There’s no questioning that everyone from the President to the ex-Secretary of Defense and his underlings should be held accountable for their actions, but the chances of that happening are highly unlikely. The Bush Administration politicized the CIA, now those commonly thrown under the bus are doing their best to make sure that doesn’t happen…

“Senior intelligence officers are lobbying the outgoing president to look after the men and women who could face charges for following his orders in the war on terrorism.

Many fear that Barack Obama, who has pledged to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and put an end to the policy of extraordinary rendition, could launch a legal witch hunt against those who oversaw the policies after he is sworn in on Jan 20.

Most vulnerable are US intelligence officers who took part in intensive interrogations against terrorist suspects, using techniques including water boarding, which many believe crossed the line into torture.

A former CIA officer familiar with the backstage lobbying for pardons, said: “These are the people President Bush asked to fight the war on terror for him. He gave them the green light to fight tough. The view of many in the intelligence community is that he should not leave them vulnerable to legal censure when he leaves.

“An effort is under way to get pre-emptive pardons. The White House has indicated that the matter is under consideration.”

In addition to frontline CIA and military officers, others at risk could include David Addington, Dick Cheney’s former counsel, and William Haynes, the former Pentagon general counsel who helped draw up the regulations governing enhanced interrogations.”

Leonard Pitts Jr. of the Miami Herald had something rather profound published in yesterday’s edition. He went on a bent about some memos, waterboarding, the CIA, the Bush Administration, the fact that no one really noticed – you know, the usual…

“You remember the War on Terror, don’t you? It was in all the papers. Back before presidential politics sucked the air from the room and your 401(k) shrank till it was worth maybe dinner and a movie, it was considered quite the important news story. Abu Ghraib? Extraordinary renditions? Fight ‘em over there so we don’t have to fight ‘em over here? Surely you recall.

I only ask because of a news story that broke last week to a yawn of media disinterest. The Washington Post reported on two secret White House memos explicitly endorsing the use of waterboarding — simulated drowning — on so-called high-value terrorism suspects. This is, says The Post, the first time the still-classified memos have been disclosed. They were written in response to requests from then-CIA Director George Tenet, who worried his agents might be hung out to dry if the practice were discovered and the people or their representatives demanded someone’s head.

According to The Post, the White House issued written authorizations in 2003 and 2004. Yet in 2006, President Bush told the nation, “The United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it — and I will not authorize it.”

Which was, of course, a lie.

You’d think the latest proof of that lie — yet another smoking gun to stack with all the others — would merit attention. But a computer search Thursday turned up only seven newspaper stories mentioning the memos. Searches of the CNN and FOX news websites also came up dry, though the story did appear on MSNBC’s site.

If you think my point is that the media missed an important story, it isn’t. No, the point is that normal is not where we thought it would be.

You remember how it was just after Sept. 11, 2001, right? Some of us vowed we would never enter a skyscraper again. Some of us didn’t want to leave our houses again. The minutiae of popular culture became staggeringly unimportant. Humorists like David Letterman and my colleague, Dave Barry, wondered if they could ever return to the business of laughter.

We were scared dry. And some of us said: Get used to it. This was the new normal.

But skyscrapers did not close from lack of use. We did not become a nation of agoraphobics. We did not lose our interest in singers and movie stars. Letterman and Barry went back to work.

Fear, which had cut through us like a hot poker, became instead a low-grade fever, ambient noise, wallpaper, something you feel without feeling, hear without hearing, see without seeing.

Then you look up one day and realize how profoundly that fear has changed your world. People are imprisoned without charges or access to attorneys, and it’s routine. People are surveilled, their reading habits studied, their telephone usage logged, and it’s commonplace. People, including children, end up on a secret list of those who are not allowed to fly, nobody will tell you why, there is no appeal, and it’s ordinary. We swallow lies like candy, nod sagely at babblespeak, and it’s unexceptional.

Torture is inflicted with White House approval, the president lies about it and it’s just another Tuesday.

Once upon a time, Americans were fond of looking upon backward nations, upon places where law was whatever the king said it was, and noting with pride that we do things differently in our country. But that was a day long ago and a country long gone.”

What is torture? According to the dictionary it is defined as:

“The action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or to force them to do or say something. Great physical or mental suffering or anxiety.”

With regards to torture, the 17th Article of the Geneva Conventions states:

“No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.”

Thanks to the likes of John Yoo, in the aftermath of 9/11 the United States went about systematically attacking what it labeled legal ambiguities regarding what constitutes a prisoner of war. It was argued by Yoo, and others, that those captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere were not prisoners of war but rather enemy combatants, and were therefore not assured the protections guaranteed by the Geneva Conventions. This precedent led to the current detention system employed by the United States, how detainees may be interrogated, and the ability of the United States to hold individuals indefinitely without any legal recourse. It also set a precedent with regards to the ability of the United States, a signatory of the Geneva Conventions, to both usurp its authority and redefine those aspects of it that challenge US detention and interrogation methods.

In short, the United States took the position of being able to adhere to the Geneva Conventions when it chose to, or disregard or redefine it when it presented obstacles.

