In today’s edition of the Observer, Peter Beaumont presents some interesting information about the Israeli operation undertaken on the 6th of this month that violated Syrian airspace. Having mentioned it in an entry yesterday, I thought it important to point out Beaumont’s article…

“The head of Israel’s airforce, Major-General Eliezer Shkedi, was visiting a base in the coastal city of Herziliya last week. For the 50-year-old general, also the head of Israel’s Iran Command, which would fight a war with Tehran if ordered, it was a morale-boosting affair, a meet-and-greet with pilots and navigators who had flown during last summer’s month-long war against Lebanon. The journalists who had turned out in large numbers were there for another reason: to question Shkedi about a mysterious air raid that happened this month, codenamed ‘Orchard’, carried out deep in Syrian territory by his pilots.

Shkedi ignored all questions. It set a pattern for the days to follow as he and Israel’s politicians and officials maintained a steely silence, even when the questions came from the visiting French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner. Those journalists who thought of reporting the story were discouraged by the threat of Israel’s military censor.

But the rumours were in circulation, not just in Israel but in Washington and elsewhere. In the days that followed, the sketchy details of the raid were accompanied by contradictory claims even as US and British officials admitted knowledge of the raid. The New York Times described the target of the raid as a nuclear site being run in collaboration with North Korean technicians. Others reported that the jets had hit either a Hizbollah convoy, a missile facility or a terrorist camp.

Amid the confusion there were troubling details that chimed uncomfortably with the known facts. Two detachable tanks from an Israeli fighter were found just over the Turkish border. According to Turkish military sources, they belonged to a Raam F15I - the newest generation of Israeli long-range bomber, which has a combat range of over 2,000km when equipped with the drop tanks. This would enable them to reach targets in Iran, leading to speculation that it was an ‘operation rehearsal’ for a raid on Tehran’s nuclear facilities.

Finally, however, at the week’s end, the first few tangible details were beginning to emerge about Operation Orchard from a source involved in the Israeli operation.

They were sketchy, but one thing was absolutely clear. Far from being a minor incursion, the Israeli overflight of Syrian airspace through its ally, Turkey, was a far more major affair involving as many as eight aircraft, including Israel’s most ultra-modern F-15s and F-16s equipped with Maverick missiles and 500lb bombs. Flying among the Israeli fighters at great height, The Observer can reveal, was an ELINT - an electronic intelligence gathering aircraft.”

I urge you to read the rest. The link is above.

Given the subject of my last entry, I thought it prudent to mention this article by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball…

“In a new embarrassment for the Bush administration’s top spymaster, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell is withdrawing an assertion he made to Congress this week that a recently passed electronic-surveillance law helped U.S. authorities foil a major terror plot in Germany.

The temporary measure, signed into law by President Bush on Aug. 5, gave the U.S. intelligence community broad new powers to eavesdrop on telephone and e-mail communications overseas without seeking warrants from the surveillance court. The law expires in six months and is expected to be the subject of intense debate in the months ahead. On Monday, McConnell—questioned by Sen. Joe Lieberman—claimed the law, intended to remedy what the White House said was an intelligence gap, had helped to “facilitate” the arrest of three suspects believed to be planning massive car bombings against American targets in Germany. Other U.S. intelligence-community officials questioned the accuracy of McConnell’s testimony and urged his office to correct it. Four intelligence-community officials, who asked for anonymity discussing sensitive material, said the new law, dubbed the “Protect America Act,” played little if any role in the unraveling of the German plot. The U.S. military initially provided information that helped the Germans uncover the plot. But that exchange of information took place months before the new “Protect America” law was passed.

After questions about his testimony were raised, McConnell called Lieberman to clarify his statements to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, an official said. (A spokeswoman for Lieberman confirmed that McConnell called the senator Tuesday but could not immediately confirm what they spoke about.) Late Wednesday afternoon, McConnell issued a statement acknowledging that “information contributing to the recent arrests [in Germany] was not collected under authorities provided by the ‘Protect America Act’.”

The developments were cited by Democratic critics on Capitol Hill as the latest example of the Bush administration’s exaggerated claims—and contradictory statements—about ultrasecret surveillance activities. In the face of such complaints, the administration has consistently resisted any public disclosure about the details of the surveillance activities—even though McConnell himself has openly talked about some aspects of them.”

The pertinent question is: what does attempting to glorify such measures by falsely stating they helped subvert a terrorist attack suggest?

As Juan Cole pointed out today, an article by McClatchy includes some telling information about the reality of civilian deaths in Iraq, among other things. Cole quotes the article as such…

“Civilian deaths haven’t decreased in any significant way across the country, according to statistics from the Iraqi Interior Ministry, and numbers gathered by McClatchy Newspapers show no consistent downward trend even in Baghdad, despite military assertions to the contrary. The military has provided no hard numbers to back the claim. . .”

“. . . Overall, civilian casualties in Iraq appear to have remained steady throughout the siege, though numbers are difficult to come by.

“. . . According to the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, 984 people were killed across Iraq in February, and 1,011 died in violence in August. No July numbers were released because the ministry said the numbers weren’t clear.

But an official in the ministry who spoke anonymously because he wasn’t authorized to release numbers said those numbers were heavily manipulated.

The official said 1,980 Iraqis had been killed in July and that violent deaths soared in August, to 2,890. . .”

