US Accused Of Politicising Weapons Of Mass Destruction

When the United States invaded Iraq back in March 2003, one of its primary objectives was to track down and destroy weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) reportedly stockpiled by the regime of President Saddam Hussein.

By its own definition – and by U.N. standards – the United States was frantically searching for WMDs constituting three of the world’s most lethal armaments: nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons.

"Comparing the weapons used in the Boston bombings with nuclear weapons in particular is ludicrous." -- Dr. Natalie J. Goldring of Georgetown University

The search, apparently based on faulty U.S. intelligence, proved futile. But the acronym “WMD” became an integral part of military jargon worldwide as characterising NBCs.

Since last April’s bombings in Boston, Massachusetts, however, both the administration of President Barack Obama and the mainstream news media have offered a new definition of WMDs: shrapnel-packed, homemade pressure cooker bombs that killed three and wounded more than 250 during a marathon in that U.S. city.

That bomb has repeatedly been described as a “weapon of mass destruction”.

Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a senior fellow with the Security Studies Programme in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS the weapons used in the Boston bombings were improvised explosive devices (IEDs), not weapons of mass destruction.

Chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons are commonly grouped together as weapons of mass destruction, she said. Combining these weapons in a single category makes it seem as though all three types of weapons are equivalent to one another. They’re not, said Goldring.

WMD hazard symbols, arranged vertically. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

“Nuclear weapons are by far more destructive than existing chemical or biological weapons. Even so, all three types of weapons have the capability to be massively more damaging than the weapons used in Boston,” she said.

“Comparing the weapons used in the Boston bombings with nuclear weapons in particular is ludicrous,” said Goldring, who also represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations on conventional weapons and arms trade issues.

Jody Williams, the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and chair of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, told IPS, “If you want to confuse people, you blur the lines of distinction between things and also situations.”

She said an improvised explosive device as a “weapon of mass destruction” is just such an example, as is the broad use of “terrorist” and “terrorism” in the aftermath of Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

“We also have the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys’ – a tad broad, to say the least,” said Williams, who led a highly successful global campaign that resulted in a worldwide ban on anti-personnel landmines.

She said it is easier for the U.S. government to continue to prosecute its borderless “war on terror” if people don’t quite understand or see distinctions. It’s all “too confusing” and best left in the hands of the “experts” in Washington, she added.

Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher at the Arms Transfers Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS the use of the term WMD to describe the Boston bombs has been perceived as “weird”.

He said most people would think WMDs are the serious mass killer weapons – nuclear, biological, chemical, and potentially radiological. However, said Wezeman, the term WMD has been used loosely from the time it was probably first coined in 1937 to describe more or less every weapon.

There seem to be in the U.S. official terminology some 50 different definitions, he said.

“Considering the U.S. official terminology, WMD would more or less cover every type of slightly larger explosive weapon – IEDs, hand grenades, artillery shells, small cannon – as used daily by ‘terrorists’ as well as armed forces,” he added.

“Of course for most people and for normal usage, WMD remains just the nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological (CBRN) weapons,” Wezeman said.

Goldring told IPS, “As horrific as the Boston bombings were, the number of casualties caused by those bombings was a tiny fraction of the likely casualties if one or more nuclear weapons were exploded in a city.”

She pointed out that scientists estimate that if even a relatively small (10 kilotonne) nuclear weapon were exploded in a city, the entire area out about a mile in every direction would be largely destroyed.

“Calling the Boston bombs weapons of mass destruction is a political statement. It makes no sense from a substantive perspective,” she said.

If the Boston bombs are weapons of mass destruction, Goldring asked, “Does that mean all of the improvised explosive devices used in Afghanistan and Iraq are also defined as weapons of mass destruction?”

That simply makes no sense, she said, adding, “IEDs have caused enormous damage to military personnel and civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they are not weapons of mass destruction.”