By September 11th, 2006, the number of those detained in the War On Terror exceeded 83,000, none of whom, at that time, were charged with definable crimes under International or US law, nor brought to trial. It was during this immense detention roundup that entirely under qualified US military personnel were following wholly ambiguous rules of interrogation, the majority of whom had no training in interrogation techniques whatsoever and were commonly placed in the position of interrogating detainees after periods of instruction that were, in some cases, as short as six hours. Likewise, soldiers stationed at detention facilities were urged by a variety of individuals, from intelligence personnel to military contractors, to help ‘soften up’ prisoners, again despite the fact they had no experience working in such facilities, let alone dealing with prisoners. These were the individuals that were thrown to the wolves following the Abu Ghraib and Bagram scandals while no high level officer or member of the intelligence community, nor any member of the administration itself, was ever held responsible despite the fact that the interrogation directives themselves emanated from the highest offices in US government.

That said; let’s return to the primary question – what is torture?

While there are those that believe that torture is a wholly physical phenomenon, the truth is that since the 1950’s the Central Intelligence Agency has worked diligently on constructing an interrogation platform almost entirely based on psychological manipulation, including the development of LSD and other drugs as part of its chemical interrogation program known as MK-ULTRA (directed by the CIA’s Technical Services Staff, thus the digraph ‘MK’), which was later renamed MK-SEARCH in 1964. During that period, the following routinely occurred under the umbrella of the program:

- Experiments were conducted without the knowledge or consent of test subjects.

- Academic researchers were unaware in numerous cases that their work was being used to help provide the CIA with data.

- US soldiers were dosed with LSD to study its side affects with regards to mind control (Operation Teapot - Subproject 54, Perfect Concussion).

- Pregnant women were exposed to radiation and other substances and the testicles of inmates at an Oregon prison were irradiated without their knowledge (Operation Teapot – Subproject 54).

It is believed that over 150 different subprojects were carried out under the umbrella of MK-ULTRA. Unfortunately, as ‘luck’ would have it, the majority of the records regarding MK-ULTRA were deliberately destroyed in 1973 by order of Richard Helms, the director of the CIA between 1966 and 1973. As an aside, Helms remains the only CIA director to have ever been convicted of lying to Congress.

So how is this applicable to what is currently transpiring with regards to detainees? The answer is rather straight forward – the CIA’s extensive research into the use of detrimental psychological methods was transformed into the official American handbook on torture. The irony, of course, is that many people do not equate psychological mistreatment with the term ‘torture’, which is, in truth, the genius of its guise. Also of note is that much of the sensory deprivation techniques used by the United States military and CIA were initially researched by Dr. Donald Hebb, a Canadian psychologist, who, at his own admission, has claimed that the prolonged affects of sensory deprivation can easily result in a permanent state of psychosis after a minimum of six to eight days.

For example, take these images that hundreds of millions of people have seen since the detention facility at Guantanamo was opened…

In this photograph, and dozens of others like it, we see detainees at Guantanamo wearing hoods, blackened goggles, ear guards, and mittens. To your average observer this image doesn’t seem all that bad. In fact, it seems rather benign given what the individuals in the photographs have been accused of.

Now take a look at this photograph…

This photograph shows a subject undergoing one of Dr. Hebb’s sensory deprivation experiments. In it the subject is blindfolded, their hands are encased, and their auditory capability has been removed. They are also covered by a blanket, which can be removed and then replaced to control their body temperature and further disorient them (which is also the reason why their hands and feet are covered).

Returning to this image (on the left), we see detainees at Guantanamo sitting in stress positions outfitted with much of the same sensory deprivation equipment worn by the test subject in the photograph above.

That said; the application of sensory deprivation represents only the beginning of the process of psychological torture. Once desensitized and physically overwhelmed, the implementation of fear and degradation are then introduced. While not all prisoners are immediately subjected to sensory deprivation, they are subjected to fear and degradation, which is then commonly followed by the application of sensory deprivation, usually represented by being held in small rooms, cages, or cells in stress positions that make it impossible to sleep. This state is then capitalized on by the introduction of fear, degradation, and the implementation of further sensory deprivation techniques, such as the use of strobe lights and loud music in a dark room while enduring painful stress positions - or other techniques such as waterboarding (though it should be noted that waterboarding is a technique that can be employed outright in an attempt to break an individual).

This photograph (to the left) is, perhaps, one of the most familiar images produced during the Abu Ghraib scandal. In it a prisoner is standing on a small box, their head covered, with wires attached to each hand.

The point of this position is to place the prisoner in a state of fear having told them that they will be electrocuted if they attempt to get off of the box or lower their arms. In actuality the wires aren’t attached to anything, but the prisoner is unaware of that because they have been placed on the box while hooded. Thus, they believe that they will be electrocuted if they move.