“Services haven’t improved across most of the capital” the international aid group Oxfam reported in July that only 30 percent of Iraqis have access to clean water, compared with 50 percent in 2003 “and tens of thousands of Iraqis are fleeing their homes each month in search of safety. . .”

” . . . Oxfam estimates that 28 percent of Iraqi children are malnourished, compared with 19 percent before the U.S. invasion. . .”

“Baghdad has become more segregated. Sunni Muslims in the capital now live in ghettos encircled by concrete blast walls to stop militia attacks and car bombs. Shiite militias continue to push to control the city’s last mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods in the southwest, by murdering and intimidating Sunni residents and, sometimes, their Shiite neighbors. . .”

“[In Baghdad] the push to drive Sunnis from Shiite neighborhoods continues in a city that U.S. military officers say has gone from being 65 percent Sunni to being 75 percent Shiite. . .

Unidentified bodies continue to show up daily in Baghdad, though the pace is lower than it was last December, when 1,030 bodies were found . . . dropping . . . to 428 in August. Some military officials and many residents attribute the generally lower numbers not to the U.S. security plan, but to the purges in mixed neighborhoods that have left militants with fewer people to kill.

Of an estimated 1 million Iraqis who’ve fled their homes since February 2006, 83 percent are from Baghdad, the IOM says.

“There have been very few returns,” Ladek said. Those that have come back have done so only briefly to gather belongings. “They are waiting for long-term stability. . .”

Iraqi security forces remain heavily infiltrated by militias, and political leaders continue to intervene in their activities. . .”

Officials agree that the anti-Islamist coalition in Anbar has yet to ally itself with the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, and a recent National Intelligence Estimate warned that it might even threaten it. . .

In the north since the surge began, suspected Sunni extremists have carried out some of the deadliest terror attacks of the war, killing hundreds in car and truck bombings. . .

Sunni militants remain openly active in the north. Three weeks ago, fighters for the Islamic State of Iraq, an al Qaida in Iraq front organization, paraded through the streets of Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, said tribal sheik Fawaz Mohammed al Jarba. “It’s very bad,” Jarba said. “There are so many attacks that never make it in the media.” . .

In the Shiite-dominated south, violence is rising as Shiite militias vie with one another for control.

At least 52 people were killed this month when fighting broke out between the Mahdi Army and the rival Badr Organization during a religious festival in Karbala.

In Basra, the strategic port city on the Persian Gulf, those militias and one from the Fadhila party have fought pitched battles for control, with the death toll rising throughout the year, from 59 in January to 134 in May. In August, 90 people died there. . .

Maliki’s cabinet still has nearly as many vacancies as it has sitting ministers, and no major legislation governing Iraq’s major issues, including a militia disarmament program, has made it to the floor of the Iraqi parliament.

Last week, the parliament, back from its summer vacation, barely had a quorum in its first meetings. . .

“. . . No Iraqi McClatchy spoke to in preparation for this article said he or she had confidence in the government. . .”

On December 21st, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York exploded mid-air over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. All 270 aboard the 747 were lost, and 11 residents of Lockerbie itself were killed when a wing section of the aircraft, traveling at some 500 miles per hour, hit 13 Sherwood Crescent and exploded.

The man convicted of the bombing was a Libyan intelligence officer, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, who was also the head of security for Libya Arab Airlines. He was sentenced to life in prison in Scotland for his role in the bombing on the 31st of January, 2001. Megrahi appealed the decision, which was refused on March 20th of 2002. He has, since his arrest, continually professed his innocence.

Having read that, most, including myself at one time, would view Megrahi’s assertion of innocence as little more than laughable. After all, not only was the bombing investigated thoroughly by British authorities, but by the FBI as well. The conclusion reached, of course, was that the government of Colonel Muammar Gadaffi was exacting revenge for the bombing of Tripoli in 1986. It should also not be overlooked that four of the passengers aboard Flight 103 were US intelligence officers…

- Matthew Gannon - CIA Deputy Station Chief, Beirut, Lebanon
- Major Chuck McKee – DIA, Beirut, Lebanon
- Ronald Lariviere – CIA Security Officer, U.S. Embassy, Beirut, Lebanon
- Daniel O’Connor – CIA Security Officer, U.S. Embassy, Nicosia, Cyprus

The deaths of these four men lend credence to theories that the plane was targeted specifically to kill, at the very least, Gannon and McKee.

All of that said, an unexpected turn of events has occurred with regards to the Lockerbie bombing that may very well now result in Megrahi’s freedom.

According to yesterday’s Guardian…

“The key piece of material evidence used by prosecutors to implicate Libya in the Lockerbie bombing has emerged as a probable fake.

Nearly two decades after Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Scotland on 21 December, 1988, allegations of international political intrigue and shoddy investigative work are being levelled at the British government, the FBI and the Scottish police as one of the crucial witnesses, Swiss engineer Ulrich Lumpert, has apparently confessed that he lied about the origins of a crucial ‘timer’ - evidence that helped tie the man convicted of the bombing to the crime.”

If you can believe it, Lumpert simply walked into a Zurich police station and requested to swear an affidavit. Now, that in itself might sound suspect, but Lumpert’s sudden desire to confess may have been prompted by the fact that the Edwin Bollier, who has spent two decades trying to clear the name of Mebo, his now bankrupt company that supposedly manufactured the timing switch used in the bombing, and who has admitted that his company did sell switches to the Libyan military, stumbled across something that casts serious doubts on the legitimacy of the case against Megrahi…

“Bollier, now 70, admits having done business with Libya. ‘Two years before Lockerbie, we sold 20 MST-13 timers to the Libyan military. FBI agents and the Scottish investigators said one of those timers had been used to detonate the bomb. We were shown a fuzzy photograph and I confirmed the fragments looked as though they came from one of our timers.’

