Happy New Year: 19 killed in US drone attacks in Pakistan

The pentagon doesn't care about silly things like the Geneva Conventions or morality. Hell, kill those removing the wounded. That's the American way. Uh, like, why are we there in their country? I dunno, just to kill I guess, defend our corrupt empire, and maybe test out some weapons.

From Prison Planet and PTI


The unmanned spy planes fired four missiles at the vehicle, killing at least five Taliban fighters and injuring several others.

A Predator drone fired two missiles at a suspected militant hideout at Ghoresta area of Spin Wam sub-division in the second strike, killing six militants.

The third strike targeted persons who were removing bodies and the injured at the site of the first attack in Spin Wam. At least four militants were killed in this attack, officials said.

Taliban Leader in Secret Talks Was an Impostor

Oh what have we here? No mention however in the Pentagon-loyal New York Times that our military or intelligence agencies could have also had a hand in the creation of this phony adversary and bargaining partner.


From The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan — For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

I wonder how many other "terror adversaries" are also imposters? Probably most of them. War is a racket. See below.

See Also: The New York Times Continues To Use The Dubious "Zabiullah Mujahid" As Convenient Source For Anti-Wikileaks Propaganda

See Also: The Terrorist Leaders Who Die, And Are Captured, And Die Again

See Also: New York Times Admits Mumbai Terror Plotter Was U.S. Intelligence Asset

See Also: Afghans Believe US Is Funding Taliban

See Also: Al-Qaeda Mastermind Invited To Pentagon After 9/11

See Also: With Incredible Gall FBI Admits Osama Bin Laden Photo Made to Look Like War Critic Spanish MP

See Also: Former CIA Officials Admit TO Faking Bin Laden Video

See Also: The Strange Tale Of Azzam the American

See Also: Times Square Bomber Had Pakistani Army, U.S. Embassy Connections

See Also: Nato contractors 'attacking own vehicles' in Pakistan

Noam Chomsky: No Evidence that Al-Qaeda Carried Out the 9/11 Attacks

From Washington's Blog

Nov 6, 2010
Leading liberal intellectual Noam Chomsky just told Press TV:
“The explicit and declared motive of the [Afghanistan] war was to compel the Taliban to turn over to the United States, the people who they accused of having been involved in World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist acts. The Taliban…they requested evidence…and the Bush administration refused to provide any,” the 81-year-old senior academic made the remarks on Press TV’s program a Simple Question.
“We later discovered one of the reasons why they did not bring evidence: they did not have any.”
The political analyst also said that nonexistence of such evidence was confirmed by FBI eight months later.
“The head of FBI, after the most intense international investigation in history, informed the press that the FBI believed that the plot may have been hatched in Afghanistan, but was probably implemented in the United Arab Emirates and Germany.”
Chomsky added that three weeks into the war, “a British officer announced that the US and Britain would continue bombing, until the people of Afghanistan overthrew the Taliban… That was later turned into the official justification for the war.”
“All of this was totally illegal. It was more, criminal,” Chomsky said...

Blast From The Past...

From an article with further information.

Wikileaks Likely Has Nothing To Do With Tribal Leader Deaths

Though the powers that be would have you believe that Wikileaks and their recent document release are to blame for a recent rash of tribal leader killings in Afghanistan, on closer look it seems highly unlikely that the two have anything to do with one another. One can read in Newsweek or in The New York Post that:

the Taliban has already begun to retaliate against Afghan collaborators named in more than 90,000 secret U.S. files released by a whistleblower website

and how...

over the weekend one tribal elder, Khalifa Abdullah, who the Taliban believed had been in close contact with the Americans, was taken from his home in Monar village, in Kandahar province’s embattled Arghandab district, and executed by insurgent gunmen.

What isn't made clear, and probably for very good reason, is what the execution has to do with the Wikileaks documents. I found another article which sort of filled in the details that Newsweek and The New York Post chose to leave out.

In an article originally from Asia World News that I found on Earthtimes, some added details are given around the events. Wikileaks however is never mentioned in the article. Were the events simply lifted and blamed on Wikileaks to fit the propaganda purposes of the Pentagon? Perhaps. But there is more. It is hard to imagine how the deaths could be connected to Wikileaks for two reasons. The Wikileaks documents came out on Sunday, the 25th of July. According to the article:

70 tribal elders in Panwayi district had received death threats unless they leave the country within five days.