In truth, it is far worse than having a gun put to your head and the trigger pulled. At least in that scenario you have no control, and the fear is minimized by the fact that it only lasts a few seconds before you’re killed. In this instance the prisoner is placed in the position of fearing death, or extreme pain, based on their own actions. The catch is that if they’re left in that position long enough exhaustion begins to play a significant role, only heightening their fear despite the fact that they’ve become so fatigued that they begin to lose the ability to remain in the position that they have been told will ensure their well being. The psychological impact of this procedure, while obviously perceived to produce results, would most likely end in the prisoner immediately stepping off of the box if it is repeated enough times that they are driven to the point where death is viewed as a release, even given the stringent view of suicide in the Islamic faith.

When cultural and religious elements are introduced into the equation, humiliation also becomes part of the process. In the case of Muslim men, sexual assault or overt sexual behaviour by female interrogators, forced nudity and masturbation, sexual humiliation, and the forced imposition of homosexual acts are all examples of techniques that have been employed because of the offense and trauma they cause. Coupled with the affects of sensory deprivation and fear, the impact of such techniques works to further degrade the mental state of prisoners.

It is in such a state that, according to the tenets of the doctrine, individuals are more likely to divulge information. But, in truth, they are simply more apt to say whatever it is that their captors want to hear because of extreme disorientation – and that is not the production of reliable intelligence.

If you believe that psychological mistreatment does not constitute torture try a simple experiment at home (and no, I am not actually saying that you should do this, I am just demonstrating a point).

First, get a knife, place the blade over your forearm, and cut yourself. If you are too afraid to do it, remember that feeling.

Second, get a friend to blindfold you, place a hood over your head, wrap towels around your feet and hands, bind them together with something, and then have them place you in a small closet with your arms raised over your head. After they do that, have them turn the thermostat up to full.

After that, every hour have them turn the heat off and wait 30 minutes. Then have them place ice cubes or icepacks inside your clothing, leaving them there for 30 minutes. After that have them return, remove the icepacks, place a winter coat on you, turn the thermostat back up to full, bind your hands back together and resume holding them over your head. Repeat this process for 12 hours.

Chances are that you will not last 30 minutes in that closet. If you last four hours, I will bet you that you would rather willfully cut yourself rather than spend another four hours in it.

Ultimately, what is more torturous? Killing an individual outright, physically torturing them to the point that they could die, or driving them psychologically to the point that they want to? It is one thing to be executed by another. It is altogether another matter to be brought to that black precipice at which you would gladly execute yourself.

And yet they deem it legal.

It’s happened twice in recent days – two US incursions into the Pakistani Province of Waziristan, both denied by the United States. The first involved two US helicopters that were, according to Pakistani sources, fired upon, and which returned to Afghan airspace without returning fire. The second incident involved a US drone that reportedly crashed in Southern Waziristan yesterday according to the Pakistani media.

Despite the recent attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the Pakistani government’s position regarding the sanctity of its sovereignty remains unaltered – Pakistani forces will use force to repel operations by foreign militaries emanating from Afghanistan. While the attentions of many in the United States, and elsewhere, are focused on the current economic crisis, the potentially catastrophic game that is being played by the Bush Administration has been flying under the radar.

As Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer, pointed out in a recently article for Time…

“As Wall Street collapsed with a bang, almost no one noticed that we’re on the brink of war with Pakistan. And, unfortunately, that’s not too much of an exaggeration. On Tuesday, the Pakistan’s military ordered its forces along the Afghan border to repulse all future American military incursions into Pakistan. The story has been subsequently downplayed, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, flew to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, to try to ease tensions. But the fact remains that American forces have and are violating Pakistani sovereignty.

You have to wonder whether the Bush administration understands what it is getting into. In case anyone has forgotten, Pakistan has a hundred plus nuclear weapons. It’s a country on the edge of civil war. Its political leadership is bitterly divided. In other words, it’s the perfect recipe for a catastrophe.”

[…]

“U.S. forces have been entering Pakistan for the last six years. But it was always very quietly, usually no more than a hundred yards in, and usually to meet a friendly tribal chieftain. Pakistan knew about these crossings, but it turned a blind eye because it was never splashed across the front page of the country’s newspapers. This has all changed in the last month, as the Administration stepped up Predator missile attacks. And then, after the New York Times ran an article that U.S. forces were officially given the go-ahead to enter Pakistan without prior Pakistani permission, Pakistan had no choice but to react.

On another level the Bush Administration’s decision to step up attacks in Pakistan is fatally reckless, because the cross-border operations’ chances of capturing or killing al Qaeda’s leadership are slim. American intelligence isn’t good enough for precision raids like this. Pakistan’s tribal regions are a black hole that even Pakistani operatives can’t enter and come back alive. Overhead surveillance and intercepts do little good in tracking down people in a backward, rural part of the world like this.

On top of it, is al-Qaeda worth the candle? Yes, some deadender in New York or London could blow himself up in the subway and leave behind a video claiming the attack in the name of al-Qaeda. But our going into Pakistan, risking a full-fledged war with a nuclear power, isn’t going to stop him.”

What has shocked me more than anything is the fact that reports of a three-phase plan, approved at the highest level of government, have gone completely overlooked. According to an article published by NPR on the 13th of this month, President Bush himself gave the green light to the plan, which includes the use of Predator Drones and US Special Operations Forces to strike targets within Pakistan. One of the first actions taken under this new strategy was a raid by US Navy Seals in which civilians were killed. Further, it has been reported that CIA personnel from various parts of the world are being deployed along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier in an attempt to produce an ‘intelligence surge’ to aid in the selection of cross-border targets.