However, Bollier was uneasy with the photograph he had been shown and asked to see the fragments. He was finally given permission in 1998 and travelled to Dumfries to see the evidence.

‘I was shown fragments of a brown circuit board which matched our prototype. But when the MST-13 went into production, the timers contained green boards. I knew that the timers sold to Libya had green boards. I told the investigators this.’

Back in Switzerland, Bollier’s company was in effect bankrupt, having faced a lawsuit from Pan Am and having lost major clients, such as the German federal police to which Mebo supplied communications equipment.

In 2001, Bollier spent five days in the witness box at the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. ‘I was a defence witness, but the trial was so skewed to prove Libyan involvement that the details of what I had to say was ignored. A photograph of the fragments was produced in court and I asked to see the pieces again. When they were brought to me, they were practically carbonised. They had been tampered with since I had seen them in Dumfries.’

Few people apart from conspiracy theorists and investigative journalists working on the case were prepared to believe Bollier until the end of last month, when Lumpert, one of his former employees, walked into a Zurich police station and asked to swear an affidavit before a notary.”

First, for those of you that haven’t seen the documentary OutFoxed, which was released in 2004, I highly recommend it. That said, here’s a new clip from Robert Greenwald worth a look regarding Fox’s promotion of an attack on Iran…

John Pilger’s entry posted today on the The Guardian’s Comment Is Free blog entitled “The old Iran-Contra death squad gang is desperate to discredit Chavez” is an interesting read. In it, Pilger confronts some of Latin America’s harsh realities and, having also made a documentary entitled The War On Democracy, which “shows that the principles of democracy can be found more readily among the poorest people of Latin America than anywhere near the corridors of the White House. It features an exclusive interview with Hugo Chávez and Pilger also speaks to former US government officials who claim the CIA waged covert wars in Latin America”, his views on the subject carry some weight.

In the entry Pilger writes…

“In making my film The War on Democracy, I sought the help of Chileans like Roberto and his family, and Sara de Witt, who courageously returned with me to the torture chambers at Villa Grimaldi, which she somehow survived. Together with other Latin Americans who knew the tyrannies, they bear witness to the pattern and meaning of the propaganda and lies now aimed at undermining another epic bid to renew both democracy and freedom on the continent.

The disinformation that helped destroy Allende and give rise to Pinochet’s horrors worked the same in Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas had the temerity to implement modest, popular reforms. In both countries, the CIA funded the leading opposition media, although they need not have bothered. In Nicaragua, the fake martyrdom of La Prensa became a cause for North America’s leading liberal journalists, who seriously debated whether a poverty-stricken country of 3 million peasants posed a “threat” to the United States. Ronald Reagan agreed and declared a state of emergency to combat the monster at the gates. In Britain, whose Thatcher government “absolutely endorsed” US policy, the standard censorship by omission applied. In examining 500 articles that dealt with Nicaragua in the early 1980s, the historian Mark Curtis found an almost universal suppression of the achievements of the Sandinista government - “remarkable by any standards” - in favour of the falsehood of “the threat of a communist takeover”.

The similarities in the campaign against the phenomenal rise of popular democratic movements today are striking. Aimed principally at Venezuela, especially Chávez, the virulence of the attacks suggests that something exciting is taking place; and it is. Thousands of poor Venezuelans are seeing a doctor for the first time in their lives, having their children immunised and drinking clean water. New universities have opened their doors to the poor, breaking the privilege of competitive institutions effectively controlled by a “middle class” in a country where there is no middle. In barrio La Línea, Beatrice Balazo told me her children were the first generation of the poor to attend a full day’s school. “I have seen their confidence blossom like flowers,” she said. One night in barrio La Vega, in a bare room beneath a single lightbulb, I watched Mavis Mendez, aged 94, learn to write her own name for the first time.

More than 25,000 communal councils have been set up in parallel to the old, corrupt local bureaucracies. Many are spectacles of raw grassroots democracy. Spokespeople are elected, yet all decisions, ideas and spending have to be approved by a community assembly. In towns long controlled by oligarchs and their servile media, this explosion of popular power has begun to change lives in the way Beatrice described.

It is this new confidence of Venezuela’s “invisible people” that has so inflamed those who live in suburbs called country club. Behind their walls and dogs, they remind me of white South Africans. Venezuela’s wild west media is mostly theirs; 80% of broadcasting and almost all the 118 newspaper companies are privately owned. Until recently one television shock jock liked to call Chávez, who is mixed race, a “monkey”. Front pages depict the president as Hitler, or as Stalin (the connection being that both like babies). Among broadcasters crying censorship loudest are those bankrolled by the National Endowment for Democracy, the CIA in spirit if not name. “We had a deadly weapon, the media,” said an admiral who was one of the coup plotters in 2002. The TV station, RCTV, never prosecuted for its part in the attempt to overthrow the elected government, lost only its terrestrial licence and is still broadcasting on satellite and cable.

