress cost too much, cover too few and cause too many people who are happy with their insurance to lose the coverage they want to keep. I'd like to hear from you. Share your health care reform ideas on the “Senate Doctors Show,” where the U.S. Senate’s only two doctors -- Senator Coburn (R-OK) and I -- discuss health care policy and answer questions from across America about proposals being debated in Congress. The show airs online every Tuesday and Thursday at 2 p.m. (MT). Click here to watch previous shows and share your thoughts.I’ve been hearing some great ideas these past weekends from people at home in Wyoming. Please keep them coming. After all, the commonsense ideas haven’t been coming out of Washington, D.C. -- they have been coming from people like you.
Best wishes,U.S. Senator John Barrasso
Senator Barrasso meets with Wyoming students attending a conference this week in Washington, D.C.
Senator Barrasso TV
Barrasso talks with Greta Van Susteren of FOX NewsBarrasso on FOX News with Trace GallagherSenate Doctors Show, Episode 3
Barrasso on CNBC with Larry KudlowSenate Doctors Show, Episode 2
Barrasso on FOX Business talking about Senate Doctors ShowBarrasso on FOX News with Trace GallagherSenate Doctors Show, Episode 1Barrasso Speech on Equal Access Health Care Bill for Rural AmericansBarrasso on MSNBC with Ed SchultzBarrasso Floor Speech on Washington Takeover of Health CareBarrasso on FOX News with Gregg Jarrett
News from Senator Barrasso's Office
Barrasso: Mining Proposal Will Hurt Wyo. JobsMining reform proposals will push American mining jobs overseas
July 14, 2009
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) blasted new mining reform proposals that would ship Wyoming jobs overseas during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Hearing.
Click here to read more...
Senate Republicans to Launch the “Senate Doctors Show”LIVE. ONLINE. TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS.
July 8, 2009
WASHINGTON – Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) announced today a new, live, online show – “Senate Doctors” – broadcasting here every Tuesday and Thursday at 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. The first show will air tomorrow, Thursday, July 9, 2009 at 4:00 p.m.
Click here to read more...
“Culture of Intimidation” Rules EPABarrasso calls for a Senate Investigation into EPA activities
July 7, 2009
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) has called for a Senate investigation into the silencing of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials and Small Business Administration lawyers by the Administration.
Click here to read more...
Senator Barrasso in the News
Sen. Barrasso rising national GOP TV starWednesday, July 15, 2009
Rawlins Daily Times
Bill SniffinAs the national Republican Party reels from South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s gambits, Nevada Sen. John Ensign’s mistress mess and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s surprise resignation, it appears that the Grand Old Party may be looking for some fresh leadership.And Wyoming’s junior Sen. John Barrasso may be just the man.
Click here to read more...
Sen. Barrasso Makes a Name for Himself Fighting EPA, Climate BillJuly 15, 2009New York TimesWaving a handful of papers in the air at a recent Environment and Public Works Committee hearing, a Republican senator told the head of U.S. EPA that the nine-page memo he brandished proves her agency made political, not scientific, findings on possible regulations of carbon dioxide emissions.Click here to read more... Barrasso says proposals threaten Wyo industryJuly 15, 2009Casper Star Tribune
WASHINGTON -- An Obama administration plan to reform the nation's 137-year-old hardrock mining law could cripple Wyoming's bentonite and uranium mining industries, U.S. Sen. John Barrasso asserted Tuesday.Click here to read more... GOP Senators Start Online "Doctor" ShowJuly 9, 2009CBS NewsIt was no surprise when President Obama turned to his vast online resources to try and win support for his health care agenda. Now Republicans are trying to tap into the potential of the Internet to push their own health care ideas. Two Republican senators -- senators who happen to have medical degrees -- launched an online show today called "Senate Doctors."Click here to read more...
Thursday, July 16, 2009
B.C. Liberal Budget bombshell puts lie to Premier's election promise
B.C. LIBERAL BUDGET BOMBSHELL PUTS LIE TO PREMIER’S ELECTION PROMISE
VICTORIA – Today’s admission by B.C.’s finance minister that it’s not “near possible” to contain the provincial deficit to $495 million shows that Gordon Campbell wasn’t telling the truth during the provincial election, say the New Democrats.
“This admission puts the lie to the premier’s fundamental election promise that he would contain the deficit and protect vital social programs from deep cuts,” said New Democrat finance critic Bruce Ralston.
“It’s now obvious that the deficit is ballooning, and that deep cuts are coming to health care, education, and other key services that British Columbians need.”
Ralston noted that when Carole James challenged Campbell’s budget assumptions during the election, the premier accused her of “fear mongering”.
“This arrogant government can’t get its story straight,” said Ralston. “One day the deficit is $495 million ‘maximum’ and anyone who challenges that is fear-mongering. Another day and the deficit isballooning and the government claims no one could have seen it coming.”
Ralston said Finance Minister Colin Hansen’s attempt to explain the flip flops are not working.
“The minister’s effort to construct an alibi for this mess is just not credible,” said Ralston. “Colin Hansen claims the news that his numbers were flawed came from the federal government like a bolt outof the blue on June 24. But top business leaders have been warning him since February that his budget didn’t add up.
“Now British Columbians are paying the price. We’re getting both a bigger deficit and cuts to programs. We’ve already seen the start, with massive funding shortfalls at the health authorities and schoolboards, and layoffs are coming to vital ministries like environment and forestry,” said Ralston.
VICTORIA – Today’s admission by B.C.’s finance minister that it’s not “near possible” to contain the provincial deficit to $495 million shows that Gordon Campbell wasn’t telling the truth during the provincial election, say the New Democrats.
“This admission puts the lie to the premier’s fundamental election promise that he would contain the deficit and protect vital social programs from deep cuts,” said New Democrat finance critic Bruce Ralston.
“It’s now obvious that the deficit is ballooning, and that deep cuts are coming to health care, education, and other key services that British Columbians need.”
Ralston noted that when Carole James challenged Campbell’s budget assumptions during the election, the premier accused her of “fear mongering”.
“This arrogant government can’t get its story straight,” said Ralston. “One day the deficit is $495 million ‘maximum’ and anyone who challenges that is fear-mongering. Another day and the deficit isballooning and the government claims no one could have seen it coming.”
Ralston said Finance Minister Colin Hansen’s attempt to explain the flip flops are not working.
“The minister’s effort to construct an alibi for this mess is just not credible,” said Ralston. “Colin Hansen claims the news that his numbers were flawed came from the federal government like a bolt outof the blue on June 24. But top business leaders have been warning him since February that his budget didn’t add up.
“Now British Columbians are paying the price. We’re getting both a bigger deficit and cuts to programs. We’ve already seen the start, with massive funding shortfalls at the health authorities and schoolboards, and layoffs are coming to vital ministries like environment and forestry,” said Ralston.
Five years later, Campbell still refusing to come clean on tainted B.C. Rail deal
July 14, 2009
FIVE YEARS LATER, CAMPBELL STILL REFUSING TO COME CLEAN ON TAINTED B.C. RAIL DEAL
Communities Could Lose Vital Rail Service As Key Clauses Take Effect
VANCOUVER – As new clauses take effect on today’s five-year anniversary of the closing of the tainted B.C. Rail deal, Gordon Campbell's continued refusal to come clean with British Columbians is undermining the public interest, New Democrats said today.
"The premier is more concerned with ducking accountability for the corrupt B.C. Rail sale than with what's best for British Columbia. British Columbians deserve to know whether the five-year anniversary of thesale of B.C. Rail means that we will now start seeing sections of the railway abandoned, but Gordon Campbell has refused to come clean about the true nature of the tainted deal,” said New Democrat Attorney General critic Leonard Krog.
"What little we do know about this tainted deal leads to some serious questions. Did the Campbell government sign away the rights of local communities by allowing sections of the rail line to be abandoned after five years, potentially putting thousands of jobs at risk in communities that rely on rail to transport products to market?”
A highly-severed version of the B.C. Rail deal, released in August 2004 in response to a FOI request from the New Democrats, includes clauses that allow Canadian National to stop service to portions of the rail line. The premier has also said the contract allows the government to sell off rail lands for one dollar. Despite public pressure, the Campbell government has never released a complete version of the contract.
“If Gordon Campbell really cared about transparency, he would release the full B.C. Rail contract. Instead, his government continues to stonewall and refuses to answer even the most basic questions about the impact of this scandal for British Columbians,” said Krog.
Krog noted that since large sections of the B.C. Rail deal have never been released, there may be significant clauses in the deal that British Columbians have not been made aware of. “What other clauses exist that the public isn’t even aware of yet? Will we be in for even more surprises?” said Krog.
Carole James and the New Democrats have called for a public inquiry into the sale of B.C. Rail since the Campbell government pushed through the highly controversial deal, after breaking their promise to keep B.C. Rail in public hands.
Communities Could Lose Vital Rail Service As Key Clauses Take Effect
VANCOUVER – As new clauses take effect on today’s five-year anniversary of the closing of the tainted B.C. Rail deal, Gordon Campbell's continued refusal to come clean with British Columbians is undermining the public interest, New Democrats said today.
"The premier is more concerned with ducking accountability for the corrupt B.C. Rail sale than with what's best for British Columbia. British Columbians deserve to know whether the five-year anniversary of thesale of B.C. Rail means that we will now start seeing sections of the railway abandoned, but Gordon Campbell has refused to come clean about the true nature of the tainted deal,” said New Democrat Attorney General critic Leonard Krog.
"What little we do know about this tainted deal leads to some serious questions. Did the Campbell government sign away the rights of local communities by allowing sections of the rail line to be abandoned after five years, potentially putting thousands of jobs at risk in communities that rely on rail to transport products to market?”
A highly-severed version of the B.C. Rail deal, released in August 2004 in response to a FOI request from the New Democrats, includes clauses that allow Canadian National to stop service to portions of the rail line. The premier has also said the contract allows the government to sell off rail lands for one dollar. Despite public pressure, the Campbell government has never released a complete version of the contract.
“If Gordon Campbell really cared about transparency, he would release the full B.C. Rail contract. Instead, his government continues to stonewall and refuses to answer even the most basic questions about the impact of this scandal for British Columbians,” said Krog.
Krog noted that since large sections of the B.C. Rail deal have never been released, there may be significant clauses in the deal that British Columbians have not been made aware of. “What other clauses exist that the public isn’t even aware of yet? Will we be in for even more surprises?” said Krog.