In the end, the reality, as Baer pointed out, is that the United States is willfully ignoring the sovereignty of Pakistan. Given that, it is empowering both the Pakistani military and local militants to support an aligned cause – the repulsion of foreign military incursions.

Given that President Bush has mere months left in office, the risk of sparking something disastrous is only bolstered by his administration’s repeatedly proven track record of outright stupidity. And while the condemnation of Iran continues to attract more international attention, the fact that the United States is goading a nuclear power is certainly something that should not be excused as Republican political necessity with regards to making an 11th hour attempt to kill or capture high level al-Qaeda figures to feebly justify the administration’s mistakes.

Good morning from mentally ill headquarters located in Vancouver’s sunny Downtown Lower Eastside. Here at MI HQ we do our best to cover the day’s events from the perspective of the mentally ill prior to our mid afternoon tee-off times (and to think there was a time when I was younger that I had a 15 handicap – just ask Salros).

Painting 2 Billion People With A Single Brush

Sheldon Richman of The Future Of Freedom Foundation penned a piece yesterday entitled Why the Peaceful Majority of Muslims Are Not Irrelevant, something that every hack out there that loves to employ the term ‘Islamofascism’ should read (not that it would make a ton of difference)…

“A few years ago, FrontPageMag.com columnist Paul Marek wrote an article titled “Why the Peaceful Majority Is Irrelevant.” His thesis was that even if the majority of Muslims abhor violence, it doesn’t matter because “the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history…. The hard quantifiable fact is, that the ‘peaceful majority’ is the ‘silent majority’ and it is cowed and extraneous.”

For Marek, the upshot is this: “We must pay attention to the only group that counts: the fanatics who threaten our way of life.”

He’s wrong. No, he’s worse than wrong, because his position could be used to justify mass murder.

Marek and those who have applauded his column point out that most Germans and Japanese during World War II were not warmongers, but warmongers controlled policymaking. The implication is that the United States was right to regard the peaceful majority as nonexistent. That’s exactly what the Allies did. Under Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Winston Churchill hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese civilians were targeted and killed in bombings that had no direct relationship to military objectives. Most people consider this morally defensible. It’s regarded as a normal part of war, although it violates traditional just-war doctrine. But why isn’t it understood to be mass murder? Marek’s answer would be that, since the peaceful majority did nothing to stop the warmongering minority, the majority — men, women, and children — were fair game.

This dubious principle has been applied to the Middle East: If the majority are peaceful, why don’t its members speak out — and act — against the radical minority? Since they don’t, “we” have the right to ignore them when “we” devise strategy and tactics to defend “ourselves.” If they die or otherwise suffer in the attacks, they have only themselves or the radical minority to blame. This principle goes beyond chalking up the deaths of innocents to “collateral damage,” because it suggests that no one is truly innocent.”

I invite you to read Paul Marek’s original piece written in 2006 published by FrontPage Magazine. When doing so, for the sake of ‘objectivity’, keep in mind that FrontPage Magazine is the anti-Islamic propaganda brainchild of David Horowitz. Beyond that, read the piece and then read Richmond’s article in full and decide for yourself which is the more intelligent and well rounded argument.

Photoshop, Not Just For Graphic Designers

Wired Magazine points out that some of the images used to bolster anti-Russian sentiment during its recent conflict with Georgia were tampered with by an Associated Press photographer. The AP has denied the accusations.

Again, read the article and come to your own conclusions.

Poland And Black Sites

When news first broke that the United States had been using secret locations in Europe to hold and interrogate detainees illegally rendered to them, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice scoffed at the assertion. Of course, as time passed, it became clear that her rejection of the idea was little more than hot air.

Yesterday’s Telegraph contains an explosive article pertaining to the uncovering of evidence that numerous key Polish Cabinet Ministers knew of the existence of a CIA Black Site in the country…

“A Polish radio station has claimed that prosecutors possess a 2006 report confirming the jail’s existence, written by Roman Giertych, a cabinet minister in Poland’s previous government, who was then head of a committee monitoring the secret services.

The station, Radio Zet, says that at least two ministers, including then justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, saw the report.

The revelations have been supported by similar claims by one of Poland’s most respected newspapers. Gazeta Wyborcza says that it has seen a document, possessed by prosecutors, proving the existence of a key CIA centre in Poland, which was set up under a secret Polish-US agreement in 2002.

The paper adds that the secret service presented the report to Poland’s then chief prosecutor, Janusz Kaczmarek and two ministers in 2006. Mr Kaczmarek confirmed he met the ministers but has refused to disclose what was discussed.

Prosecutors began their probe under orders from Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, in order to investigate persistent accusations that Szymany, an air force base in north-east Poland, was the location of a key centre in US’s campaign against terrorist networks.

They are also investigating claims that US interrogators used practices such as water-boarding, regarded by many as torture, in Poland.”

I would imagine that, somewhere out there, there are articles that contradict this. If you can find them, feel free to post them in the comments.