Yet, as in Nicaragua, the “treatment” of RCTV is a cause celebre for those in Britain and the US affronted by the sheer audacity and popularity of Chávez, whom they smear as “power crazed” and a “tyrant”. That he is the authentic product of a popular awakening is suppressed. Even the description of him as a “radical socialist”, usually in the pejorative, wilfully ignores the fact that he is a nationalist and social democrat, a label many in Britain’s Labour party were once proud to wear.

In Washington, the old Iran-Contra death squad gang, back in power under Bush, fear the economic bridges Chávez is building in the region, such as the use of Venezuela’s oil revenue to end IMF slavery. That he maintains a neoliberal economy, described by the American Banker as “the envy of the banking world” is seldom raised as valid criticism of his limited reforms. These days, of course, any true reforms are exotic. And as liberal elites under Blair and Bush fail to defend their own basic liberties, they watch the very concept of democracy as a liberal preserve challenged on a continent about which Richard Nixon once said “people don’t give a shit”. However much they play the man, Chávez, their arrogance cannot accept that the seed of Rousseau’s idea of direct popular sovereignty may have been planted among the poorest, yet again, and “the hope of the human spirit”, ofwhich Roberto spoke in the stadium, has returned.”

It is often overlooked that the most powerful weapon in the world is, in fact, information. And given that, the use of highly developed counter-intelligence is therefore the pinnacle of power. The United States largely learned the art of counter-intelligence during the Second World War from the British, its undisputed historical masters, and, after the creation of the CIA, went on to perfect it during the Cold War, though credit must also be given the Soviets for their efforts as well. It has been used domestically, internationally, and has infiltrated every medium that is able to be influenced by it, from educational curriculums to newspapers to television. It can be used to discredit foreign leaders, political movements, distort economic realities, and justify military interventions. It can even scapegoat an entire religion for the sake of national hysteria based on the actions of a handful.

In the world of intelligence, it doesn’t get more dirty, nor secretive, than counter-intelligence. During the Cold War it was employed with perfection in such cases as the overthrow of Mosaddeq in Iran (a democratically elected leader), Allende in Chile (a democratically elected leader), and Árbenz in Guatemala (a democratically elected leader) - just not the right sort of democratically elected leaders.

In all three cases, the cause for their removal was purely economic, inferring that they were not in line with those who had benefited from lucratively established practices in their countries. In all three cases, they were painted as communist, or highly socialist, bringing into question the possibility that they might align themselves with the Soviets.

In all three cases it worked. In fact, it worked so well that the realities of their removal are usually dismissed in many curriculums at the post secondary level, some of which actually lean on the propaganda that was used in the counter-intelligence operations themselves. In such cases, operations such as AJAX and PBSUCCESS are explained away as Cold War necessities.

The point of counter-intelligence is not to spread false information. It is to spread confusion so that disinformation seems logical by comparison. The recreation of truth is not particularly the point, only the acceptance that wrongdoing is, in some way, afoot. Thus, portions of populations can be swayed to condemn governments, religious leaders, and even other ethnicities within their societies purely based on a lack of knowledge and the fear that that causes.

Also of importance is the fact that counter-intelligence is commonly double edged. While its use is employed in one fashion in a foreign locale, it is applied in a completely different fashion domestically. Thus, a divergence of realities is created that, domestically, causes public condemnation of those being targeted while, at the same time, creating the required confusion of those being manipulated abroad. In the context of a free society, such as the United States, it is important that this element exists, as it helps project legitimacy.

We are, like it or not, products of decades of counter-intelligence that has, in no small way, affected how we view others. This reality has only helped strengthen and diversify the power of counter-intelligence initiatives, and has most certainly been amplified in a domestic sense to an unprecedented level.

I don’t know how better to present this, so I’m just going to quote the article that appeared in this morning’s Globe & Mail entitled Court lifts lid on secret Arar details…

“Newly declassified information shows that that Canadian agencies worked directly with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and also received information known to be likely derived from Syrian torture during a post-9/11 investigation that culminated in the Maher Arar scandal.

The disclosure follows a pitched legal battle by Mr. Justice Dennis O’Connor, who fought to make public 1,500 words that the Canadian federal government had excised from his four-volume report released last year.

A Federal Court decision resulted in the release of some of the information Thursday morning.

Almost universally, the blotted out passages referred to the CIA or information most likely derived from Syrian torture.

There had been almost no direct references to this until now. As a result, Canadian agencies have borne the brunt of the blame for the scandal.

There had been almost no direct references to this until now. As a result, Canadian agencies have borne the brunt of the blame for the scandal.

Ottawa officials fought to keep the information secret, frequently arguing that it did not want to compromise the goodwill of foreign allies who sent in intelligence from abroad.

As anticipated, the Maher Arar affair was found to be the result of a chain of detentions of Canadian suspects in Syria. Much of what happened appears to have been influenced by the coerced confession of the first Canadian suspect to be jailed there.

Truck driver Ahmad Abou El Maati, just two months after 9/11, “confessed” in Syria to plotting a truck bomb attack in Canada at the behest of his brother, who is still considered a fugitive al-Qaeda suspect.

The truck driver has since returned to Canada, uncharged, and recanted his statements as purely the product of torture. He has also expressed regret that he was forced into naming Canadian associates of his, including Maher Arar, including saying that he saw the telecommunications engineer in Afghanistan in the early 1990s.”

Thus, based on intelligence elicited from a false confession under torture, Maher Arar was rendered to Syria, where he himself was held and tortured for a year and the government of this country willfully attempted to protect the CIA’s involvement in the matter.