Carole James and the New Democrats have called for a public inquiry into the sale of B.C. Rail since the Campbell government pushed through the highly controversial deal, after breaking their promise to keep B.C. Rail in public hands.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
There is no freedom in Canada
In these video clips you can see how vicious is Canada police and how well police in Canada works with outlaws.
There is no freedom in Canada
In these video clips you can see how police in Canada works with outlaws.
I just earned my Project Management Certificate
This is to certify that
Peyman DOUSTI
Has successfully completed an equivalent course to
PM 200 - Introduction to Professional Project Management
2736 – PM200: 14 PDUs
Course Date: May 9 and 10, 2009
__________________________________
Dale XXX, PhD, PMP
Executive Director
Project Management Centre of Excellence
Peyman DOUSTI
Has successfully completed an equivalent course to
PM 200 - Introduction to Professional Project Management
2736 – PM200: 14 PDUs
Course Date: May 9 and 10, 2009
__________________________________
Dale XXX, PhD, PMP
Executive Director
Project Management Centre of Excellence
U.S.: Reaction to the CIA Assassination Program
By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton
On June 23, 2009, Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta learned of a highly compartmentalized program to assassinate al Qaeda operatives that was launched by the CIA in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. When Panetta found out that the covert program had not been disclosed to Congress, he canceled it and then called an emergency meeting June 24 to brief congressional oversight committees on the program. Over the past week, many details of the program have been leaked to the press and the issue has received extensive media coverage.
That a program existed to assassinate al Qaeda leaders should certainly come as no surprise to anyone. It has been well-publicized that the Clinton administration had launched military operations and attempted to use covert programs to strike the al Qaeda leadership in the wake of the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings. In fact, the Clinton administration has come under strong criticism for not doing more to decapitate al Qaeda prior to 2001. Furthermore, since 2002, the CIA has conducted scores of strikes against al Qaeda targets in Pakistan using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) like the MQ-1 Predator and the larger MQ-9 Reaper.
These strikes have dramatically increased over the past two years and the pace did not slacken when the Obama administration came to power in January. So far in 2009 there have been more than two dozen UAV strikes in Pakistan alone. In November 2002, the CIA also employed a UAV to kill Abu Ali al-Harithi, a senior al Qaeda leader suspected of planning the October 2000 attack against the USS Cole. The U.S. government has also attacked al Qaeda leaders at other times and in other places, such as the May 1, 2008, attack against al Qaeda-linked figures in Somalia using an AC-130 gunship.
As early as Oct. 28, 2001, The Washington Post ran a story discussing the Clinton-era presidential finding authorizing operations to capture or kill al Qaeda targets. The Oct. 28 Washington Post story also provided details of a finding signed by President George W. Bush following the 9/11 attacks that reportedly provided authorization to strike a larger cross section of al Qaeda targets, including those who are not in the Afghan theater of operations. Such presidential findings are used to authorize covert actions, but in this case the finding would also provide permission to contravene Executive Order 12333, which prohibits assassinations.
In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Bush and the members of his administration were very clear that they sought to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and the members of the al Qaeda organization. During the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections in the United States, every major candidate, including Barack Obama, stated that they would seek to kill bin Laden and destroy al Qaeda. Indeed, on the campaign trail, Obama was quite vocal in his criticism of the Bush administration for not doing more to go after al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan. This means that, regardless of who is in the White House, it is U.S. policy to go after individual al Qaeda members as well as the al Qaeda organization.
In light of these facts, it would appear that there was nothing particularly controversial about the covert assassination program itself, and the controversy that has arisen over it has more to do with the failure to report covert activities to Congress. The political uproar and the manner in which the program was canceled, however, will likely have a negative impact on CIA morale and U.S. counterterrorism efforts.
Program Details
As noted above, that the U.S. government has attempted to locate and kill al Qaeda members is not shocking. Bush’s signing of a classified finding authorizing the assassination of al Qaeda members has been a poorly kept secret for many years now, and the U.S. government has succeeded in killing al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
While Hellfire missiles are quite effective at hitting trucks in Yemen and AC-130 gunships are great for striking walled compounds in the Somali badlands, there are many places in the world where it is simply not possible to use such tools against militants. One cannot launch a hellfire from a UAV at a target in Milan or use an AC-130 to attack a target in Doha. Furthermore, there are certain parts of the world — including some countries considered to be U.S. allies — where it is very difficult for the United States to conduct counterterrorism operations at all. These difficulties have been seen in past cases where the governments have refused U.S. requests to detain terrorist suspects or have alerted the suspects to the U.S. interest in them, compromising U.S. intelligence efforts and allowing the suspects to flee.
A prime example of this occurred in 1996, when the United States asked the government of Qatar for assistance in capturing al Qaeda operational mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was living openly in Qatar and even working for the Qatari government as a project engineer. Mohammed was tipped off to American intentions by the Qatari authorities and fled to Pakistan. According to the 9/11 commission report, Mohammed was closely associated with Sheikh Abdullah bin Khalid al-Thani, who was then the Qatari minister of religious affairs. After fleeing Doha, Mohammed went on to plan several al Qaeda attacks against the United States, including the 9/11 operation.
Given these realities, it appears that the recently disclosed assassination program was intended to provide the United States with a far more subtle and surgical tool to use in attacks against al Qaeda leaders in locations where Hellfire missiles are not appropriate and where host government assistance is unlikely to be provided. Some media reports indicate that the program was never fully developed and deployed; others indicate that it may have conducted a limited number of operations.
Unlike UAV strikes, where pilots fly the vehicles by satellite link and can actually be located a half a world away, or the very tough and resilient airframe of an AC-130, which can fly thousands of feet above a target, a surgical assassination capability means that the CIA would have to put boots on the ground in hostile territory where operatives, by their very presence, would be violating the laws of the sovereign country in which they were operating. Such operatives, under nonofficial cover by necessity, would be at risk of arrest if they were detected.
Also, because of the nature of such a program, a higher level of operational security is required than in the program to strike al Qaeda targets using UAVs. It is far more complex to move officers and weapons into hostile territory in a stealthy manner to strike a target without warning and with plausible deniability. Once a target is struck with a barrage of Hellfire missiles, it is fairly hard to deny what happened. There is ample physical evidence tying the attack to American UAVs. When a person is struck by a sniper’s bullet or a small IED, the perpetrator and sponsor have far more deniability. By its very nature, and by operational necessity, such a program must be extremely covert.
Even with the cooperation of the host government, conducting an extraordinary rendition in a friendly country like Italy has proved to be politically controversial and personally risky for CIA officers, who can be threatened with arrest and trial. Conducting assassination operations in a country that is not so friendly is a far riskier undertaking. As seen by the Russian officers arrested in Doha after the February 2004 assassination of former Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, such operations can generate blowback. The Russian officers responsible for the Yandarbiyev hit were arrested, tortured, tried and sentenced to life in prison (though after several months they were released into Russian custody to serve the remainder of their sentences).
Because of the physical risk to the officers involved in such operations, and the political blowback such operations can cause, it is not surprising that the details of such a program would be strictly compartmentalized inside the CIA and not widely disseminated beyond the gates of Langley. In fact, it is highly doubtful that the details of such a program were even widely known inside the CIA’s counterterrorism center (CTC) — though almost certainly some of the CTC staff suspected that such a covert program existed somewhere. The details regarding such a program were undoubtedly guarded carefully within the clandestine service, with the officer in charge most likely reporting directly to the deputy director of operations, who reports personally to the director of the CIA.
Loose Lips Sink Ships
As trite as this old saying may sound, it is painfully true. In the counterterrorism realm, leaks destroy counterterrorism cases and often allow terrorist suspects to escape and kill again. There have been several leaks of “sources and methods” by congressional sources over the past decade that have disclosed details of sensitive U.S. government programs designed to do things such as intercept al Qaeda satellite phone signals and track al Qaeda financing. A classified appendix to the report of the 2005 Robb-Silberman Commission on Intelligence Capabilities (which incidentally was leaked to the press) discussed several such leaks, noted the costs they impose on the American taxpayers and highlighted the damage they do to intelligence programs.
The fear that details of a sensitive program designed to assassinate al Qaeda operatives in foreign countries could be leaked was probably the reason for the Bush administration’s decision to withhold knowledge of the program from the U.S. Congress, even though amendments to the National Security Act of 1947 mandate the reporting of most covert intelligence programs to Congress. Given the imaginative legal guidance provided by Bush administration lawyers regarding subjects such as enhanced interrogation, it would not be surprising to find that White House lawyers focused on loopholes in the National Security Act reporting requirements.
The validity of such legal opinions may soon be tested. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, recently said he was considering an investigation into the failure to report the program to Congress, and House Democrats have announced that they want to change the reporting requirements to make them even more inclusive.
Under the current version of the National Security Act, with very few exceptions, the administration is required to report the most sensitive covert activities to, at the very least, the so-called “gang of eight” that includes the chairmen and ranking minority members of the congressional intelligence committees, the speaker and minority leader of the House of Representatives and the majority and minority leaders of the Senate. In the wake of the program’s disclosure, some Democrats would like to expand this minimum reporting requirement to include the entire membership of the congressional intelligence committees, which would increase the absolute minimum number of people to be briefed from eight to 40. Some congressmen argue that presidents, prompted by the CIA, are too loose in their invocation of the “extraordinary circumstances” that allow them to report only to the gang of eight and not the full committees. Yet ironically, the existence of the covert CIA program stayed secret for over seven and a half years, and yet here we are writing about it less than a month after the congressional committees were briefed.
The addition of that many additional lips to briefings pertaining to covert actions is not the only thing that will cause great consternation at the CIA. While legally mandated, disclosing covert programs to Congress has been very problematic. The angst felt at Langley over potential increases in the number of people to be briefed will be compounded by the recent reports that Attorney General Eric Holder may appoint a special prosecutor to investigate CIA interrogations and ethics reporting.
In April we discussed how some of the early actions of the Obama administration were having a chilling effect on U.S. counterterrorism programs and personnel. Expanding the minimum reporting requirements under the National Security Act will serve to turn the thermostat down several additional notches, as did Panetta’s overt killing of the covert program. It is one thing to quietly kill a controversial program; it is quite another to repudiate the CIA in public. In addition to damaging the already low morale at the agency, Panetta has announced in a very public manner that the United States has taken one important tool entirely out of the counterterrorism toolbox: Al Qaeda no longer has to fear the possibility of clandestine American assassination teams.