The tribal leader, Khalifa Abdullah, who was recently killed, and mentioned in Newsweek as being a result of Wikileaks, was killed on Friday. Assuming they did give him five days, that would mean the same day Wikileaks released their material the Taliban was in a position to scourge through it all in english and find his name and issue the letters and have them arrive the same day so that the leaders would have their five days before the killing would begin. Not satisfied? There's still more...

At the very end of the article which doesn't mention Wikileaks at all, another more logical reason is given for the murders:

NATO said earlier this month that Taliban chief Mullah Omar had sent to his followers a list of tribal leaders to kill.

A month ago? What can that possibly have to do with the Wikileaks Afghan Diary?
If you wish you can also read another article from more than a month ago which talks of the Taliban assassinations as an ongoing event in the region way before Wikileaks was even making news.
It seems obvious to me that the Pentagon and their propaganda artists in the mainstream media have done a bit of cut and paste to make this suddenly all the fault of Wikileaks. Nice smear campaign.

Intelligence Analyst Admits "Stable Honest Government in Kabul" Is Not The War's Purpose; Suggests Mobile Mullahs And More...

The good sir, Mitchell LaFortune, former Army sergeant and intelligence analyst makes some thoughtful weekend admissions about the Afghanistan War's true purpose in an Op-ed in The New York Times. Here are some tender morsels of war strategy written in the pleasant bucolic environment of Saco, Maine and morbidly entitled Learning From Wikileaks.

In this first passage I do believe it sounds as if the good sergeant is saying that keeping in place a "quick-strike military structure" (permanently?) is the real purpose of the war.

...Many people also operate from a faulty assumption about the war’s purpose. No matter what we’ve told the Afghans, the true goal of the American-led effort should not be to create a stable, honest government in Kabul. While that would be a great benefit, what’s vital is that we keep in place the robust intelligence and quick-strike military structure we have developed in the country and across the Pakistan border...

And then here, am I to presume he means adding afghanistan journalists to the U.S. special op hit list?

...To undermine support for United States troops, the Taliban insistently remind the people that America has committed to a withdrawal beginning next summer, they jump on any announcement of our Western allies pulling out troops and they publicize polls that show declining domestic American support for the war. To counter the spin, we need to add the Taliban’s top propagandists to the high-value-target list and direct military operations at the insurgents’ media nerve centers. A major reason that people in rural areas are so reluctant to help us is that Taliban propaganda and intimidation have created an atmosphere of fear...

And then I do admire the lovely bit of alliteration in his last gem of an idea, the mobile mullah.

...While creating a network of more enlightened religious figures to compete with the hard-liners will take time, we could jump-start progress by creating a group of “mobile mullahs” — well-protected clerics who can travel through rural areas and settle land disputes and other issues. These men should come from the general areas in which they will be performing their duties and be approved by community leaders...

I feel so much safer that the USA is guided by bright minds like Mr. LaFortune, who will undoubtebly guide us through the dirty muck of the next....centuries, of armed conflict in Central Asia. Hail, O Eternal War...

Zabiullah Mujahid Helps Gates Slam Wikileaks

Zabiullah Mujahid, alleged Taliban spokesperson, is being reported as saying about the Wikileaks documents, "We will investigate through our own secret service whether the people mentioned are really spies working for the U.S. If they are U.S. spies, then we know how to punish them."

It sounds as if this Zabiullah Mujahid from his Wikipedia profile might be another made-up spokesperson for the bad guys out there who comes in at the right times to help with Pentagon propaganda.

If the Taliban don't hunt down an informer, maybe the CIA or some special op will do it for them just to prove their point? Wouldn't even surprise me from these criminals.

In Which Direction Will Wikileaks Be Spun?

I was delighted to see the release of the recent Wikileaks documents. I assumed they would have a positive effect since they reveal some information about ISI involvement with the Taliban among other things. They also seemed to have a negative effect on the warmongers who were bitterly complaining over the leaks. I still assume this all to be a good thing. As for Assange himself, I believe he should be judged by his efforts. His works should speak of his character and I am going to assume he means well despite some of the criticism WIkileaks has been getting.