The article continues…

“Judge O’Connor found that Mr. Arar was never a threat to Canadian national security and that authorities here had no case against him, but still spread incorrect and misleading information that may have caused the United States to send him to the Middle East, where he was jailed for a year. Canada has since compensated Mr. Arar $10-million.

Newly declassified findings of Judge O’Connor’s report indicate a host of foreign agencies shoulder the blame for what happened:

• Investigating Mounties had no experience in dealing with the CIA before 2001, but a relationship began to develop after the Sept. 11 attacks that year.

• As anticipated, information from abroad – likely the statements by Mr. El Maati – found its way into Canadian searches and interviews conducted in January, 2002. “When applying for search warrants, Project A-O Canada relied on information obtained from a country with a poor human rights record.” The report adds that “no assessment was made of the reliability of that information.”

• In the fall of 2002, the information was still being treated as credible. “In September 2002, the RCMP filed an application for a telephone warrant … [it] referred to [Ahmed Abou El Maati's] confession to the Syrians that he undertook pilot training at the request of his brother and that he accepted a mission to be a suicide bomber by exploding a truck bomb on Parliament hill.”

• Even though the RCMP was made aware that the confession was extracted by “extreme coercion,” they insisted that it was “still accurate and continues to be true.” In this period, RCMP investigators had heard of Mr. El Maati’s complaints of torture but dismissed them as “damage control” and asserted the confession corroborated their earlier investigation of him.

• It was the CIA that sent questions to Canada about Mr. Arar when U.S. border guards arrested him in October, 2002. The CIA, which sent him to the Middle East in shackles aboard a leased Gulfstream jet, appears to have been driving the process to send Mr. Arar to Syria.

• Canadian officials were knowledgeable about the U.S. practice of “rendering” suspects to harsh interrogations third-countries. “I think the U.S. would like to get Arar to Jordan where they can have their way with him,” one CSIS official wrote in an email on October 10, 2002 – two days after Mr. Arar was quietly sent to that country, and on to Syria, for questioning.

• CSIS visited Syria once Mr. Arar was in custody and came back with the impression that officials there “looked upon the matter as more of a nuisance than anything.” He remained jailed there for nearly a year.”

The complicity of our government agencies (the Chrétien era included), and the current government’s willingness to attempt to protect the role and influence of the Central Intelligence Agency in this matter, is, to me, simply incomprehensible. The truth is, an innocent Canadian was sold out to a foreign power by his own government based on lies and engineered falsehoods, and then, after his release, those that were responsible for playing the most significant role in the matter, a foreign intelligence agency, were purposely protected by our government at the expense of our own agencies.

Today, from coast to coast, Canadians should be ashamed of the unscrupulous actions of both this government and that of Mr. Chrétien’s, as well as enraged that any Canadian government would willfully protect the role of a foreign country in the illegal seizure, rendition, imprisonment, and torture of a Canadian citizen. And to think that someone like Mr. Justice Simon Noel would actually exclaim in defense of the matter that…

“The third-party rule is one that is sacred among law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, and is premised on mutual confidence, reliability and trust.”

The truth. Now there’s something, Mr. Noel. In this case, the truth is that an innocent man lost a year of his life and endured God knows what at the hands of jailers in a foreign country based on faulty intelligence provided by a foreign intelligence service that, at the time, was so hyper-sensitive that it was probably willing to believe that pigs could fly if someone they had captured and rendered to one of numerous countries was willing to say as much. And yet when it comes to the truth of the matter, we’re willing to protect them in favour of disregarding the truth.

Now you tell me – what, exactly, is defensible about that?

The Globe was not alone is reporting this story today. The Toronto Star also ran a piece…

“New information made public this morning after a long legal battle with the federal government reveals CSIS suspected within weeks of Maher Arar’s arrest that the United States would ship him off to the Middle East where he likely faced torture.

It also shows Canada’s spy agency received information from Syria barely two months later that even Syrian authorities viewed Arar as a “nuisance” and not “as a major case.”

One can only imagine how Maher Arar must feel this morning.

The CBC provides a link to the original censored report here (.pdf).

Today the President of the United States defended, once again, the war that he, and others, engineered. He spouted the usual nonsense, that to not defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq, which is to say Salafi Jihadis, would result in “surrendering Iraq’s future to al-Qaeda”. Of course, as has been noted by a variety of scholars and regional experts, were the United States to abandon Iraq tomorrow, Salafi Jihadi forces would be the first to be dealt with, and with severe measures. What Mr. Bush doesn’t mention is where the influx of foreign fighters in Iraq stems from. He dare not mention the fact that Saudis compromise a significant number of those foreign fighters currently in Iraq, not to mention Jordanians. That would be singling out nations with which the United States has relations, despite the fact that, in the case of Saudi Arabia, it is a nation that fits the model of a state that the United States has declared “unacceptable” with regards to their desire to spread freedom throughout the world.

Instead, and not surprisingly, the President focused on others…

“President Bush also singled out Iran, Syria and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, accusing them of fomenting violence in Iraq.

Iran, he said, was supplying improvised explosive devices to militants there; Hezbollah was training militants to attack coalition forces in Iraq; and Syria was providing a route for suicide bombers heading for the country.”