Tell STRATFOR What You Think
For Publication in Letters to STRATFORNot For Publication
On June 23, 2009, Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta learned of a highly compartmentalized program to assassinate al Qaeda operatives that was launched by the CIA in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. When Panetta found out that the covert program had not been disclosed to Congress, he canceled it and then called an emergency meeting June 24 to brief congressional oversight committees on the program. Over the past week, many details of the program have been leaked to the press and the issue has received extensive media coverage.
That a program existed to assassinate al Qaeda leaders should certainly come as no surprise to anyone. It has been well-publicized that the Clinton administration had launched military operations and attempted to use covert programs to strike the al Qaeda leadership in the wake of the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings. In fact, the Clinton administration has come under strong criticism for not doing more to decapitate al Qaeda prior to 2001. Furthermore, since 2002, the CIA has conducted scores of strikes against al Qaeda targets in Pakistan using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) like the MQ-1 Predator and the larger MQ-9 Reaper.
These strikes have dramatically increased over the past two years and the pace did not slacken when the Obama administration came to power in January. So far in 2009 there have been more than two dozen UAV strikes in Pakistan alone. In November 2002, the CIA also employed a UAV to kill Abu Ali al-Harithi, a senior al Qaeda leader suspected of planning the October 2000 attack against the USS Cole. The U.S. government has also attacked al Qaeda leaders at other times and in other places, such as the May 1, 2008, attack against al Qaeda-linked figures in Somalia using an AC-130 gunship.
As early as Oct. 28, 2001, The Washington Post ran a story discussing the Clinton-era presidential finding authorizing operations to capture or kill al Qaeda targets. The Oct. 28 Washington Post story also provided details of a finding signed by President George W. Bush following the 9/11 attacks that reportedly provided authorization to strike a larger cross section of al Qaeda targets, including those who are not in the Afghan theater of operations. Such presidential findings are used to authorize covert actions, but in this case the finding would also provide permission to contravene Executive Order 12333, which prohibits assassinations.
In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Bush and the members of his administration were very clear that they sought to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and the members of the al Qaeda organization. During the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections in the United States, every major candidate, including Barack Obama, stated that they would seek to kill bin Laden and destroy al Qaeda. Indeed, on the campaign trail, Obama was quite vocal in his criticism of the Bush administration for not doing more to go after al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan. This means that, regardless of who is in the White House, it is U.S. policy to go after individual al Qaeda members as well as the al Qaeda organization.
In light of these facts, it would appear that there was nothing particularly controversial about the covert assassination program itself, and the controversy that has arisen over it has more to do with the failure to report covert activities to Congress. The political uproar and the manner in which the program was canceled, however, will likely have a negative impact on CIA morale and U.S. counterterrorism efforts.
Program Details
As noted above, that the U.S. government has attempted to locate and kill al Qaeda members is not shocking. Bush’s signing of a classified finding authorizing the assassination of al Qaeda members has been a poorly kept secret for many years now, and the U.S. government has succeeded in killing al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
While Hellfire missiles are quite effective at hitting trucks in Yemen and AC-130 gunships are great for striking walled compounds in the Somali badlands, there are many places in the world where it is simply not possible to use such tools against militants. One cannot launch a hellfire from a UAV at a target in Milan or use an AC-130 to attack a target in Doha. Furthermore, there are certain parts of the world — including some countries considered to be U.S. allies — where it is very difficult for the United States to conduct counterterrorism operations at all. These difficulties have been seen in past cases where the governments have refused U.S. requests to detain terrorist suspects or have alerted the suspects to the U.S. interest in them, compromising U.S. intelligence efforts and allowing the suspects to flee.
A prime example of this occurred in 1996, when the United States asked the government of Qatar for assistance in capturing al Qaeda operational mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was living openly in Qatar and even working for the Qatari government as a project engineer. Mohammed was tipped off to American intentions by the Qatari authorities and fled to Pakistan. According to the 9/11 commission report, Mohammed was closely associated with Sheikh Abdullah bin Khalid al-Thani, who was then the Qatari minister of religious affairs. After fleeing Doha, Mohammed went on to plan several al Qaeda attacks against the United States, including the 9/11 operation.
Given these realities, it appears that the recently disclosed assassination program was intended to provide the United States with a far more subtle and surgical tool to use in attacks against al Qaeda leaders in locations where Hellfire missiles are not appropriate and where host government assistance is unlikely to be provided. Some media reports indicate that the program was never fully developed and deployed; others indicate that it may have conducted a limited number of operations.
Unlike UAV strikes, where pilots fly the vehicles by satellite link and can actually be located a half a world away, or the very tough and resilient airframe of an AC-130, which can fly thousands of feet above a target, a surgical assassination capability means that the CIA would have to put boots on the ground in hostile territory where operatives, by their very presence, would be violating the laws of the sovereign country in which they were operating. Such operatives, under nonofficial cover by necessity, would be at risk of arrest if they were detected.
Also, because of the nature of such a program, a higher level of operational security is required than in the program to strike al Qaeda targets using UAVs. It is far more complex to move officers and weapons into hostile territory in a stealthy manner to strike a target without warning and with plausible deniability. Once a target is struck with a barrage of Hellfire missiles, it is fairly hard to deny what happened. There is ample physical evidence tying the attack to American UAVs. When a person is struck by a sniper’s bullet or a small IED, the perpetrator and sponsor have far more deniability. By its very nature, and by operational necessity, such a program must be extremely covert.
Even with the cooperation of the host government, conducting an extraordinary rendition in a friendly country like Italy has proved to be politically controversial and personally risky for CIA officers, who can be threatened with arrest and trial. Conducting assassination operations in a country that is not so friendly is a far riskier undertaking. As seen by the Russian officers arrested in Doha after the February 2004 assassination of former Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, such operations can generate blowback. The Russian officers responsible for the Yandarbiyev hit were arrested, tortured, tried and sentenced to life in prison (though after several months they were released into Russian custody to serve the remainder of their sentences).
Because of the physical risk to the officers involved in such operations, and the political blowback such operations can cause, it is not surprising that the details of such a program would be strictly compartmentalized inside the CIA and not widely disseminated beyond the gates of Langley. In fact, it is highly doubtful that the details of such a program were even widely known inside the CIA’s counterterrorism center (CTC) — though almost certainly some of the CTC staff suspected that such a covert program existed somewhere. The details regarding such a program were undoubtedly guarded carefully within the clandestine service, with the officer in charge most likely reporting directly to the deputy director of operations, who reports personally to the director of the CIA.
Loose Lips Sink Ships
As trite as this old saying may sound, it is painfully true. In the counterterrorism realm, leaks destroy counterterrorism cases and often allow terrorist suspects to escape and kill again. There have been several leaks of “sources and methods” by congressional sources over the past decade that have disclosed details of sensitive U.S. government programs designed to do things such as intercept al Qaeda satellite phone signals and track al Qaeda financing. A classified appendix to the report of the 2005 Robb-Silberman Commission on Intelligence Capabilities (which incidentally was leaked to the press) discussed several such leaks, noted the costs they impose on the American taxpayers and highlighted the damage they do to intelligence programs.
The fear that details of a sensitive program designed to assassinate al Qaeda operatives in foreign countries could be leaked was probably the reason for the Bush administration’s decision to withhold knowledge of the program from the U.S. Congress, even though amendments to the National Security Act of 1947 mandate the reporting of most covert intelligence programs to Congress. Given the imaginative legal guidance provided by Bush administration lawyers regarding subjects such as enhanced interrogation, it would not be surprising to find that White House lawyers focused on loopholes in the National Security Act reporting requirements.
The validity of such legal opinions may soon be tested. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, recently said he was considering an investigation into the failure to report the program to Congress, and House Democrats have announced that they want to change the reporting requirements to make them even more inclusive.
Under the current version of the National Security Act, with very few exceptions, the administration is required to report the most sensitive covert activities to, at the very least, the so-called “gang of eight” that includes the chairmen and ranking minority members of the congressional intelligence committees, the speaker and minority leader of the House of Representatives and the majority and minority leaders of the Senate. In the wake of the program’s disclosure, some Democrats would like to expand this minimum reporting requirement to include the entire membership of the congressional intelligence committees, which would increase the absolute minimum number of people to be briefed from eight to 40. Some congressmen argue that presidents, prompted by the CIA, are too loose in their invocation of the “extraordinary circumstances” that allow them to report only to the gang of eight and not the full committees. Yet ironically, the existence of the covert CIA program stayed secret for over seven and a half years, and yet here we are writing about it less than a month after the congressional committees were briefed.
The addition of that many additional lips to briefings pertaining to covert actions is not the only thing that will cause great consternation at the CIA. While legally mandated, disclosing covert programs to Congress has been very problematic. The angst felt at Langley over potential increases in the number of people to be briefed will be compounded by the recent reports that Attorney General Eric Holder may appoint a special prosecutor to investigate CIA interrogations and ethics reporting.
In April we discussed how some of the early actions of the Obama administration were having a chilling effect on U.S. counterterrorism programs and personnel. Expanding the minimum reporting requirements under the National Security Act will serve to turn the thermostat down several additional notches, as did Panetta’s overt killing of the covert program. It is one thing to quietly kill a controversial program; it is quite another to repudiate the CIA in public. In addition to damaging the already low morale at the agency, Panetta has announced in a very public manner that the United States has taken one important tool entirely out of the counterterrorism toolbox: Al Qaeda no longer has to fear the possibility of clandestine American assassination teams.
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CSIS ignored Khadr's human rights: report
CSIS ignored human-rights concerns and did not take Omar Khadr's age into account in deciding to interview him at the U.S. military's Guantanamo Bay prison, says a report from the parliamentary committee that oversees the spy agency.
The Toronto-born Khadr, now 22, is being held at the U.S. detention centre in Cuba for allegedly throwing a grenade in Afghanistan when he was 15, killing an American soldier. He is the only Westerner still detained at Guantanamo.
A report from the security intelligence review committee (SIRC), released Wednesday in Ottawa, said documents also show Khadr's U.S. captors threatened him with rape, kept him alone and would not let him sleep. Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers questioned Khadr at Guantanamo Bay in 2003 and shared the results of their interrogations with the Americans.
However, the report did not find that CSIS was complicit in Khadr's alleged torture at the hands of U.S. interrogators.
The committee recommended that CSIS take human-rights issues into consideration in future probes and also establish a policy framework to guide its dealings with young people.