Welcoming The Taliban With Open Arms

Defectors and Deception in Afghanistan

By Douglas Valentine
February 1, 2010
Courtesy Of Global Research

This week, the U.S. Government began floating the idea of welcoming low and mid-level Taliban defectors into its war on terror against Al Qaeda. After waging an eight-year “dirty war” against the Taliban, U.S. military commanders and politicians are publicly acknowledging their “insurgent” enemy is actually part of the “fabric” of Afghan society. U.S. and NATO officials are also offering bribes from a billion dollar “Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund” to Taliban fighters to defect. Taliban leaders have condemned the buyout strategy as a “trick” to divide and conquer its forces, and said that offers of reconciliation were futile without a withdrawal of foreign troops. This billion dollar buyout may, indeed, seem a bizarre reversal of fortunes, but only if one believes theU.S. genuinely wants reconciliation with the Taliban. In reality, defectors programs like the one proposed for Afghanistan are an essential part of the traditional U.S. pacification policy. For example, the so-called Chieu Hoi “Open Arms” program is touted by military historians as having produced positive results throughout the Vietnam War by offering “clemency to insurgents.” Make no mistake about it: this too is propaganda. Defector “amnesty” or “clemency” or “open arms” programs are aggressive CIA intelligence operations and have nothing to do with reconciliation. As former DCI William Colby told me, CIA political action teams in Vietnam (like Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan) employed defectors whose job was to “go around the countryside and indicate to the people that they used to be Vietcong and that the government has received them and taken them in, and that the Chieu Hoi program does exist as a way of VC currently on the other side to rally. [Defectors] contact people like the families of known VC,” Colby said, “and provide them with transportation to defector and refugee centers.” Master spy Colby would certainly agree that information management – language – is the essence of political warfare in general and defector programs in particular. The first step in either case is concocting a slogan that appeals to the sensibilities of the targeted audience, which is why defectors programs are given names like “amnesty” or “clemency” or “open arms.” Such cleverly crafted slogans need have no basis in reality. Instead, by appealing to American (not Vietnamese or Afghan) sensibilities (or lack thereof), these slogans serve as the first step in creating deniability for the CIA’s roll in organizing repression. During Senate hearings into CIA assassination plots against foreign leaders, deniability was defined by the CIA's deputy director of operations Richard Bissell as “the use of circumlo cution and euphemism in discussions where precise definitions would expose covert actions and bring them to an end.” Apart from using circumlo cution and euphemism, and Madison Avenue style slogans, the CIA creates deniability, and thus garners public approval, by composing and planting distorted articles in foreign and domestic newspapers. It also composes "official" communiqués which appear to have originated within, for example, the Karzai government in Afghanistan. To ensure the deniability necessary for public support of its repressive policies, the CIA conducts covert action under cover of Civic Action programs that are advertised as fostering freedom, patriotism, brotherhood, democracy. Likewise, the Taliban defector buyout program is said to foster reconciliation. In CIA jargon this manipulation of language is called “black propaganda” and is the job of political and psychological (PP) warfare officers in the covert action branch. “PP” officers played a major role in packaging the Phoenix Program for sale to the American public as a program designed "to protect the people from terrorism."" CIA disinformation campaigns persuade predisposed Americans to offer their tax dollars to pay for the massive military and aid programs that support the CIA's covert action programs. The proposed billion dollar Taliban defector program is just such a case. Intelligence Potential After arranging for deniability, the CIA will launch a covert action program like the Taliban defector program only if it has “intelligence poten tial.” Such a program must be able to produce information on an enemy's political, military, and economic infrastructure or it will not be undertaken. The CIA after all, is not a “reconciliation” agency. And defectors have superlative “intelligence potential.” Not only are defectors valued for their ability to sap the enemy's fighting strength and morale, but having worked on the inside, they are an accurate and timely source of intelligence on enemy unit strength and location. They also serve as guides and trackers, and after defecting, many are immediately returned to their area of operations with a reaction force to locate hidden enemy arms or food caches. Others defectors, after being screened and interrogated by security officers, are