The lead story on most major media websites this morning is the announcement that Joe Biden has been chosen as Barack Obama’s running mate. Buried in the back pages is a story of much greater significance, and one that ties in with my last entry. From The Raw Story…

“New documents from within the Bush administration and US intelligence community during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq reveal that the White House began assembling a case for war before it had compiled the intel that ostensibly formed the basis of that case.

A new report on the documents from George Washington University’s National Security Archive also presents compelling evidence that the Bush administration pressured the CIA and other intelligence agencies to tailor their reports to back-up Bush’s desire to invade. The report suggests the bulk of this effort was run out of Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, backing up numerous other post-war examinations of the path to invasion that saw Cheney as the mastermind of the plan to oust Saddam Hussein.

The Archive published a July 2002 draft of a CIA “White Paper” on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. The draft was prepared months before a National Intelligence Estimate on Saddam’s regime, which Congress did not demand until September, although the final “White Paper” released in October purportedly summarized that very NIE.

In addition to the Archive’s newly obtained documents, Dr. John Prados, who compiled the report, examined previous investigations of pre-war intelligence manipulation such as the recently completed Senate Intelligence Committee “Phase II” report on administration officials’ pre-war rhetoric and books on the subject such as former White House spokesman Scott McClellan’s memoir.”

The politicization of the intelligence community post 9/11 is a very important factor to take into account, and one that is largely overlooked.

I hate to say it, but, Paris for President…

Sure, someone wrote that for her, but you have to admit that her verbal execution was pretty flawless. Let’s be honest, in politics these days reading convincingly off of a telepromper constitutes 80% of your ability to lead. Hell, might as well be a hot chick in a bikini.

Oh, and this might be of a tiny bit of importance as well…

There are those that you antagonize because you know that there won’t be serious repercussions and those that you do not. Heated rhetoric aimed at Iran is one thing, but outing the Pakistani ISI is another matter altogether. Like it or not, agree with it or not, the reality is that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence is an extremely powerful entity, one that routinely transcends the authority of Pakistan’s government. The ISI has been referred to as Pakistan’s Ghost Government on more than one occasion, and even Pervez Musharraf, who was, for all intents and purposes, a military dictator, lived with the reality that if you do not possess the confidence and favour of the ISI then you are in the wilderness.

After the assassination of Benazir Bhutto it was speculated by many that the ISI was complicit, even if their involvement was limited to the employment or financing of others to accomplish the deed itself. Bhutto must have been fully aware when she returned to Pakistan that the ISI would be a problem were she to succeed in securing her old office. She must have also been aware of the fact that they most likely viewed her as little more than a US political proxy. Those in and around Washington that pushed for her return given the state of Pakistani politics at the time severely underestimated the ISI’s resolve in my opinion, and it ultimately cost Bhutto her life.

One thing that should be taken into account is that the ISI is, more than likely, not afraid of the United States. They have, in the past, worked closely with the CIA, and are by no means strangers with regards to American covert practices. In truth, they have probably been the most significant force behind Pakistan’s double dealings with the US since 9/11, placating US interests when it suits their purposed while supporting those that serve their own, the Taliban included.

In yesterday’s New York Times, an article by Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt was published entitled Pakistanis Aided Attack in Kabul, U.S. Officials Say. An excerpt…

“American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.

The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.

The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Concerns about the role played by Pakistani intelligence not only has strained relations between the United States and Pakistan, a longtime ally, but also has fanned tensions between Pakistan and its archrival, India. Within days of the bombings, Indian officials accused the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, of helping to orchestrate the attack in Kabul, which killed 54, including an Indian defense attaché.

This week, Pakistani troops clashed with Indian forces in the contested region of Kashmir, threatening to fray an uneasy cease-fire that has held since November 2003.

The New York Times reported this week that a top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled to Pakistan this month to confront senior Pakistani officials with information about support provided by members of the ISI to militant groups. It had not been known that American intelligence agencies concluded that elements of Pakistani intelligence provided direct support for the attack in Kabul.”

The publication of this story has, of course, spread like wildfire, resulting in a statement today by the Pakistani government claiming that the ISI was not involved in the Kabul bombing. Among those that have picked up on it are The BBC, The CBC, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and Reuters, just to name a brief few. The point being, the world is out, and now a very dangerous game of US covert interventionism and Pakistani culpable deniability will no doubt ensue. But the real motivation behind the revelation of the ISI’s involvement in the Kabul bombing by the CIA could have very little to do with an attempt to egregiously expose the ISI’s support of insurgents that operate along the Pakistan-Afghan frontier and use the information to fan another flame altogether.

The Probable Squeeze Play

First, this morning finds the article penned by the New York Times’ Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt in yesterday’s publication ‘updated’. The exact same body of text quoted above now reads…

“A top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled secretly to Islamabad this month to confront Pakistan’s most senior officials with new information about ties between the country’s powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas, according to American military and intelligence officials.

The C.I.A. emissary presented evidence showing that members of the spy service had deepened their ties with some militant groups that were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the officials said.