"As part of this, the service should ensure that such interactions are guided by the same principles that are entrenched in Canadian and international law," the report said.
CSIS "will give careful consideration to [the report's] findings and recommendations," the agency said in a statement.
"CSIS has had to adapt to the more recent phenomenon of youth radicalization and will consider SIRC's findings as it continues to assess how it deals with this threat."
Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan said, "We are reviewing the report with interest."Manitoba Opposition Leader Gary Filmon, with his wife Janice beside him in 2000, heads the security intelligence review committee. (Jeff De Booy/Canadian Press)
Former Manitoba premier Gary Filmon heads the security intelligence review committee, which has spent a year investigating an allegation that CSIS was involved in Khadr's abuse and alleged torture at the hands of U.S. prison officials.
The torture allegations came to light after Khadr's lawyers released a video of one of the CSIS interrogation sessions.
Khadr, who was 16 at the time, breaks down crying for his mother as an angry CSIS interrogator peppers him with questions.
Khadr lawyers subsequently learned that before the interrogation session began, his American captors tried to soften him up in preparation for an interview with intelligence officials from Canada's foreign affairs department.
They subjected him to something known as the "frequent flyer program." It's a form of sleep deprivation in which a prisoner is moved to a new location every three hours for several weeks and often exposed to extreme hot and cold temperatures.
Human rights advocates allege that fits the legal definition of torture.
The Toronto-born Khadr, now 22, is being held at the U.S. detention centre in Cuba for allegedly throwing a grenade in Afghanistan when he was 15, killing an American soldier. He is the only Westerner still detained at Guantanamo.
A report from the security intelligence review committee (SIRC), released Wednesday in Ottawa, said documents also show Khadr's U.S. captors threatened him with rape, kept him alone and would not let him sleep. Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers questioned Khadr at Guantanamo Bay in 2003 and shared the results of their interrogations with the Americans.
However, the report did not find that CSIS was complicit in Khadr's alleged torture at the hands of U.S. interrogators.
The committee recommended that CSIS take human-rights issues into consideration in future probes and also establish a policy framework to guide its dealings with young people.
"As part of this, the service should ensure that such interactions are guided by the same principles that are entrenched in Canadian and international law," the report said.
CSIS "will give careful consideration to [the report's] findings and recommendations," the agency said in a statement.
"CSIS has had to adapt to the more recent phenomenon of youth radicalization and will consider SIRC's findings as it continues to assess how it deals with this threat."
Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan said, "We are reviewing the report with interest."Manitoba Opposition Leader Gary Filmon, with his wife Janice beside him in 2000, heads the security intelligence review committee. (Jeff De Booy/Canadian Press)
Former Manitoba premier Gary Filmon heads the security intelligence review committee, which has spent a year investigating an allegation that CSIS was involved in Khadr's abuse and alleged torture at the hands of U.S. prison officials.
The torture allegations came to light after Khadr's lawyers released a video of one of the CSIS interrogation sessions.
Khadr, who was 16 at the time, breaks down crying for his mother as an angry CSIS interrogator peppers him with questions.
Khadr lawyers subsequently learned that before the interrogation session began, his American captors tried to soften him up in preparation for an interview with intelligence officials from Canada's foreign affairs department.
They subjected him to something known as the "frequent flyer program." It's a form of sleep deprivation in which a prisoner is moved to a new location every three hours for several weeks and often exposed to extreme hot and cold temperatures.
Human rights advocates allege that fits the legal definition of torture.
168 killed in Iran plane crash
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A Russian-made Iranian passenger plane carrying 168 people crashed shortly after takeoff Wednesday, nose-diving into a field northwest of the capital and shattering into flaming pieces. All on board were killed in Iran's worst air disaster in six years, officials said.
Before crashing, the plane's tail was on fire as it circled in the air, one witness told The Associated Press.
"Then, I saw the plane crashing nose-down. It hit the ground causing a big explosion. The impact shook the ground like an earthquake. Then, plane pieces were scattered all over the agricultural fields," Ali Akbar Hashemi, a 23-year-old who was laying gas pipes in a nearby home, told AP by phone.
The impact blasted a deep trench in the dirt field, which was littered with smoking wreckage, body parts and personal items from the Tupolev jet, according to photos from the scene. Firefighters put out the flaming wreckage, which officials said was strewn over a 200 yard (meter) area. A large chunk of a wing was visible in footage of the scene, but much of the wreckage appeared to be in small shreds.
Iran has seen numerous crashes in recent years and its airlines have been plagued by maintenance problems. In part, Iranian carriers are chronically cashed-strapped and unable to buy new planes. Iranian officials often blame U.S. sanctions that prevent it from updating American aircraft bought before the 1979 Islamic revolution and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes as well.
Iranian airlines and the military have turned increasingly to Russian aircraft, which are not affected by sanctions, but have seen a string of accidents. Two other Tupolev crashes in Iran this decade have killed nearly 140 people.
The Caspian Airlines Tu-154M jet had taken off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport on Wednesday morning and was headed to the Armenian capital Yerevan. It crashed at 11:30 am about 16 minutes after takeoff near the village of Jannat Abad outside the city of Qazvin, around 75 miles northwest of Tehran, civil aviation spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh told state media.
At Yerevan's airport, Tina Karapetian, 45, said she had been waiting for her sister and the sister's 6- and 11-year-old sons, who were due on the flight. "What will I do without them?" she said, weeping, before she collapsed to the floor.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known. Hossein Ayaznia, an aviation police official, said emergency workers were searching for the plane's data recorders to get evidence of the cause.
Iran's Jafarzadeh and the deputy chairman of Armenia's civil aviation authority Arsen Pogosian said there were 153 passengers and 15 crewmembers on board the plane. "In all likelihood, all on board were killed," Pogosian told reporters at Yerevan airport.
Most of the passengers were Iranians, many of them from Iran's large ethnic Armenian community, along with six Armenian citizens and two Georgian citizens, Pogosian said. The two Georgians included a staffer from the Caucasus nation's embassy in Yerevan, Georgia's military attache in the Armenian capital said.
Serob Karapetian, the chief of Yerevan airport's aviation security service, said the plane may have attempted an emergency landing, but reports that it caught fire in the air were "only one version." He did not elaborate. A police official told Iran's semi-official ISNA news agency that several witnesses reported seeing the plane's tail on fire in the air as it circled to find a place to land.
The plane was completely destroyed in the crash and shattered to pieces, Qazvin emergency services director Hossein Behzadpour told the state news agency IRNA.
"The force of the crash was so serious that pieces of the aircraft were thrown over a 200 meter area. Unfortunately, all the bodies were totally destroyed," Behzadpour said.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued a statement expressing condolences "to the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei and the families of the dead" over what he called a "heart-wrenching tragedy" and ordered an investigation into the cause. Armenia's president, Serge Sarkisian, also expressed his condolences and declared Thursday a day of mourning.
Also among the passengers were eight members of Iran's national youth judo team, along with two trainers and a delegation chief, who were scheduled to train with the Armenian judo team before attending competitions in Hungary on Aug. 6, state TV said.
The crash is the worst since February 2003, when a Russian-made Ilyushin 76 carrying members of the elite Revolutionary Guards crashed in the mountains of southeastern Iran, killing 302 people aboard.
Caspian Airlines is an Iranian-Russian joint venture founded in 1993 whose fleet is made up of Tupolevs.
Soviet-built Tupolev and Antonov planes have long been the mainstays of the civil air fleets in Russia and former Soviet republics. Once considered reliable aircraft, the most widely used models — like the Tu-154 — have in recent years gone largely unmodified or updated by aircraft designers.
The Soviet collapse resulted in the sharp decline in government funding for aircraft spare parts manufacturers and for the aircraft manufactures themselves, and many airlines fell behind in maintenance programs for the planes.
Iran has about a dozen Soviet-built Tu-154 airliners. In 2006, Russia negotiated the sale of five Tu-204s to Iran.
In February 2006, a Russian-made Tu-154 operated by Iran Airtour, which is affiliated with Iran's national carrier, crashed during landing in Tehran, killing 29 of the 148 people on board. Another Airtour Tupolev crashed in 2002 in the mountains of western Iran, killing all 199 on board.
The crashes have also affected Iran's military. In December 2005, 115 people were killed when a pre-1979 U.S.-made C-130 plane, crashed into a 10-story building near Tehran's Mehrabad airport. In Nov. 2007, a Russian-made Iranian military plane crashed shortly after takeoff killing 36 Revolutionary Guards members.
AP writer Avet Demourian in Yerevan, Armenia, contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Before crashing, the plane's tail was on fire as it circled in the air, one witness told The Associated Press.
"Then, I saw the plane crashing nose-down. It hit the ground causing a big explosion. The impact shook the ground like an earthquake. Then, plane pieces were scattered all over the agricultural fields," Ali Akbar Hashemi, a 23-year-old who was laying gas pipes in a nearby home, told AP by phone.
The impact blasted a deep trench in the dirt field, which was littered with smoking wreckage, body parts and personal items from the Tupolev jet, according to photos from the scene. Firefighters put out the flaming wreckage, which officials said was strewn over a 200 yard (meter) area. A large chunk of a wing was visible in footage of the scene, but much of the wreckage appeared to be in small shreds.
Iran has seen numerous crashes in recent years and its airlines have been plagued by maintenance problems. In part, Iranian carriers are chronically cashed-strapped and unable to buy new planes. Iranian officials often blame U.S. sanctions that prevent it from updating American aircraft bought before the 1979 Islamic revolution and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes as well.
Iranian airlines and the military have turned increasingly to Russian aircraft, which are not affected by sanctions, but have seen a string of accidents. Two other Tupolev crashes in Iran this decade have killed nearly 140 people.
The Caspian Airlines Tu-154M jet had taken off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport on Wednesday morning and was headed to the Armenian capital Yerevan. It crashed at 11:30 am about 16 minutes after takeoff near the village of Jannat Abad outside the city of Qazvin, around 75 miles northwest of Tehran, civil aviation spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh told state media.
At Yerevan's airport, Tina Karapetian, 45, said she had been waiting for her sister and the sister's 6- and 11-year-old sons, who were due on the flight. "What will I do without them?" she said, weeping, before she collapsed to the floor.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known. Hossein Ayaznia, an aviation police official, said emergency workers were searching for the plane's data recorders to get evidence of the cause.
Iran's Jafarzadeh and the deputy chairman of Armenia's civil aviation authority Arsen Pogosian said there were 153 passengers and 15 crewmembers on board the plane. "In all likelihood, all on board were killed," Pogosian told reporters at Yerevan airport.