turned into double agents. Defectors who return to their former positions inside enemy military units or political organizations are, as Colby explained, provided with a "secure" means of contacting their CIA case officer, to whom they feed information leading to the arrest or ambush of enemy cadres, soldiers, and secret agents. Defector programs also provide CIA “talent scouts” with cover for recruiting criminals into counter-terrorist and political action programs. Burglars, arsonists, forgers, and smugglers have unique skills and no compunctions about preparing wanted posters or conducting interrogations. In Vietnam, the entire Fifty-second Ranger Battalion was recruited from Saigon prisons. With Obama’s surge and additional NATO forces providing cover for more expansive CIA covert actions, CIA political and psychological warfare experts are moving to the forefront of the occupation; and of course, their Provincial Reconstruction Teams are, as noted in a previous article, at the forefront of this “intelligence” surge. That is why the Taliban defector buyout program is being launched now. Let me repeat: what makes such an intelligence operation “covert” is not any false impression on the part of the Taliban, but rather the CIA's ability to deny its involvement in the defector buyout program to the American public. A Case Study Under cover of Civic Action, the CIA is waging a plausibly deniable dirty war against the Taliban using black propaganda, defectors, criminals, selective terror, indefinite detention and a slew of other devious tactics disguised as bringing freedom and democracy, but in fact designed to provide internal security for the puppet Karzai regime. The CIA perfected this practice in Vietnam, where it waged clandestine political and psychological warfare with the U.S. Information Service (USIS). Ostensibly the overseas branch of the U.S. Information Agency (which performed the same propaganda and censorship functions inside America), the USIS had as its raison d'être promotion of the "Amer ican way." In its crusade to convert the world into one big happy Chamber of Commerce, the USIS employed all manner of “media,” from TVs, radios, and satellites to armed propaganda teams, wanted posters, and terrorism. Frank Scotton, a CIA officer masquerading as an USIS officer, played a large role in political and psychological operations (psyops) in Vietnam. A graduate of American University's College ofInternational Relations, Scot ton received a government graduate assistantship to the East-WestCen ter at the University of Hawaii. According to legendary CIA officer Lucien Conein, it was there that Scotton was recruited into the CIA. About the CIA-sponsored East-West Center, Scotton said, "It was a cover for a training program in which Southeast Asians were brought to Hawaii and trained to go back to Vietnam, Cambodia, andLaos to create agent nets." After passing the Foreign Service exam, Scotton was persuaded to join the USIS, which "dealt with people," unlike the State Department, which "ob served from a distance. After arriving in Vietnam in 1961, and initiating his vast agent net, Scotton turned his attention to “energizing" the Vietnamese through political action that advanced American policies. In looking for individuals to mold into unilateral political cadres, Scotton turned to the CIA's defector program, which in April 1963 was placed under cover of the Agency for International Development and named the Chieu Hoi (Open Arms) amnesty program. There Scotton found the raw material he needed to prove the viability of CIA political action and psywar programs. Scotton worked with Vietnamese Special Forces Captain Nguyen Tuy (a graduate of Fort Bragg's Special Warfare Center who commanded the Fourth Special Operations De tachment) and Tuy's case officer, U.S. Special Forces Captain Howard Wal ters in Pleiku Province. As part of a pilot program designed to induce defectors, Scotton, Wal ters, and Tuy set up an ambush deep in Vietcong territory and waited till dark. When they spotted a VC unit, Scotton yelled in Vietnamese through a bullhorn, "You are being misled! You are being lied to! We promise you an education!" Then, full of purpose and allegory, he shot a flare into the night sky and hollered, "Walk toward the light!" To his surprise, two defectors did walk in, convincing him and his CIA bosses that "a deter mined GVN unit could contest the VC in terms of combat and propaganda." Back in camp, Scotton told the VC defectors that they had to divest themselves of untruths. “We said that certainly the U.S. perpetrated war crimes, but so did the VC [substitute Taliban]. We acknowledged that theirs was the stronger force, but that didn't mean that everything they did was honorable and good and just." In this manner, Scotton indoctrinated cadres for his political action teams. The chief of CIA covert action programs, Tom Donohue, recognized the value of intelligence obtained through defectors, and authorized the establishment of Chieu Hoi programs in each of South Vietnam’s provinces. In typical CIA style, there was nothing in writing, and nothing went through the central