If you go back in my del.icio.us archives you’ll find articles replete with contradictory information about Iranian involvement in Iraq. Everything from them allying themselves with Sunni insurgents to Salafi Jihadis to the Mahdi Army. At one point, not too long ago, US officials in Baghdad claimed that Iran was planning to support a summer offensive against occupational forces by arming a variety of different groups, claims that were later challenged, and ones that were linked with a US propaganda campaign aimed at Iran.

The reality is, George Bush has disposed of those that have attempted to warn him, or at least tell him the truth, about what is actually transpiring in Iraq. The ‘surge’ has done nothing but produce more US casualties – in fact, more over the last few months than at any point in the war – and more Iraqi civilian casualties. It has placed the Iraqi government in an even more tenuous position, as have US pressures to do with Iraqi oil legislation, and has helped empower Islamic extremists. US intelligence recently claimed that extremist groups are stronger now than they were prior to 9/11, a claim that the President also denies. Because as we all know, he has far more knowledge of such matters than his own intelligence community. Perhaps, given the ‘bogus’ information that he was fed by them prior to the invasion he simply doesn’t trust them anymore. Then again, maybe the yes men that helped fix post war intelligence around policy are all out of creative ideas.

‘A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi… You know, so what?’

Meanwhile, Leonard Doyle provides some morning reading that might make eating breakfast not the wisest of decisions…

“It is an axiom of American political life that the actions of the US military are beyond criticism. Democrats and Republicans praise the men and women in uniform at every turn. Apart from the odd bad apple at Abu Ghraib, the US military in Iraq is deemed to be doing a heroic job under trying circumstances.

That perception will take a severe knock today with the publication in The Nation magazine of a series of in-depth interviews with 50 combat veterans of the Iraq war from across the US. In the interviews, veterans have described acts of violence in which US forces have abused or killed Iraqi men, women and children with impunity.

The report steers clear of widely reported atrocities, such as the massacre in Haditha in 2005, but instead unearths a pattern of human rights abuses. “It’s not individual atrocity,” Specialist Garett Reppenhagen, a sniper from the 263rd Armour Battalion, said. “It’s the fact that the entire war is an atrocity.”

A number of the troops have returned home bearing mental and physical scars from fighting a war in an environment in which the insurgents are supported by the population. Many of those interviewed have come to oppose the US military presence in Iraq, joining the groundswell of public opinion across the US that views the war as futile.

This view is echoed in Washington, where increasing numbers of Democrats and Republicans are openly calling for an early withdrawal from Iraq. And the Iraq quagmire has pushed President George Bush’s poll ratings to an all-time low.

Journalists and human rights groups have published numerous reports drawing attention to the killing of Iraqi civilians by US forces. The Nation’s investigation presents for the first time named military witnesses who back those assertions. Some participated themselves.

Through a combination of gung-ho recklessness and criminal behaviour born of panic, a narrative emerges of an army that frequently commits acts of cold-blooded violence. A number of interviewees revealed that the military will attempt to frame innocent bystanders as insurgents, often after panicked American troops have fired into groups of unarmed Iraqis. The veterans said the troops involved would round up any survivors and accuse them of being in the resistance while planting Kalashnikov AK47 rifles beside corpses to make it appear that they had died in combat.

“It would always be an AK because they have so many of these lying around,” said Joe Hatcher, 26, a scout with the 4th Calvary Regiment. He revealed the army also planted 9mm handguns and shovels to make it look like the civilians were shot while digging a hole for a roadside bomb.

“Every good cop carries a throwaway,” Hatcher said of weapons planted on innocent victims in incidents that occurred while he was stationed between Tikrit and Samarra, from February 2004 to March 2005. Any survivors were sent to jail for interrogation.

There were also deaths caused by the reckless behaviour of military convoys. Sgt Kelly Dougherty of the Colorado National Guard described a hit-and-run in which a military convoy ran over a 10-year-old boy and his three donkeys, killing them all. “Judging by the skid marks, they hardly even slowed down. But, I mean… your order is that you never stop.”

The worst abuses seem to have been during raids on private homes when soldiers were hunting insurgents. Thousands of such raids have taken place, usually at dead of night. The veterans point out that most are futile and serve only to terrify the civilians, while generating sympathy for the resistance.

Sgt John Bruhns, 29, of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Armoured Division, described a typical raid. “You want to catch them off guard,” he explained. “You want to catch them in their sleep … You grab the man of the house. You rip him out of bed in front of his wife. You put him up against the wall… Then you go into a room and you tear the room to shreds. You’ll ask ‘Do you have any weapons? Do you have any anti-US propaganda?’

“Normally they’ll say no, because that’s normally the truth,” Sgt Bruhns said. “So you’ll take his sofa cushions and dump them. You’ll open up his closet and you’ll throw all the clothes on the floor and basically leave his house looking like a hurricane just hit it.” And at the end, if the soldiers don’t find anything, they depart with a “Sorry to disturb you. Have a nice evening”.

Sgt Dougherty described her squad leader shooting an Iraqi civilian in the back in 2003. “The mentality of my squad leader was like, ‘Oh, we have to kill them over here so I don’t have to kill them back in Colorado’,” she said. “He just seemed to view every Iraqi as a potential terrorist.”

‘It would always happen. We always got the wrong house…’

“People would make jokes about it, even before we’d go into a raid, like, ‘Oh fuck, we’re gonna get the wrong house’. Cause it would always happen. We always got the wrong house.”