Most of the passengers were Iranians, many of them from Iran's large ethnic Armenian community, along with six Armenian citizens and two Georgian citizens, Pogosian said. The two Georgians included a staffer from the Caucasus nation's embassy in Yerevan, Georgia's military attache in the Armenian capital said.
Serob Karapetian, the chief of Yerevan airport's aviation security service, said the plane may have attempted an emergency landing, but reports that it caught fire in the air were "only one version." He did not elaborate. A police official told Iran's semi-official ISNA news agency that several witnesses reported seeing the plane's tail on fire in the air as it circled to find a place to land.
The plane was completely destroyed in the crash and shattered to pieces, Qazvin emergency services director Hossein Behzadpour told the state news agency IRNA.
"The force of the crash was so serious that pieces of the aircraft were thrown over a 200 meter area. Unfortunately, all the bodies were totally destroyed," Behzadpour said.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued a statement expressing condolences "to the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei and the families of the dead" over what he called a "heart-wrenching tragedy" and ordered an investigation into the cause. Armenia's president, Serge Sarkisian, also expressed his condolences and declared Thursday a day of mourning.
Also among the passengers were eight members of Iran's national youth judo team, along with two trainers and a delegation chief, who were scheduled to train with the Armenian judo team before attending competitions in Hungary on Aug. 6, state TV said.
The crash is the worst since February 2003, when a Russian-made Ilyushin 76 carrying members of the elite Revolutionary Guards crashed in the mountains of southeastern Iran, killing 302 people aboard.
Caspian Airlines is an Iranian-Russian joint venture founded in 1993 whose fleet is made up of Tupolevs.
Soviet-built Tupolev and Antonov planes have long been the mainstays of the civil air fleets in Russia and former Soviet republics. Once considered reliable aircraft, the most widely used models — like the Tu-154 — have in recent years gone largely unmodified or updated by aircraft designers.
The Soviet collapse resulted in the sharp decline in government funding for aircraft spare parts manufacturers and for the aircraft manufactures themselves, and many airlines fell behind in maintenance programs for the planes.
Iran has about a dozen Soviet-built Tu-154 airliners. In 2006, Russia negotiated the sale of five Tu-204s to Iran.
In February 2006, a Russian-made Tu-154 operated by Iran Airtour, which is affiliated with Iran's national carrier, crashed during landing in Tehran, killing 29 of the 148 people on board. Another Airtour Tupolev crashed in 2002 in the mountains of western Iran, killing all 199 on board.
The crashes have also affected Iran's military. In December 2005, 115 people were killed when a pre-1979 U.S.-made C-130 plane, crashed into a 10-story building near Tehran's Mehrabad airport. In Nov. 2007, a Russian-made Iranian military plane crashed shortly after takeoff killing 36 Revolutionary Guards members.
AP writer Avet Demourian in Yerevan, Armenia, contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
The stumbling blocks in Obama's Israel plan
Patrick Martin
Gush Etzion, West Bank — From Wednesday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Wednesday, Jul. 15, 2009 04:39AM EDT
Nothing poses a greater threat to the relationship between Israel and the United States than the issue of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories.
In May, U.S. President Barack Obama made it clear that for the Arab-Israeli peace process to move forward, in his view Israel must halt settlement construction in the West Bank as a sign of good faith and a signal of a more even-handed American diplomacy in the Middle East. This week, Mr. Obama's envoy George Mitchell lands in Israel to press the case for a freeze, and Israel is bracing itself for the implications of its critical ally's new, hard-nosed stand.
Israel has yet to announce how it will comply with Mr. Obama's request, but the President made it clear recently to an audience of American Jewish leaders that he expects it to do so.
Many U.S. administrations have tried to halt the expansion of the settlements, considering them illegally built in occupied territory. Every one of them has failed, despite assurances from a succession of Israeli leaders that there would be no expansion.
In the 16 years since the Oslo peace accords were signed on the White House lawn, the number of Israelis living in West Bank settlements has increased to almost 300,000 from 110,000 – and that does not include the more than 200,000 Israelis living in occupied east Jerusalem.
The situation was ruefully summed up by Mr. Mitchell in a 2003 speech. “Opposition to the government of Israel's policies and practices regarding settlements … has been consistent through the Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush administrations,” he said. “Just as consistent has been the continued settlement activity by the Israeli government.”
Far from being a simple matter, figuring out just how serious Mr. Obama is and how much of a freeze on construction it will actually have to carry out is a problem that has occupied the Israeli government for much of the past two months.
For example, there's the question of where to draw the line. If a settlement home is already 90-per-cent built, can it be finished? What if it's only 10-per-cent built? What if the plan for a building has been approved, but work has not yet begun? What if the work began in the two months since Mr. Obama issued his call for a freeze?
Then there's the question of “vertical” expansion. Various Israeli leaders have said they understand the desire not to expand a settlement outward, taking up more Palestinian land. But what about building taller buildings within a settlement's current boundaries? Surely there's no harm in that, they say.
All indications are that the Obama administration is going to take a hard line in every case, and Israelis know it. As Amos Harel, a leading writer for Haaretz, wrote this past weekend, the mood in official Jerusalem is “one of shock” over how much ground the government is going to have to give on the settlement issue.
There is one exception Israel is counting on, however: the settlement-block exemption.
Ever since the Oslo accords were signed in 1993, Israelis have argued, and Palestinian negotiators have agreed, that certain settlement blocks immediately east of the 1949 Green Line boundary in which large numbers of Israelis are clustered should be considered part of Israel in any final-status agreement – provided that Palestinians receive an equivalent amount of comparable territory from Israel in return.
All other Israeli settlements would be relinquished by Israel.
Since both principal parties agree that the blocks won't be part of a future Palestinian state, Israelis say, surely the freeze need not apply to them.
But the settlement blocks Palestinians agreed to 16 years ago look a lot different today.
About two-thirds of the Jewish population increase in the West Bank has taken place in three settlement blocks: Gush Etzion, Modiin Ilit and Maale Adumim. The remaining one-third has been spread out among the other 117 settlements. Along with that population growth has come an expansion in settlement boundaries, with plans for much more.
While Palestinians take some comfort from the assurance they will be compensated with other territory, the scale of expansion threatens to bend their future state out of shape and severely isolate several Palestinian communities.
So what are these settlement blocks, and why should Israel be able to count on retaining them?
Here to stay
If Israel were allowed to keep only one of its 120 settlements in the West Bank, it would be the block known as Gush Etzion.
“From my window, I can see the path where Abraham walked on his way to bind his son Isaac,” said Yair Wolfe, deputy mayor of this community in the Judean Hills southwest of Bethlehem. “Our history didn't just begin in 1948.”
There's a lot of ancient history in these hills, but it is the community's more recent history that makes it special to Israelis.
Settlement attempts during the British mandate in the 1920s and 1930s fell victim to Arab uprisings. Jewish pioneers finally established a viable religious farming community here in the mid-1940s, only to lose it in the intense fighting that broke out after the 1947 UN plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. More than 150 of the community's defenders perished in the days just before Israel's declaration of independence.
For 19 years, during Jordan's occupation of the area, many of the survivors and orphans planned their return. Within weeks of Israeli forces conquering the area in the 1967 Six-Day War, a group set up camp on the old site. In a controversial decision, the Israeli government allowed them to remain, the first such permission it granted. Prime minister Levi Eshkol distinguished the act of these people as returning to their homes, rather than as settlement, which was disallowed under the Geneva Conventions concerning occupied territory. Gush Etzion grew from that.
Last month, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter visited the settlement and even he, a critic of many Israeli policies, said it was one good reason for adjusting the 1967 borders.
“This particular settlement area is not one I ever envision being abandoned or changed over into Palestinian territory,” he said.
These days, however, the block that started as a group of four small communities has grown well beyond the historic boundaries to which Mr. Carter was referring.
Gush Etzion organizers have carefully knitted together a chain of outlying settlements intended to maximize the block's reach. They have extended their jurisdiction 20 kilometres to the east where the settlement of Nokdim (home of Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman) includes half a dozen concrete foxholes that face the desert. “It's important that we control the Judean desert,” Mr. Wolfe explained.
Gush Etzion also has claimed jurisdiction over the bursting new settlement of Beitar Ilit to the west. Not only does this ultra-Orthodox community house more than 37,000 people, it is located less than half a kilometre from the Green Line that delineates the border between the West Bank and Israel.
Gush Etzion's plans call for it to expand its residential areas in that direction.
“There are only 1,000 Arabs between us and the Green Line,” said a determined Mr. Wolfe, referring to the village of Nahalin that stands in the way. Nahalin, with a population of more than 6,000, is on the verge of being hemmed in by the expanding Etzion bloc on one side and Israel's security barrier on the other.
The secular settlement
There may be 28 synagogues in Maale Adumim, a sprawling settlement block east of Jerusalem, but religion has little to do with why most of the population of 37,000 people decided to move here.
They came because their shekels can buy a home near Jerusalem at reasonable prices, and they believe the municipality's literature that tells them “Maale Adumim is regarded as an integral part of the State of Israel.”
That's why the growth has been so strong, and why 1,000 more housing units are under construction.
“This isn't a settlement, it's a city,” says Hizki Zisman, spokesman for the Maale Adumim municipality. “You can't freeze that. We're a suburb of Jerusalem.
“People didn't come here for ideological reasons,” he adds. “They came for the quality of life.”
And while the community already has approval for its expansion to several outlying settlements, which will allow it to grow to 70,000 people by 2020, Mr. Zisman points out, “We're not displacing any Arabs.”
That's true, if you don't count the 1,000 or so Bedouin who live in tents and shacks in the valleys outside the community.
Part of the municipal plan is to link up with Kedar, a well-guarded settlement to the south that had been started by Gush Etzion in 1983, but now is being turned over to Maale Adumim. Another part of the plan is to link to four smaller settlements on the other side of the Jerusalem-Jericho highway.
Ayelet Meridor was one month old when her parents and a dozen other families started one of those settlements, Kfar Adumim, in 1979.
The 1,500 people in this attractive hilltop community are proudly independent, a mixture of religious and secular, with a primary school that places the children together. They don't care much for Maale Adumim.
“It's just a big city,” says Ms. Meridor, a mother of two and Kfar Adumim's community director. “Everyone here wanted to keep the community small,” she said. “Once you've lived in the desert, you can't ever leave it. It's like oxygen.”