The decision to confront Pakistan with what the officials described as a new C.I.A. assessment of the spy service’s activities seemed to be the bluntest American warning to Pakistan since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks about the ties between the spy service and Islamic militants.

The C.I.A. assessment specifically points to links between members of the spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and the militant network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, which American officials believe maintains close ties to senior figures of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The C.I.A. has depended heavily on the ISI for information about militants in Pakistan, despite longstanding concerns about divided loyalties within the Pakistani spy service, which had close relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks.

That ISI officers have maintained important ties to anti-American militants has been the subject of previous reports in The New York Times. But the C.I.A. and the Bush administration have generally sought to avoid criticism of Pakistan, which they regard as a crucial ally in the fight against terrorism.

The visit to Pakistan by the C.I.A. official, Stephen R. Kappes, the agency’s deputy director, was described by several American military and intelligence officials in interviews in recent days. Some of those who were interviewed made clear that they welcomed the decision by the C.I.A. to take a harder line toward the ISI’s dealings with militant groups.”

You will note that mention of tensions with India have been removed. This passage from yesterday’s version of the story is of paramount importance…

“Within days of the bombings, Indian officials accused the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, of helping to orchestrate the attack in Kabul, which killed 54, including an Indian defense attaché.”

To many this might seem of little consequence given historical tensions between the two nations, but the inevitable question must be asked – who furnished the Indians with information that the ISI was involved? Of course, given that the Indian embassy was the target, they could have come to that conclusion on their own, it’s not as if they lack the intelligence capability to unearth such information. But given the revelations now being provided by the United States, it is not outside the realm of possibility that the US provided the Indian government with that information in an attempt to open what could be referred to as ‘a second front’ with regards to using the Indians as part of a ‘squeeze play’ to regionally box the Pakistanis in. In that sense, Kashmir becomes the inevitable playing field in that arena, one which, if properly exploited, could result in the diversion of support intended for insurgents operating along the Pakistan-Afghan frontier. As was also pointed out in the initial article run by the New York Times yesterday…

“This week, Pakistani troops clashed with Indian forces in the contested region of Kashmir, threatening to fray an uneasy cease-fire that has held since November 2003.”

Reuters is also reporting the following…

“India said on Friday that peace talks with Pakistan were at the lowest point in their four-year history after a spate of bombings in Indian cities and at the country’s embassy in Kabul.

Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said the blasts had “affected the future” of negotiations between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

“If you ask me to describe the state of the dialogue, it is in a place where it hasn’t been in the last four years,” Menon told reporters.

“We face a situation where things have happened in the recent past which were unfortunate and which quite frankly have affected the future of the dialogue.”

India blames Pakistan for a breach of a 2003 ceasefire on its de facto border in disputed Kashmir, and accuses its spy agency of involvement in last month’s bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, in which two senior diplomats were among 58 people killed.”

In situations such as this, motive is always a factor. US motives are plain enough – there must be a serious transformation of the Pakistani political landscape so that the ISI’s powers are either limited or altogether removed. Bhutto’s return was certainly a part of US efforts to upset that balance. Of course, the ISI aren’t fools, and are well aware of how the United States operates when it comes to the differentiation between promoted initiatives and covert ones. They, themselves, have been running the very same game against the US since 9/11. Publicly they claim that they are not aiding militants involved in operations in Afghanistan, or that if elements with the ISI are involved in such activities that they will be rooted out. Privately they continue to support those groups that they view, and have viewed for some time, as vital to the spread of Pakistani influence in the region. And they will, make no mistake, be patient and wait for the United States to act rashly with regards to unilateral military operations within Pakistan itself, which will only further their domination over the Pakistani government and ultimately lead to a growth in public support as it pertains to confronting the United States as a foreign aggressor that is threatening Pakistani sovereignty.

This is where the Indians become a crucial part of the equation, and again, motive must be examined. If the United States did furnish the Indian government intelligence with regards to the ISI’s role in the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, what do the Americans get out of it – or, better, yet, what leverage do they possess to help ensure that the Indian government plays ball. Well, interestingly enough, and only a day after that initial New York Times article was published…

“The governors of the U.N. nuclear watchdog approved an inspections plan for India on Friday, an important step towards completing a nuclear cooperation deal between New Delhi and the United States.

The plan, approved by consensus by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors, will permit regular IAEA surveillance of India’s declared civilian nuclear energy plants — 14 of 22 existing or planned reactors.

This clears a hurdle to an accord that would allow sales of atomic materials and technology for civilian use to India. The deal has been criticized because New Delhi has not signed the global Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).”

This is, I am sad to report, how things work. There are back channels for back channels when it comes to the covert agendas of nations that are often conveniently appropriated through openly negotiated dealings. It is no secret that the United States and India have been working on this deal for some time now, but given the situation in Pakistan, and the fact that Afghanistan is beginning to resemble its former self more and more, securing the favour of traditional regional allies is quintessential.

The reason is clear enough.