Sergeant Jesus Bocanegra, 25, of Weslaco, Texas 4th Infantry Division. In Tikrit on year-long tour that began in March 2003

“I had to go tell this woman that her husband was actually dead. We gave her money, we gave her, like, 10 crates of water, we gave the kids, I remember, maybe it was soccer balls and toys. We just didn’t really know what else to do.”

Lieutenant Jonathan Morgenstein, 35, of Arlington, Virginia, Marine Corps civil affairs unit. In Ramadi from August 2004 to March 2005

“We were approaching this one house… and we’re approaching, and they had a family dog. And it was barking ferociously, cause it’s doing its job. And my squad leader, just out of nowhere, just shoots it… So I see this dog - I’m a huge animal lover… this dog has, like, these eyes on it and he’s running around spraying blood all over the place. And like, you know, what the hell is going on? The family is sitting right there, with three little children and a mom and a dad, horrified. And I’m at a loss for words.”

Specialist Philip Chrystal, 23, of Reno, 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry Brigade. In Kirkuk and Hawija on 11-month tour beginning November 2004

“I’ll tell you the point where I really turned… [there was] this little, you know, pudgy little two-year-old child with the cute little pudgy legs and she has a bullet through her leg… An IED [improvised explosive device] went off, the gun-happy soldiers just started shooting anywhere and the baby got hit. And this baby looked at me… like asking me why. You know, ‘Why do I have a bullet in my leg?’… I was just like, ‘This is, this is it. This is ridiculous’.”

Specialist Michael Harmon, 24, of Brooklyn, 167th Armour Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. In Al-Rashidiya on 13-month tour beginning in April 2003

“I open a bag and I’m trying to get bandages out and the guys in the guard tower are yelling at me, ‘Get that fuck haji out of here,’… our doctor rolls up in an ambulance and from 30 to 40 meters away looks out and says, shakes his head and says, ‘You know, he looks fine, he’s gonna be all right,’ and walks back… kind of like, ‘Get your ass over here and drive me back up to the clinic’. So I’m standing there, and the whole time both this doctor and the guards are yelling at me, you know, to get rid of this guy.”

Specialist Patrick Resta, 29, from Philadelphia, 252nd Armour, 1st Infantry Division. In Jalula for nine months beginning March 2004

‘Every person opened fire on this kid, using the biggest weapons we could find…’

“Here’s some guy, some 14-year-old kid with an AK47, decides he’s going to start shooting at this convoy. It was the most obscene thing you’ve ever seen. Every person got out and opened fire on this kid. Using the biggest weapons we could find, we ripped him to shreds…”

Sergeant Patrick Campbell, 29, of Camarillo, California, 256th Infantry Brigade. In Abu Gharth for 11 months beginning November 2004

“Cover your own butt was the first rule of engagement. Someone could look at me the wrong way and I could claim my safety was in threat.”

Lieutenant Brady Van Engelen, 26, of Washington DC, 1st Armoured Division. Eight-month tour of Baghdad beginning Sept 2003

“I guess while I was there, the general attitude was, ‘A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi… You know, so what?’… [Only when we got home] in… meeting other veterans, it seems like the guilt really takes place, takes root, then.”

Specialist Jeff Englehart, 26, of Grand Junction, Colorado, 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry. In Baquba for a year beginning February 2004

“[The photo] was very graphic… They open the body bags of these prisoners that were shot in the head and [one soldier has] got a spoon. He’s reaching in to scoop out some of his brain, looking at the camera and smiling.”

Specialist Aidan Delgado, 25, of Sarasota, Florida, 320th Military Police Company. Deployed to Talil air base for one year beginning April 2003

“The car was approaching what was in my opinion a very poorly marked checkpoint… and probably didn’t even see the soldiers… The guys got spooked and decided it was a possible threat, so they shot up the car. And they [the bodies] literally sat in the car for the next three days while we drove by them.

Sergeant Dustin Flatt, 33, of Denver, 18th Infantry Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. One-year from February 2004

“The frustration that resulted from our inability to get back at those who were attacking us led to tactics that seemed designed simply to punish the local population…”

Sergeant Camilo Mejía, 31, from Miami, National Guardsman, 1-124 Infantry Battalion, 53rd Infantry Brigade. Six-month tour beginning April 2003

“I just remember thinking, ‘I just brought terror to someone under the American flag’.”

Sergeant Timothy John Westphal, 31, of Denver, 18th Infantry Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. In Tikrit on year-long tour beginning February 2004

“A lot of guys really supported that whole concept that if they don’t speak English and they have darker skin, they’re not as human as us, so we can do what we want.”

Specialist Josh Middleton, 23, of New York City, 2nd Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division. Four-month tour in Baghdad and Mosul beginning December 2004

“I felt like there was this enormous reduction in my compassion for people. The only thing that wound up mattering is myself and the guys that I was with, and everybody else be damned.”

Sergeant Ben Flanders, 28, National Guardsman from Concord, New Hampshire, 172nd Mountain Infantry. In Balad for 11 months beginning March 2004”

Sheldon Richmond’s recent piece on The Future Of Freedom Foundation’s website is a must read…

“What’s more obnoxious than a person who constantly whines about the injustices committed against him while ignoring his own injustices against others?

A country that does the same thing.