Like it or not, the 380 families here know their future is tied to Maale Adumim. The only chance they have to remain a part of Israel is to be included with the expansion of the big metropolis.
“There's a lot of tension here right now,” Ms. Meridor says. “We know all the arguments. We just don't know what the future will hold.”
Bulgaria agrees to Caspian gas link
Bulgaria and Greece agreed on the construction of a pipeline that will allow Bulgaria to import natural gas from the Caspian Sea region, energy officials said yesterday. Bulgaria's state-owned Energy Holding signed an agreement yesterday with Greek natural gas monopoly DEPA and Italy's Edison SpA on setting up a company to construct and operate the pipeline, and a second company to supply and make commercial use of the natural gas. The link, dubbed Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria, will allow Bulgaria to import one billion cubic meters of gas from Azerbaijan each year from 2012 through the ITGI pipeline due to carry Caspian gas via Turkey and Greece to Italy. EDN (Milan) was unchanged at 95 euro cents ($1.50).
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
OTTAWA URGES CANADIAN'S RELEASE
Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon called in Iran's top diplomat in Ottawa this week for a third blast over Tehran's treatment of election protesters and the detention of Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari.
Foreign Affairs officials met with Iranian chargé d'affaires Bahram Ghasemi on Tuesday to demand a visit with Mr. Bahari, a Canadian journalist working for Newsweek magazine, and to urge Tehran to release him.
But Iran does not even recognize the Canadian status of Mr. Bahari, a dual citizen who was arrested June 21 and held without charge.
"Canada is gravely concerned about the continuing detention of Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, and by the Iranian regime's unrelenting disregard for basic human rights, including freedom of expression, which continue to be deliberately ignored," Mr. Cannon said in a statement issued yesterday.
"Mr. Bahari is a professional and experienced journalist who was doing his job covering an important and difficult story."
It was the third time since Iran's disputed June 12 presidential election that Mr. Ghasemi was summoned to meet with Foreign Affairs officials. Iran, however, has only stepped up a crackdown on protesters, and rebuffed Canada's claim to a stake in Mr. Bahari's case.
Iran has not had an ambassador in Ottawa since the Canadian government rejected two of its proposed candidates for the job in 2007.
Most Canadians support reasonable Internet traffic management, poll suggests
By THE CANADIAN PRESS – 1 hour ago
OTTAWA — Most Canadians support the idea of Internet traffic management as long as all users are treated fairly, a new poll suggests.
The Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll found only about one in five of those surveyed had heard of Internet traffic management or "traffic shaping," a contentious issue now before the federal regulator.
Internet service providers employ the practice, which slows down service to heavy users, to manage and prioritize online traffic during high-volume periods.
Telecom companies are appearing before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission this week over the question of guidelines for Internet traffic management.
Critics of the practice are pressing for so-called "net neutrality" so that the big service providers are prevented from penalizing some customers over others.
Sixty per cent of survey respondents said they found the practice reasonable as long as customers are treated fairly, while 22 per cent said Internet management is unreasonable regardless.
"Canadians like high-speed Internet access, and the speed of service provided by their Internet service providers is seen as satisfying their needs," said the survey.
Eighty per cent of households have Internet access at home, 73 per cent of them high-speed, the survey suggests. Eighty-five per cent of survey respondents said the speed of their home service is adequate.
Most - 54 per cent - said they did not know whether traffic management affects them personally. Just 15 per cent said they are affected by the practice.
"As long as all customers are treated fairly in the way they are affected, most believe that traffic shaping is a reasonable approach for ISPs (Internet service providers) to take," said the survey.
Telecom companies identify person-to-person file-sharing - such as uploading and downloading of movies - as the main problem they're trying to solve through traffic management.
Rogers, for one, uses complex technology to analyze what kinds of communications users are engaged in - sharing a Hollywood movie versus sending email, for example - and then "throttles" or slows down certain activities so the rest of its network moves faster.
The company compares person-to-person file-sharing to a car that parks in one lane of a busy highway at all times of the day or night, clogging the roadways for everyone unless someone takes action.
The survey of 1,000 Canadians was conducted July 9-12 and is considered accurate to within plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times in 20.
OTTAWA — Most Canadians support the idea of Internet traffic management as long as all users are treated fairly, a new poll suggests.
The Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll found only about one in five of those surveyed had heard of Internet traffic management or "traffic shaping," a contentious issue now before the federal regulator.
Internet service providers employ the practice, which slows down service to heavy users, to manage and prioritize online traffic during high-volume periods.
Telecom companies are appearing before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission this week over the question of guidelines for Internet traffic management.
Critics of the practice are pressing for so-called "net neutrality" so that the big service providers are prevented from penalizing some customers over others.
Sixty per cent of survey respondents said they found the practice reasonable as long as customers are treated fairly, while 22 per cent said Internet management is unreasonable regardless.
"Canadians like high-speed Internet access, and the speed of service provided by their Internet service providers is seen as satisfying their needs," said the survey.
Eighty per cent of households have Internet access at home, 73 per cent of them high-speed, the survey suggests. Eighty-five per cent of survey respondents said the speed of their home service is adequate.
Most - 54 per cent - said they did not know whether traffic management affects them personally. Just 15 per cent said they are affected by the practice.
"As long as all customers are treated fairly in the way they are affected, most believe that traffic shaping is a reasonable approach for ISPs (Internet service providers) to take," said the survey.
Telecom companies identify person-to-person file-sharing - such as uploading and downloading of movies - as the main problem they're trying to solve through traffic management.
Rogers, for one, uses complex technology to analyze what kinds of communications users are engaged in - sharing a Hollywood movie versus sending email, for example - and then "throttles" or slows down certain activities so the rest of its network moves faster.
The company compares person-to-person file-sharing to a car that parks in one lane of a busy highway at all times of the day or night, clogging the roadways for everyone unless someone takes action.
The survey of 1,000 Canadians was conducted July 9-12 and is considered accurate to within plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times in 20.
Officer used colleague's material for paperwork, taser inquiry hears
OLIVER MOORE
Halifax — Globe and Mail Update Last updated on Tuesday, Jul. 14, 2009 03:43PM EDT
The officer who arrested Howard Hyde acknowledged Tuesday that he used a colleague's material to prepare paperwork after the mentally ill man was tasered, reversing testimony from yesterday at a fatality inquiry.
Halifax Regional Police Constable Jonathan Edwards said Monday that he had “not accessed” his colleague's supplemental report. He wrote his own supplemental, he said, after accompanying Mr. Hyde to hospital. This was about an hour after Special Constable Gregory McCormick, who actually used the taser on Mr. Hyde, prepared his report.
Questioned about the numerous similarities between their accounts, Constable Edwards suggested Monday it was a coincidence.
On Tuesday, though, he was questioned by police lawyer Sandra MacPherson-Duncan. After establishing that officers aren't graded on their creative writing, and that he wouldn't ever copy a colleague's notes, she returned to the issue of cribbing the other report.
“Are you satisfied now that you did?” she asked.
“Yes,” Constable Edwards said.
During a subsequent break in proceedings the officer said he could not comment further.
Ms. MacPherson-Duncan minimized the reversal, saying that mistakes are made. Perfection cannot be expected of police officers, particularly after such a stressful event, she said.
Earlier Tuesday, Constable Edwards testified Tuesday that he had been mistaken when he said the mentally ill man was warned before being tasered.
Constable Edwards gave a statement to the RCMP on 25-November, 2007, three days after Mr. Hyde died in custody in a Dartmouth jail.
In that statement, he described the booking room fracas that involved Mr. Hyde being tasered repeatedly by another officer and ended with the 45-year-old stopping breathing and having to be revived in a hallway.
Prompted by Kevin MacDonald, the lawyer for Mr. Hyde's sister and her husband, Constable Edwards acknowledged the warning mentioned in his statement was not reflected in surveillance video from the scene.
“I watched the video just before giving the statement. I don't know why I would have said that,” the officer said.
Mr. MacDonald suggested that Constable Edwards had been trying to establish a justification for the tasering, prompting an objection from a lawyer for the local police.
“The proposition is scandalous,” said Ms. MacPherson-Duncan. “There's no suggestion that this interview [with the RCMP] was probing justification for use of force.”
Provincial Court Judge Anne Derrick, who is presiding over the inquiry, allowed the line of questions to continue.
Asked again, Constable Edwards noted that the officers didn't have to give a warning and that he didn't have to justify his actions to the RCMP
Monday, July 13, 2009
Shirin NESHAT & People of California
In past, I post some profanity about Shirin NESHAT on this blog, and I removed them because maybe a child would read this blog. Kindly keep those papers, and remember how much I do not want to receive an e-mail from you.
1. Shirin NESHAT just leave me alone, and stop spamming me.
2. People of California, I do not care about you folks in California. You folks had 30 years and did nothing about emancipation of Iran. Just got money from Mullah in Iran and US, bought fancy houses and cars.
3. You folks had 30 years and never study social science. So, I never would read your papers, listen or watch your programs.
All of you keep a copy of this paper, and never e-mail me anything. If I ever work with you people, please show me a copy of this paper.
Peyman DOUSTI
V for Vendatta
This is the best version so far I have seen, and wanted to share with others. Sometimes, I wonder did the mask shape character V or cruel society made him who he was? He hides his hands, and never shows his face regardless of circumstances. It is very powerful for me.
What I like mostly about this movie, when he says at the end of the movie the following statement, the bad guy opens fire at character V and the bad guy tells V why do not you die? As V tells him beneath this mask is an idea and the ideas are bullet prove. Well said, take that Islamic Republic in Iran, ideas are bullet prove, you can kill us, eradicate the entire families, but you cannot eradicate the flame of justice and freedom for Iran. As lions of Iran shall shout out loud at IRI. As the IRI trembles from its foundation due to Iranian lions and justice shall prevail in Iran, and Iran shall be emancipated once for all. Oh mighty Ahura Mazda, I shall witness that day, and deliver it. It is a promise.
This movie shaped many my feelings toward pure divine motherland of Iran. Sometimes I am asking myself, if there was a mask for me, what would be?
Strategic Calculus and the Afghan War
By George Friedman
U.S. and allied forces began their first major offensive in Afghanistan under the command of U.S. Gen David Petraeus and Gen. Stanley McChrystal this July. Inevitably, coalition casualties have begun to mount. Fifteen British soldiers have died within the past 10 days — eight of whom were killed within a 24-hour period — in Helmand province, where the operation is taking place. On July 6, seven U.S. soldiers were killed in separate attacks across Afghanistan within a single day, and on July 12 another four U.S. soldiers were reported killed in Helmand.