Pakistan Has Always Been The Crux Of The Problem

After the Taliban was overthrown in 2001, were Pakistan not a regional factor, the reconstitution of the Taliban would never have occurred. The reality is, and has always been, that the war in Afghanistan is perpetuated by the support provided by those within Pakistan that view the success of what they view as military proxies as quintessential with regards to securing Pakistani influence in Afghanistan. That was why Benazir Bhutto backed supporting the Taliban in the 90’s and why the ISI supports them today.

It is very important to remember that, prior to 9/11, the United States possessed a very cool outlook towards Pakistan, one fermented by their acquisition and development of a nuclear weapons program. Despite the fact that the United States has never seriously condemned the Indians regarding theirs, the Pakistanis have always been another matter altogether, a position very likely cultivated during US cooperation with the ISI in the 80’s and their exposure to the organization’s mindset. Of course, there is a significant deal of hypocrisy involved as it pertains to the United States during that era, but that does not change the fact that both the CIA and the ISI are by no means strangers with regards to each others governing mindsets.

Following 9/11, unilaterally striking Pakistan was off the table - most likely because of their possession of a nuclear deterrent. Instead, the Bush Administration decided to ally itself with Pakistan’s military dictator, ironically casting him in an altogether ‘just’ light for as long as it served the administration’s ends. By the time it became clear that the Taliban were not defeated, and that their military prowess was growing, Musharraf became an obstacle that needed to be removed. Thus, various actions taken by his government to do with the diminishment of democratic freedoms were highlighted and Bhutto was ultimately thrust into the fray as a US-backed hopeful.

We all know how that turned out, and, as I stated earlier, the involvement of the ISI in her assassination should not be disregarded as mere speculation. In truth, if we’re to talk brass tacks, it was a move that the ISI had to make to ensure that foreign interventionism would not gain a significant foothold in the country.

But the fact remains that the war in Afghanistan is a war for Afghanistan, not a war to emancipate a people from a once ruthless regime. It is a conflict that is being fought by Western powers against insurgents supported by one of the region’s foremost covert military organizations that possess decades worth of experience when it comes to using regional militants to their advantage. Seven years after the fact, Western powers are finally waking up to that reality, though there is little that they can do about it without purposely orchestrating a coup within Pakistan or targeting both insurgent and Pakistani forces within the country itself without hesitation or excuse. Unfortunately, Pakistan is not Afghanistan, and to do so would lead to an outcome that would make the war in Iraq look like a child’s birthday party.

Calling a spade a spade is one thing. But the game that has seemingly been initiated by the United States regarding the ISI’s culpability is a very dangerous one indeed.

As a follow up to an entry posted a few days ago, an article of note from the New York Times entitled - C.I.A. Outlines Pakistan Links With Militants…

“The C.I.A. emissary presented evidence showing that members of the spy service had deepened their ties with some militant groups that were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the officials said.

The decision to confront Pakistan with what the officials described as a new C.I.A. assessment of the spy service’s activities seemed to be the bluntest American warning to Pakistan since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks about the ties between the spy service and Islamic militants.

The C.I.A. assessment specifically points to links between members of the spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and the militant network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, which American officials believe maintains close ties to senior figures of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The C.I.A. has depended heavily on the ISI for information about militants in Pakistan, despite longstanding concerns about divided loyalties within the Pakistani spy service, which had close relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks.

That ISI officers have maintained important ties to anti-American militants has been the subject of previous reports in The New York Times. But the C.I.A. and the Bush administration have generally sought to avoid criticism of Pakistan, which they regard as a crucial ally in the fight against terrorism.”

This should come as absolutely no surprise whatsoever, least of all to the Central Intelligence Agency who used the ISI as their primary conduit with regards to supporting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 80’s. The CIA is, by no means, in the dark when it comes to the reality of the ghost government that the ISI represents. To present information that they are, in any way, shocked that elements within the ISI (or as a whole) have continued to support those that they have, for years, considered invaluably quintessential with regards to the injection of Pakistani influence in the region is a stretch to say the least.

As most of you are aware, I am an anti-war advocate. If there is one thing that I despise more than anything it is the abuse of power to support political agendas that seek the promotion of militarism for whatever purpose – and I could really care less who that reality applies to, be it a world super power or the corrupt government of a third world dictatorship.

We live in a world in which those that cast themselves as beacons of civility and conscience are, in fact, the planet’s foremost gunrunners and enablers of conflict. That is fact, not fiction, and no argument to the contrary can alter that reality.

For every action there is a reaction. There are those that labour under the misconception that 9/11 was an attack without foundation. But the truth remains that some of those involved in a covert capacity during the CIA’s support of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan were not so daft as to overlook the fact that their self-serving actions might ultimately produce consequences in the future. The CIA refers to this phenomenon as blowback, which is the ‘unintended consequences of covert operations’. Due to the nature of such operations, when blowback occurs the general public cannot put it into context because the initial covert actions of their country were never revealed to them. Thus, a catastrophe such as 9/11 can occur and the American people are unable to put it into proper context. Instead, simplistic rationales are provided them, such as ‘they hate us for our freedoms’. This then snowballs into the production of an amplified xenophobic state that then allows those in power to capitalize on it and, in the case of the current administration, use that ‘political currency’ to enact extremely dangerous policies. Ironically, those very policies may very well result in further blowback, and, as was the case following 9/11, the public will only be exposed to one side of the equation.