government. The CIA’s security officer would oversee the Chieu Hoi Program in any particular province and select different defectors for different jobs, working with agents at the district level and into the villages. If a defector had potential, the province security officer put him on an airplane and sent him to the central CIA re-indoctrination center, where he was plied with special attention and wowed with CIA gadgetry. The food was spectacular, full of protein, and the bullets weren’t flying. The training was vigorous, but the defector was treated for infections and put on weight. Other defectors then explained the beauty of the American Way, and other applicable lessons of the day. This brainwashing is "precisely" what political warfare is all about: Having been selected into a "special" program and given "special" treatment, defectors are taught the corporate sales pitch, cross-trained as interchangeable parts for efficiency, then given one last motivational booster shot of schmaltz. Scotton called his program “motivational indoctrination.” This is deadly serious business, and conducted secretly at high security CIA bases in Afghanistan. All defector debriefing reports are certainly sent to the CIA station in Kabul for analysis and collation. Translations are, typically, never considered accurate unless read and confirmed in the original language by the same person, but that rarely happens. Likewise, interrogations conducted through defectors are rarely considered reliable, for significant information is generally lost or misrepresented. And thus, the defector program will likely be exploited by Taliban secret agents, just as the Chieu Hoi program was penetrated in Vietnam. According to Douglas McCollum, who monitored the Chieu Hoi program in three provinces in Vietnam, “It was the biggest hole in the net. They'd come in; we'd hold them, feed them, clothe them, get them a mat. Then we'd release them, and they'd wander around the city for a while, and then disappear.” What McCollom is referring to, “the revolving door syndrome,” is another reason the CIA is turning to the Taliban buyout program at this particular time, when Obama’s surge will produce thousands of more detainees and prisoners. The CIA was plagued in Vietnam, as it is in Afghanistan, by overcrowding in prisons, defector, interrogation, and detention center. In Vietnam by 1966 there was little space available in the prison system for actual "Communist offenders." And as more and more people were captured and placed in pens, a large percentage was necessarily squeezed out. Hence the revolving door. Defectors and the Phoenix Program In June 1967, the CIA’s Chieu Hoi defector program was incorporated within its newly established Phoenix Program, as it was organized by CIA officer Nelson Brickham, who appreciated Chieu Hoi as "one of the few areas where police and paramilitary advisers cooperated." The Phoenix program was designed to coordinate all intelligence programs in South Vietnam so thee CIA could more identify and neutralize Viet Cong political cadre. As Brickham said, “My motto was to recruit them; if you can't recruit them, defect them (that's Chieu Hoi); if you can't defect them, capture them; if you can't capture them, kill them." Brickham also emphasized that Chieu Hoi was a means for the CIA to develop “unilateral penetrations unknown to the [South Vietnamese] police." In other words, the Taliban defector buyout program will be conducted unilaterally by the CIA, apart from the Karzai government. From 1967 onwards, all "rallied" VC cadre were included in Phoenix neutralization statistics, and by 1969 more than a hundred thousand defectors had been processed through 51 Chieu Hoi centers. The Chieu Hoi program was managed from 1966 until March 1969 by Ogden Williams, and then by Eugene P. Bable, a career CIA officer who had served in the Flying Tigers. The Phoenix Program sought to resolve the “revolving door syndrome” by arranging through the SIDE (Screening, Interrogation and Detention of the Enemy) Program the construc tion of permanent detention facilities; a registration system coordinated with Chieu Hoi programs; and judicial reform aimed at the rapid disposal of pending cases, as devised by Robert Harper, a lawyer on contract to the CIA. Through Phoenix, the CIA also began a policy of offering Chieu Hoi status to informers. From the language of the Phoenix reports, one could easily think that the Chieu Hoi program was a great success. But many Chieu Hoi defectors simply re gurgitated the American line in order to win amnesty, make a quick visit to their families, enjoy a few home-cooked meals, and then return to the war for independence, fat and rested. Legitimate Chieu Hoi defectors were pariahs who were not accepted back in their villages. Jim Ward, the senior CIA officer in charge of Phoenix in the Delta (1967-1969) described Chieu Hoi as “a great program. Well done." Ward explained that most Chieu Hoi advisers were from the U.S. Information Service, although some were State Department or military officers. " Ward describes the defection process as follows: Upon arriving at the Chieu Hoi center, the