We often hear American politicians and commentators reciting a list of “terrorist” acts committed against the “United States.” It typically includes the 1982 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the 1996 bombing of U.S. Air Force housing in Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in the port of Aden in Yemen. Reciting this string of attacks supposedly demonstrates, without further argument, that the United States has been the major victim of violence on the world stage — unprovoked violence perpetrated by “Islamofascists” because we are free. Indeed, it is widely believed that the attacks on September 11, 2001, were in part the result of “our” failure to retaliate for the earlier attacks.

But this is sheer balderdash. The attacks, while often criminally misdirected, were hardly unprovoked.

The last century-plus of U.S. foreign policy has largely been a story of aggression and empire-building. American presidents have intervened and interfered in every region of the world, not in self-defense, but in the name of U.S. “national interest,” which in reality means the interest of well-connected corporations and their ambitious political agents who felt appointed to bring order to the world. As a whole, the American people haven’t gained by this — in fact, they have paid dearly in money and lives. But not as dearly as those on the receiving end of that policy. For all the pious moralizing about democracy and human rights, American foreign policy has treated foreign populations like garbage, beginning with the brutal repression of the Filipino uprising against American colonial rule from 1899 to 1902. That war and its related hardships killed 250,000 to a million Filipino civilians and 20,000 Filipino rebels.

How many Americans know that?

Since that time American presidents have intervened, directly or by proxy, in countless places, including Cuba, Haiti, Colombia (Panama), Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua, the Soviet Union, Iran, Iraq, Guatemala, Lebanon, the Dominican Republic, Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. On many occasions American administrations have engineered regime changes (sometimes with assassinations) to install leaders friendly to “American interests.” Rarely has intervention occurred without the murder of innocent civilians, degrading hardship for survivors, and arms and (taxpayer) money for repressive “leaders.” The paradigm is the 1953 intervention in Iran, when the CIA helped drive an elected, secular prime minister from office so the autocratic shah could be restored to power. His brutal U.S.-sponsored repression of the Iranian people finally provoked a religious revolution in 1979, creating an anti-American theocracy that has been a thorn in the side of U.S. presidents ever since.

Coincidence? Of course not. Americans may be ignorant or forgetful; the victims seldom are.

Iran was neither the first nor last case of “blowback,” the CIA’s term for what happens when a foreign operation explodes in one’s own face.

How many Americans have any inkling of the crimes — yes, crimes — their government has committed against foreign peoples in their name over the last century? Most people don’t know and don’t care — and that’s fine with their rulers because when vengeful foreigners assault American civilians (unjustifiably) or military occupiers, U.S. leaders and jingoist supporters can say “America” was the victim of another unprovoked attack. “Why do they hate us?” they will wonder.

Anyone the least bit familiar with history will know the answer. The CIA is about to release hundreds of documents about earlier interventions (and domestic spying), so there’s no more excuse for ignorance. Let’s stop whining and get curious. As Walt Kelly’s Pogo put it, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Brilliantly put.

No End In Sight is a new documentary by Magnolia Pictures that critically examines the Iraq war with one of the most impressive and knowledgeable casts ever assembled.

Faisal al-Istrabadi Iraqi Ambassador to the United Nations
Chris Allbritton Journalist, Time Magazine
Richard Armitage Deputy Secretary of State, 2001-2005
James Bamford Author, The Puzzle Palace and A Pretext for War
Amazia Baram Professor of Middle East History, Former Advisor to Bush Admin
Jamal Benomar Special Advisor, UN Development Program
Linda Bilmes Budgeting Specialist, Professor, Kennedy School of Government Harvard University
Amb. Barbara Bodine In Charge of Baghdad for the U.S. Occupation
Gerald Burke Advisor to Iraq Ministry of Interior for the U.S. Occupation (CPA)
Ashton Carter Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, Clinton Admin
Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton In charge of training New Iraqi Army, 2003-2004
Ali Fadhil Iraqi Journalist, Emigrated to U.S., 2006
James Fallows National Editor, The Atlantic Monthly, Author, Blind into Baghdad
Marc Garlasco Senior Iraq Analyst. 1997-2003, Defense Intelligence Agency
Gen. Jay Garner Administrator, ORHA, Feb-May 2003
Ann Gildroy 1st Lieutenant, U.S. Marines
Hugo Gonzalez Field Artillery Gunner, U.S. Army
Joost Hiltermann Mideast Director, International Crisis Group
Colonel Paul Hughes Director of Strategic Policy for the U.S. Occupation, 2003
Robert Hutchings Chairman (2003-2005), National Intelligence Council
Ray Jennings NGO Manager and Lecturer, Georgetown University
Seth Moulton Lieutenant, U.S. Marines
Mahmoud Othman Member of Iraqi Parliament
George Packer Journalist and Author, The Assassins’ Gate
Robert Perito Director, Office of International Criminal Justice,1995-2002, Department of Justice
Paul Pillar National Intelligence Officer for the Mideast (2000-2005), National Intelligence Council
Barry Posen Professor and Director, National Security Program, MIT
Samantha Power Author, A Problem From Hell, Professor, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government
Nir Rosen Journalist, Author: In the Belly of the Green Bird
Matt Sherman CPA Deputy Security Advisor to Iraqi Ministry of Interior
Walter Slocombe Senior Advisor for National Security and Defense, CPA
Yaroslav Trofimov Journalist, The Wall Street Journal, Author, Faith at War
Aida Ussayran Deputy Minister, Iraq Human Rights Ministry
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson Chief of Staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, 2002-2005
David Yancey Specialist, Military, U.S. Army