While the numbers are still relatively low, the reaction, particularly in the United Kingdom, has been strong. Afghanistan had long been a war of intermittent casualties, the “other war.” Now it is the prime theater of operations. The United States has changed the rules of the war, and so a great many things now change.
The increase in casualties by itself does not tell us much about the success of the operation. If U.S. and NATO forces are successful in finding and attacking Taliban militants, Western casualties inevitably will spike. If the Taliban were prepared for the offensive, and small units were waiting in ambush, coalition casualties also will rise. Overall, however, the casualties remain low for the number of troops involved — and no matter how well the operation is going, it will result in casualties.
Laying the Groundwork for Counterinsurgency
According to the U.S. command, the primary purpose of the operation in Helmand is not to engage Taliban forces. Instead, the purpose is to create a secure zone in hostile territory, staying true to the counterinsurgency principle of winning hearts and minds. In other words, Helmand is supposed to be a platform for winning over the population by securing it against the Taliban, and for demonstrating that the methods used in Iraq — and in successful counterinsurgency in general — can be applied to Afghanistan.
The U.S. strategy makes a virtue out of the fundamental military problem in counterinsurgency whereby the successful insurgent declines combat when the occupying power has overwhelming force available, withdrawing, dispersing and possibly harassing the main body with hit-and-run operations designed to impose casualties and slow down the operation. The counterinsurgent’s main advantage is firepower, on the ground and in the air. The insurgents’ main advantage is intelligence. Native to the area, insurgents have networks of informants letting them know not only where enemy troops are, but also providing information about counterinsurgent operations during the operations’ planning phases.
Insurgents will have greater say over the time and place of battle. As major operations crank up in one area, the insurgents attack in other areas. And the insurgents have two goals. The first is to wear out the counterinsurgency in endless operations that yield little. The second is to impose a level of casualties disproportionate to the level of success, making the operation either futile or apparently futile.
The insurgent cannot defeat the main enemy force in open battle; by definition, that is beyond his reach. What he can do is impose casualties on the counterinsurgent. The asymmetry of this war is the asymmetry of interest. In Vietnam, the interests of the North Vietnamese in the outcome far outweighed the interests of the Americans in the outcome. That meant the North Vietnamese would take the time needed, expend the lives required and run the risks necessary to win the war. U.S. interest in the war was much smaller. A 20-to-1 ratio of Vietnamese to U.S. casualties therefore favored the North Vietnamese. They were fighting for a core issue. The Americans were fighting a peripheral issue. So long as the North Vietnamese could continue to impose casualties on the Americans, they could push Washington to a political point where the war became not worth fighting for the United States.
The insurgent has time on his side. The insurgent is native to the war zone and has the will and patience to exhaust the enemy. The counterinsurgent always will be short of time — especially in a country like Afghanistan, where security and governing institutions will have to be built from scratch. A considerable amount of time must pass before the counterinsurgent’s strategy can yield results, something McChrystal and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have both acknowledged. The more time passes and the more casualties mount for the counterinsurgent, the more likely public support for the counterinsurgent’s war will erode. Therefore, the counterinsurgency timeline is unlikely to match up with the political timeline at home.
The Intelligence Problem
The problem of intelligence is the perpetual weakness of the counterinsurgent. The counterinsurgent is operating in a foreign country and thereby lacks the means to distinguish allies from enemy agents, or valid from invalid information. This makes winning allies among the civilian population key for the counterinsurgent.
Unless a solid base is achieved among the residents of Helmand, the coalition’s intelligence problem will remain insurmountable. This explains why the current operation is focusing on holding and securing the area and winning hearts and minds. With a degree of security comes loyalty. With loyalty comes intelligence. If intelligence is the insurgent’s strategic advantage, this is the way to counter it. It strikes at the center of gravity of the insurgent. Intelligence is his strong suit, and if the insurgent loses it, he loses the war.
Then there is the issue of counterintelligence. Every Afghan translator, soldier or government official is a possible breach of security for the counterinsurgent. Most of them — and certainly not all of them — are not in bed with the enemy. But some inevitably will be, and not only does that render counterinsurgent operations insecure, it also creates uncertainty among the counterinsurgents. The insurgent’s ability to gather intelligence on the counterinsurgents is the insurgents’ main strategic advantage. With it, insurgents can evade entrapment and choose the time and place for engagement. Without it, insurgents are blind. With it, the insurgent can fill the counterinsurgent’s intelligence pipeline with misleading information. Without it, the counterinsurgent might see clearly enough to find and destroy the insurgent force.
Counterinsurgency and the al Qaeda Factor
The Afghan counterinsurgency campaign also suffers from a weakness in its strategic rationale. What makes Afghanistan critical to the United States is al Qaeda, the core group of jihadists that demonstrated the ability to launch transcontinental attacks against the West from Afghanistan. The argument has been that without U.S. troops in the country and a pro-American government in Kabul, al Qaeda might return, rebuild and strike again. That makes Afghanistan a strategic interest for the United States
But there is a strategic divergence between the war against al Qaeda and the war against the Taliban. Some will argue that al Qaeda remains operational and, therefore, the United States must make a long-term military investment in Afghanistan to deprive the enemy of sanctuary.
But while some al Qaeda members remain to issue threatening messages from the region, the group’s ability to meet covertly, recruit talent, funnel money and execute operations from the region has been hampered considerably. The overall threat value of al Qaeda, in our view, has declined. If this is a war that pivots on intelligence, the mission to block al Qaeda eventually may once again be left to the covert capabilities of U.S. intelligence and Special Operations Command, whether in Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere.
Widening the war’s objectives to defeating the Taliban insurgency through a resource-intensive hearts-and-minds campaign requires time and patience, both of which lie with the insurgent. If the United States were to draw the conclusion that al Qaeda was no longer functional, and that follow-on organizations may be as likely to organize attacks from Somalia or Pakistan as they would be from Afghanistan, then the significance of Afghanistan declines.
That creates the asymmetry that made the Vietnam War unsustainable. The Taliban have nowhere else to go. They have fought as an organization since the 1990s, and longer than that as individuals. Their interest in the future of Afghanistan towers over the American interest if it is determined that the al Qaeda-Afghanistan nexus is no longer decisive. If that were to happen, then the willingness of the United States to absorb casualties would decline dramatically.
This is not a question of the American will to fight; it is a question of the American interest in fighting. In Vietnam, the United States fought for many years. At a certain point, the likelihood of a cessation of conflict declined, along with the likelihood of U.S. victory, such that the rational U.S. interest in remaining in Vietnam and taking casualties disappeared. In Vietnam, there was an added strategic consideration: The U.S. military was absorbed in Vietnam while the main threat was from the Soviet Union in Europe. Continuing the war increased the risk in Europe. So the United States withdrew from Vietnam.
The Taliban obviously want to create a similar dynamic in Afghanistan — the same dynamic the mujahideen used against the Soviets there. The imposition of casualties in a war of asymmetric interests inevitably generates political resistance among those not directly committed to the war. The command has a professional interest in the war, the troops have a personal and emotional commitment. They are in the war, and look at the war as a self-contained entity, worth fighting in its own right.
Outside of those directly involved in the war, including the public, the landscape becomes more complex. The question of whether the war is worth fighting becomes the question, a question that is not asked — and properly so — in the theater of operations. The higher the casualty count, the more the interests involved in the war are questioned, until at some point, the equation shifts away from the war and toward withdrawal.
Avoiding Asymmetry of Interests
The key for the United States in fighting the war is to avoid asymmetry of interests. If the war is seen as a battle against the resumption of terrorist attacks on the United States, casualties are seen as justified. If the war is seen as having moved beyond al Qaeda, the strategic purpose of the war becomes murky and the equation shifts. There have been no attacks from al Qaeda on the United States since 2001. If al Qaeda retains some operational capability, it is no longer solely dependent on Afghanistan to wage attacks. Therefore, the strategic rationale becomes tenuous.
The probe into Helmand is essentially an intelligence battle between the United States and the Taliban. But what is striking is that even at this low level of casualties, there are already reactions. A number of prominent news media outlets have highlighted the rise in casualties, and the British are reacting strongly to the fact that total British casualties in Afghanistan have now surpassed the number of British troops killed in Iraq. The response has not risen to the level that would be associated with serious calls for a withdrawal, but even so, it does give a measure of the sensitivity of the issue.
Petraeus is professionally committed to the war and the troops have shed sweat and blood. For them, this war is of central importance. If they can gain the confidence of the population and if they can switch the dynamics of the intelligence war, the Taliban could wind up on the defensive. But if the Taliban can attack U.S. forces around the country, increasing casualties, the United States will be on the defensive. The war is a contest now between the intelligence war and casualties. The better the intelligence, the fewer the casualties. But it seems to us that the intelligence war will be tougher to win than it will be for the Taliban to impose casualties.
U.S. President Barack Obama is in the position Richard Nixon found himself in back in 1969. Having inherited a war he didn’t begin, Nixon had the option of terminating it. He chose instead to continue to fight it. Obama has the same choice. He did not start the Afghan war, and in spite of his campaign rhetoric, he does not have to continue it. After one year in office, Nixon found that Lyndon Johnson’s war had become his war. Obama will experience the same dilemma.
The least knowable variable is Obama’s appetite for this war. He will see casualties without any guarantee of success. If he does attempt to negotiate a deal with the Taliban, as Nixon did with the North Vietnamese, any deal is likely to be as temporary as Nixon’s deal proved. The key is the intelligence he is seeing, and whether he has confidence in it. If the intelligence says the war in Afghanistan blocks al Qaeda attacks on the United States, he will have to continue it. If there is no direct link, then he has a serious problem.
Obama clearly has given Petraeus a period of time to fight the war. We suspect Obama does not want the Afghan war to become his war. Therefore, there have to be limits on how long Petraeus has. These limits are unlikely to align with the counterinsurgency timeline. The Taliban, meanwhile, constitute a sophisticated insurgent group and understand the dynamics of American politics. If they can impose casualties on the United States now, before the intelligence war shifts in Washington’s favor, then they might shift Obama’s calculus.
This is what the Afghan war is now about.