On the other hand, these new WIkileaks documents may be spun to only implicate Pakistan, without revealing how some believe our government actually supports the Pakistani ISI in their actions to support the Taliban, as Christoph Horstel explains below:

Afghanistan questions U.S. silence over Pakistan's role

If during Vietnam it had come out that the U.S. was giving China billions to aid the Vietcong in their fight against U.S. Troops, it would have been sensational information. Today a very similar thing is going on in Afghanistan with Pakistan. It seems to me absurd that there isn't more of a shake up over the public realization that we are basically funding our own enemies.

From Reuters.

...At a news conference later on Tuesday, council head Rangeen Dadfar Spanta was more specific, questioning the billions of dollars in cash aid and military assistance Washington has given to Pakistan over the years.

"It is really not justifiable for the Afghan people that how come you give to one country $11 billion or more as help for reconstruction or strengthen its security or defensive forces, but from other side the very forces train terrorism," he said...

BIGGEST LEAK IN INTEL HISTORY: Tens of thousands of alleged Afghan war documents go online; point to Pakistan-Taliban collusion; White House Condems

From Wikileaks

25th July 2010 5:00 PM EST WikiLeaks has released a document set called the Afghan War Diary (AWD), an extraordinary compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010...

From CNN

A whistle-blower website has published what it says are more than 90,000 United States military and diplomatic reports about Afghanistan filed between 2004 and January of this year.
The first-hand accounts are the military's own raw data on the war, including numbers killed, casualties, threat reports and the like, according to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.org, which published the material Sunday.
"It is the total history of the Afghan war from 2004 to 2010, with some important exceptions -- U.S. Special Forces, CIA activity and most of the activity of other non-U.S. groups," Assange said...

The New York Times reported Sunday that military field documents included in the release suggest that Pakistan, an ally of the United States in the war against terror, has been running something of a "double game," allowing "representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders."...

From LA TImes

The White House late Sunday condemned the leaking of what appear to be about 90,000 U.S. military records, as a handful of international media organizations that received access to the documents began to disclose their account of the war in Afghanistan....

From New York TImes

Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harbored strong suspicions that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants, according to a trove of secret military field reports made public Sunday.

The documents, made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders...


From Der Spiegel

The war logs expose the true scale of the Western military deployment -- and the problems beleaguering Germany's Bundeswehr in the Hindu Kush.

From The Guardian

From US military computers to a cafe in Brussels, how classified papers found their way to online activists...



And for a discussion of the handling of the documents go here.
For a selection from the remarkable documents themselves go here.
For a torrent download of the entire collection you may try here at Cryptogon

Here is a Wikileaks website with the documents (see how long they stay up). There is actually a cyber war going on to bring these sites down. Even The Guardian website seems to have fallen victim as one of their links is not working for their war logs.

JIhadi Terror Monkeys

I told you Spot was next! I predicted that an Al-Qaeda puppy wave would soon descend on us in a previous post. I got it slightly wrong however, as it's not dogs but now monkeys who are aiding Al-Qaeda. I am not sure what kind of disinfo, psy-op, or just plain stupid propaganda this is. Perhaps it is satire from the chinese? The War on Terror has surpassed all levels of the absurd so it is hard to tell when they might be actually being sarcastic.

From The Atlantic Wire

The People's Daily, a newspaper produced by China's ruling communist party, has either been hilariously pranked or has out-reported every news outlet in Afghanistan to secure the scoop of the century. The outlet today reports that the Taliban in Afghanistan is "training monkeys to use weapons to attack American troops." After 16 years of war and nine years of battling the U.S., the Islamist insurgents have decided to arm monkeys with "AK-47 rifles and Bren light machine guns in the Waziristan tribal region near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan."

The Chinese author, who apparently believes that PETA is more influential than the 31 percent of Americans who oppose the Afghan war, tries to explain what's happening. "Analysts believe that apart from using 'monkey killers' to attack the American troops, the Taliban also sought to arouse Western animal protectionists to pressure their governments to withdraw troops from Afghanistan..."