The promotion of freedom is not something that the United States has ever been in the business of. Those with ideologically based misrepresentations can argue against that statement until they’re blue in the face, but historical precedents provide far too many examples to the contrary. In truth, the United States has acted as an enabler for more dictators and strongmen that have benefited US interests than supporting the true, uninfluenced growth of democratic principles. In fact, it is safe to say that the United States has not supported the implementation of truly uninfluenced democratic government in its entire history, even though many Americans labour under the misconception that that is not the case. Even the Mashall Plan and American influence in post war Japan came with considerable exploitative strings attached.

Economic exploitation has always been America’s foremost weapon. With it comes the ability to treat with wholly corrupted governments eager to benefit from US military assistance and political protection while allowing US economic interests to exploit natural resources and a laundry list of equally profitable sectors. It also allows the United States to employ questionable regimes as buffers against those that they deem a threat to their global interests. The Iran-Iraq war provides a perfect example of this, as does US support for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 80’s, and the support for numerous governments in Latin America and South East Asia.

Hegemony is not a word that should be lost on the American people; nor Canadians for that matter. Hegemony, in terms of modern international relations, is the existence of ‘a power that can dictate the policies of all other powers in its vicinity, or that is able to defeat any other power or combination of powers that it might be at war with’. Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony Or Survival poses a very simple question – have US actions post 9/11 been undertaken for national security reasons or to help institute a global hegemonic reality in the wake of the Cold War? Given the tenets of the Bush Doctrine and the philosophy on which it was based, that being the Defense Planning Guidance initially written by Paul Wolfowitz in the early 90’s, it is hard to argue that the actions of the United States, especially with regards to Iraq, represent a purely national security based agenda. Further actions also lend credence to a modern American hegemonic reality, such as the illegal detention of globally apprehended prisoners held without any legal recourse, arms proliferation, and the use of covert influencing in various parts of the world to help institute friendly governments or damage those that threaten US interests.

I remember watching the twin towers crumble to the ground in 2001 and the first thought that crossed my mind was that the CIA was going to be gifted one of the biggest headaches that it had ever received. Since that day, the mandate of the CIA has been broadened, though no official recognition of that fact has ever been realistically addressed by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. For the first time in their history the CIA became jailors and were utilized in areas completely foreign to their experience. While the halls at Langley were being filled with overzealous, politically driven individuals, many of whom were responsible for the promotion of tenuous information that the agency’s old guard would have balked at, the CIA found themselves in the business of taking Extraordinary Rendition to new heights, of instituting Black Sites at which off the books detainees were held and interrogated beyond every lawful measure, and swallowing wholly politicized nonsense that to many experienced Station Chiefs reeked of preconceived policy initiatives.

Of course, once it was learned that sculpted intelligence was used by the administration to justify the invasion of Iraq, the CIA was thrown to the wolves, and many of its longstanding and highly knowledgeable assets found that their parking passes had been revoked. Not surprisingly, some of these individuals represented an element within the agency that was highly dubious of the entire affair from the get go.

One of the most telling accounts of the Bush Administration’s disregard for the CIA was the repeated disregard of two Aardwolves sent by the CIA’s Baghdad Station Chief in 2003 warning the Administration of the true strength and threat posed by the insurgency. Due to the fact that the missives pulled no punches in their relation of information that the Administration simply did not want to hear, the Station Chief was removed in December of 2003. As James Risen put it in State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, the Station Chief had “committed the unpardonable sin of telling the truth”.

Though unknown to a lot of Americans. The CIA instituted an operation prior to the invasion of Iraq in which it utilized Iraqi-Americans with family members that had worked on Iraqi’s WMD program in the past. Those that agreed to return to Iraq under false pretenses to gather intelligence for the CIA regarding the state of Iraq’s program all returned with the same story – that the program had not merely been suspended, but had been non-existent for more than a decade. Those Iraqis that clued in to what their American relatives were up to, according to reports, displayed a panicked state of disbelief that the United States might invade the country based on the premise that Iraq possessed an active program or possessed WMD’s. Not surprisingly, the intelligence gather during the operation was ultimately disregarded.

What occurred on the morning of September 11th, 2001, shocked the world, and that includes many parts of the Muslim world was well. That said, the justification for the attacks that day have been wholly disregarded, and not because of the warped ideology promoted as the root cause, but because they were carried out against a nation whose covert actions in the Middle East over the decades prior could not be allowed to be entered into the equation.

Transgressions are a tricky thing. Terrorism is the use of violence to intimidate. When employed by fringe radicals it is labeled an unforgivable act. When it is employed on a much more complex scale by nations that have at their disposal the ability to covertly manipulate perception, it is not. In fact, such actions are viewed as ones of emancipation, security, and the promotion of all things judicious.

History provides transparency of culpability. No matter our transgressions, history has cast us in such a light that to even suggest the possibility of willful wrong doing renders those that would dare claim it fit for an insane asylum. Ironically, it is those that would suggest they be committed that are the individuals that perpetuate global lunacy.