U.S. and allied forces began their first major offensive in Afghanistan under the command of U.S. Gen David Petraeus and Gen. Stanley McChrystal this July. Inevitably, coalition casualties have begun to mount. Fifteen British soldiers have died within the past 10 days — eight of whom were killed within a 24-hour period — in Helmand province, where the operation is taking place. On July 6, seven U.S. soldiers were killed in separate attacks across Afghanistan within a single day, and on July 12 another four U.S. soldiers were reported killed in Helmand.
While the numbers are still relatively low, the reaction, particularly in the United Kingdom, has been strong. Afghanistan had long been a war of intermittent casualties, the “other war.” Now it is the prime theater of operations. The United States has changed the rules of the war, and so a great many things now change.
The increase in casualties by itself does not tell us much about the success of the operation. If U.S. and NATO forces are successful in finding and attacking Taliban militants, Western casualties inevitably will spike. If the Taliban were prepared for the offensive, and small units were waiting in ambush, coalition casualties also will rise. Overall, however, the casualties remain low for the number of troops involved — and no matter how well the operation is going, it will result in casualties.
Laying the Groundwork for Counterinsurgency
According to the U.S. command, the primary purpose of the operation in Helmand is not to engage Taliban forces. Instead, the purpose is to create a secure zone in hostile territory, staying true to the counterinsurgency principle of winning hearts and minds. In other words, Helmand is supposed to be a platform for winning over the population by securing it against the Taliban, and for demonstrating that the methods used in Iraq — and in successful counterinsurgency in general — can be applied to Afghanistan.
The U.S. strategy makes a virtue out of the fundamental military problem in counterinsurgency whereby the successful insurgent declines combat when the occupying power has overwhelming force available, withdrawing, dispersing and possibly harassing the main body with hit-and-run operations designed to impose casualties and slow down the operation. The counterinsurgent’s main advantage is firepower, on the ground and in the air. The insurgents’ main advantage is intelligence. Native to the area, insurgents have networks of informants letting them know not only where enemy troops are, but also providing information about counterinsurgent operations during the operations’ planning phases.
Insurgents will have greater say over the time and place of battle. As major operations crank up in one area, the insurgents attack in other areas. And the insurgents have two goals. The first is to wear out the counterinsurgency in endless operations that yield little. The second is to impose a level of casualties disproportionate to the level of success, making the operation either futile or apparently futile.
The insurgent cannot defeat the main enemy force in open battle; by definition, that is beyond his reach. What he can do is impose casualties on the counterinsurgent. The asymmetry of this war is the asymmetry of interest. In Vietnam, the interests of the North Vietnamese in the outcome far outweighed the interests of the Americans in the outcome. That meant the North Vietnamese would take the time needed, expend the lives required and run the risks necessary to win the war. U.S. interest in the war was much smaller. A 20-to-1 ratio of Vietnamese to U.S. casualties therefore favored the North Vietnamese. They were fighting for a core issue. The Americans were fighting a peripheral issue. So long as the North Vietnamese could continue to impose casualties on the Americans, they could push Washington to a political point where the war became not worth fighting for the United States.
The insurgent has time on his side. The insurgent is native to the war zone and has the will and patience to exhaust the enemy. The counterinsurgent always will be short of time — especially in a country like Afghanistan, where security and governing institutions will have to be built from scratch. A considerable amount of time must pass before the counterinsurgent’s strategy can yield results, something McChrystal and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have both acknowledged. The more time passes and the more casualties mount for the counterinsurgent, the more likely public support for the counterinsurgent’s war will erode. Therefore, the counterinsurgency timeline is unlikely to match up with the political timeline at home.
The Intelligence Problem
The problem of intelligence is the perpetual weakness of the counterinsurgent. The counterinsurgent is operating in a foreign country and thereby lacks the means to distinguish allies from enemy agents, or valid from invalid information. This makes winning allies among the civilian population key for the counterinsurgent.
Unless a solid base is achieved among the residents of Helmand, the coalition’s intelligence problem will remain insurmountable. This explains why the current operation is focusing on holding and securing the area and winning hearts and minds. With a degree of security comes loyalty. With loyalty comes intelligence. If intelligence is the insurgent’s strategic advantage, this is the way to counter it. It strikes at the center of gravity of the insurgent. Intelligence is his strong suit, and if the insurgent loses it, he loses the war.
Then there is the issue of counterintelligence. Every Afghan translator, soldier or government official is a possible breach of security for the counterinsurgent. Most of them — and certainly not all of them — are not in bed with the enemy. But some inevitably will be, and not only does that render counterinsurgent operations insecure, it also creates uncertainty among the counterinsurgents. The insurgent’s ability to gather intelligence on the counterinsurgents is the insurgents’ main strategic advantage. With it, insurgents can evade entrapment and choose the time and place for engagement. Without it, insurgents are blind. With it, the insurgent can fill the counterinsurgent’s intelligence pipeline with misleading information. Without it, the counterinsurgent might see clearly enough to find and destroy the insurgent force.
Counterinsurgency and the al Qaeda Factor
The Afghan counterinsurgency campaign also suffers from a weakness in its strategic rationale. What makes Afghanistan critical to the United States is al Qaeda, the core group of jihadists that demonstrated the ability to launch transcontinental attacks against the West from Afghanistan. The argument has been that without U.S. troops in the country and a pro-American government in Kabul, al Qaeda might return, rebuild and strike again. That makes Afghanistan a strategic interest for the United States
But there is a strategic divergence between the war against al Qaeda and the war against the Taliban. Some will argue that al Qaeda remains operational and, therefore, the United States must make a long-term military investment in Afghanistan to deprive the enemy of sanctuary.
But while some al Qaeda members remain to issue threatening messages from the region, the group’s ability to meet covertly, recruit talent, funnel money and execute operations from the region has been hampered considerably. The overall threat value of al Qaeda, in our view, has declined. If this is a war that pivots on intelligence, the mission to block al Qaeda eventually may once again be left to the covert capabilities of U.S. intelligence and Special Operations Command, whether in Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere.
Widening the war’s objectives to defeating the Taliban insurgency through a resource-intensive hearts-and-minds campaign requires time and patience, both of which lie with the insurgent. If the United States were to draw the conclusion that al Qaeda was no longer functional, and that follow-on organizations may be as likely to organize attacks from Somalia or Pakistan as they would be from Afghanistan, then the significance of Afghanistan declines.
That creates the asymmetry that made the Vietnam War unsustainable. The Taliban have nowhere else to go. They have fought as an organization since the 1990s, and longer than that as individuals. Their interest in the future of Afghanistan towers over the American interest if it is determined that the al Qaeda-Afghanistan nexus is no longer decisive. If that were to happen, then the willingness of the United States to absorb casualties would decline dramatically.
This is not a question of the American will to fight; it is a question of the American interest in fighting. In Vietnam, the United States fought for many years. At a certain point, the likelihood of a cessation of conflict declined, along with the likelihood of U.S. victory, such that the rational U.S. interest in remaining in Vietnam and taking casualties disappeared. In Vietnam, there was an added strategic consideration: The U.S. military was absorbed in Vietnam while the main threat was from the Soviet Union in Europe. Continuing the war increased the risk in Europe. So the United States withdrew from Vietnam.
The Taliban obviously want to create a similar dynamic in Afghanistan — the same dynamic the mujahideen used against the Soviets there. The imposition of casualties in a war of asymmetric interests inevitably generates political resistance among those not directly committed to the war. The command has a professional interest in the war, the troops have a personal and emotional commitment. They are in the war, and look at the war as a self-contained entity, worth fighting in its own right.
Outside of those directly involved in the war, including the public, the landscape becomes more complex. The question of whether the war is worth fighting becomes the question, a question that is not asked — and properly so — in the theater of operations. The higher the casualty count, the more the interests involved in the war are questioned, until at some point, the equation shifts away from the war and toward withdrawal.
Avoiding Asymmetry of Interests
The key for the United States in fighting the war is to avoid asymmetry of interests. If the war is seen as a battle against the resumption of terrorist attacks on the United States, casualties are seen as justified. If the war is seen as having moved beyond al Qaeda, the strategic purpose of the war becomes murky and the equation shifts. There have been no attacks from al Qaeda on the United States since 2001. If al Qaeda retains some operational capability, it is no longer solely dependent on Afghanistan to wage attacks. Therefore, the strategic rationale becomes tenuous.
The probe into Helmand is essentially an intelligence battle between the United States and the Taliban. But what is striking is that even at this low level of casualties, there are already reactions. A number of prominent news media outlets have highlighted the rise in casualties, and the British are reacting strongly to the fact that total British casualties in Afghanistan have now surpassed the number of British troops killed in Iraq. The response has not risen to the level that would be associated with serious calls for a withdrawal, but even so, it does give a measure of the sensitivity of the issue.
Petraeus is professionally committed to the war and the troops have shed sweat and blood. For them, this war is of central importance. If they can gain the confidence of the population and if they can switch the dynamics of the intelligence war, the Taliban could wind up on the defensive. But if the Taliban can attack U.S. forces around the country, increasing casualties, the United States will be on the defensive. The war is a contest now between the intelligence war and casualties. The better the intelligence, the fewer the casualties. But it seems to us that the intelligence war will be tougher to win than it will be for the Taliban to impose casualties.
U.S. President Barack Obama is in the position Richard Nixon found himself in back in 1969. Having inherited a war he didn’t begin, Nixon had the option of terminating it. He chose instead to continue to fight it. Obama has the same choice. He did not start the Afghan war, and in spite of his campaign rhetoric, he does not have to continue it. After one year in office, Nixon found that Lyndon Johnson’s war had become his war. Obama will experience the same dilemma.
The least knowable variable is Obama’s appetite for this war. He will see casualties without any guarantee of success. If he does attempt to negotiate a deal with the Taliban, as Nixon did with the North Vietnamese, any deal is likely to be as temporary as Nixon’s deal proved. The key is the intelligence he is seeing, and whether he has confidence in it. If the intelligence says the war in Afghanistan blocks al Qaeda attacks on the United States, he will have to continue it. If there is no direct link, then he has a serious problem.
Obama clearly has given Petraeus a period of time to fight the war. We suspect Obama does not want the Afghan war to become his war. Therefore, there have to be limits on how long Petraeus has. These limits are unlikely to align with the counterinsurgency timeline. The Taliban, meanwhile, constitute a sophisticated insurgent group and understand the dynamics of American politics. If they can impose casualties on the United States now, before the intelligence war shifts in Washington’s favor, then they might shift Obama’s calculus.
This is what the Afghan war is now about.
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