The National Terror Alert also is covering the Jihadi Terror Monkeys, where they quote NATO as reassuring us that "absolutely nothing [ ] leads us to believe that this tale could be even remotely based in reality."

And now for the video also from the Atlantic Wire.

Afghans Believe US Is Funding Taliban

The truth nobody wants to hear about our decrepit wars. Reading the comments on the Guardian link makes my skin crawl how the people are so brainwashed, or are they just comments planted by the same corrupt forces intent on steering debate as we know many have suggested the government do.

From The Guardian

It's near-impossible to find anyone in Afghanistan who doesn't believe the US are funding the Taliban: and it's the highly educated Afghan professionals, those employed by ISAF, USAID, international media organisations – and even advising US diplomats – who seem the most convinced.

One Afghan friend, who speaks flawless English and likes to quote Charles Dickens, Bertolt Brecht and Anton Chekhov, says the reason is clear. "The US has an interest in prolonging the conflict so as to stay in Afghanistan for the long term."

The continuing violence between coalition forces and the Taliban is simple proof in itself.

"We say in this country, you need two hands to clap," he says, slapping his hands together in demonstration. "One side can't do it on its own."

His arguments are reasoned, although he slightly ruins the effect by explaining to me that no Jews died in the Twin Towers. It's not just the natural assets of Afghanistan but its strategic position, the logic goes. Commanding this country would give the US power over India, Russia, Pakistan and China, not to mention all the central Asian states.

"The US uses Israel to threaten the Arab states, and they want to make Afghanistan into the same thing," he says. "Whoever controls Asia in the future, controls the world."

See Also: Times Square Bomber Had Pakistani Army, U.S. Embassy Connections and Thought Provoking Article Might Help Explain Yemen and 'Sharp Dressed Indian'and Nato Forces Supplied Taliban

If Faisal Shazhad Received Taliban Training, Why Was His Bomb A Joke?

The bomb was a joke. He had non-explosive grade fertilizer. He had some fireworks and plastic alarm clocks. He left the hazard light blinking. You think that's going to blow up Times Square? Whatever people.

Don't you think if he had been trained to be a terrorist, he would have known how to make a bomb?

Nonetheless, that is the new talking point.

Attoney General Admit's "Developing" Evidence

(I wasn't sure if I should go with this, I have less passion for attacking Obama then some, however since he just nominated Kagan, here it is.)


In an article on Raw Story, Attoney General Holder is playing his cards rather bluntly by actually using the words "We've now developed evidence that shows that the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attack."

Oh really, how did you develop this evidence now?

Could it have been like this?

Holder: Mr. President, though I thought we might blame this one on the Tea Party, perhaps it might be more useful to demonize the Taliban who we are currently bombing into submission?

Obama: I don't know Eric. This guy was pretty much an amateur. Might make the Taliban seem like sissies. I agree we need to tighten the public resolve around our activities in Central Asia though. Zbig knows we will need to occupy Central Asia probably for decades.

Holder: I think it will work sir, the public didn't really notice it was just firecrackers.

Chaos On The Grand Chessboard Part II

Karzai threatens to join the Taliban.

A recent New York Times headline "Karzai Steps Up Attacks on NATO, Boxing In the West" is almost an understatement. The article details the developing deterioration between Karzai and his Western backers. As the article states "Many fear the relationship is only likely to become worse, as Mr. Karzai draws closer to allies like Iran and China, whose interests are often at odds with those of the West, and sounds sympathetic enough to the Taliban that he could spur their efforts, helping their recruitment and further destablizing the country"

It gets even worse. An unnamed member of the Afghan parliament speaking on condition of anonymity told the newspaper that Karzai said in a parliamentary meeting "If you and the international community pressure me more, I swear that I am going to join the Taliban."

Russia Today: US and Nato Strengthen Afgan Drug Industry

A lecturer from the University College Dublin, Julian Mercille, on Russia Today explains that Nato and the US are actually supporting those involved with the drug trade in Afganistan. The Taliban only receive in comparison 5% of their income from the drug trade, according to the lecturer.