defector was "interviewed" and, if he had information on the VCI, was sent to the CIA’s Province InterrogationCenter; if he had tactical military information, he was sent to military interrogators. Next came political in doctrination, lasting from 40-60 days, depending on the individual. "They had a formal course," said Ward. "They were shown movies and given lectures on democracy." Upon graduation each was given an ID card, a meal, some money, and a chance to repent. Political indoctrination was handled by defectors who said they had been well treated by the Americans and had decided it was better to live for a free Vietnam than to die for the totalitarian North Vietnamese. "Chieu Hoi had lots of guys who had been with the enemy before," Ward continued, "who knew how to talk to these people and would persuade them to join the Territorial Forces or the PRU." Others joined armed propaganda teams, which went back into VC territory to contact Vietcong families and recruit more Vietcong defectors. "The great thing about the Chieu Hoi program," Ward noted, "is that we didn't have to put people in jails or process them through the judicial system, which was already overcrowded. Political and Psychological Warfare Despite his praise for the Chieu Hoi program, Ward said that "Amer icans should have been targeted only against the North Vietnamese and left the South Vietnamese forces to handle the insurgency," even though such a strategy would have precluded Phoenix. The same lesson applies in Afghanistan. The U.S. has no legitimate reason to be there, and thus it must rely on psychological ploys, rather than any appeal to nationalism, to win the Afghanis over to the American Way of doing things. That is how High Value Reward and bounty programs become business as usual. That is why theU.S. is instituting a defector program, with a publicity campaign managed in the field by psyops teams replete with radios, leaflets, posters, banners, TV shows, movies, comic books falling from planes, and loudspeakers mounted on trucks to spread the word. http://web.archive.org/web/20000302113211/www.parascope.com/articles/0497/phxcomic.htm On January 22, 1970, thirty-eight thousand of these leaflets were dropped over three villages in Go Vap District. Addressed to specific VCI members, they read: "Since you have joined the NLF, what have you done for your family or your village and hamlet? Or have you just broken up the happiness of many families and destroyed houses and land? Some people among you have been awakened recently, they have deserted the Communist ranks and were received by the GVN and the people with open arms and family affec tion. You should be ready for the end if you remain in the Communist ranks. You will be dealing with difficulties bigger from day to day and will suffer serious failure when the ARVN expand strongly. You had better return to your family where you will be guaranteed safety and helped to establish a new life. " This is how defectors will be created in Afghanistan as well. Psyops leaflets aimed at creating defectors will portray the Taliban as a socially disruptive force that can only be stopped by America. But Americans can only reach the Afghan "people" only through "media" like leaflets and loudspeakers – an indication of just how far removed the CIA is from the reality of life in Afghanistan’s rural villages. And while the CIA relies on cartoons to sell itself, the Taliban go from person to person, proving that technology was no substitute for human contact. Ultimately the U.S. was defeated in Vietnam for just this reason. The Taliban defector buyout program heralds just such a development in Afghanistan – defeat – and nothing more.

Global Research Articles by Douglas Valentine

DeCriminalize Political Speech

The Humanitarian Law Project Case

By JAYNE LYN STAHL
December 28, 2009
Courtesy Of CounterPunch

In February, the Supreme Court will hear on appeal what many consider to be among the most important cases that speaks to the constitutionality of political speech in recent times, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project.

And, in light of the failed attempt to blow up a Northwest jetliner heading from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas day, it will be a test of the strength of the Bill of Rights, and even more important that the First Amendment prevail.

The plaintiff in the case, Humanitarian Law Project, is a human rights group that often consults with the United Nations, and that has in the past assisted the Kurdistan Workers' Party, as well as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eela. They, along with administrative law judges and others, have had their right to free association challenged under legislation that dates back to Newt Gingrich's Contract with America, and the mid-1990's, in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing; legislation that was signed into law by then President Bill Clinton.

The "Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act" was unmistakeably every inch a bipartisan effort, and is easily recognizable as the precursor to the USA Patriot Act. The objective of AEDPA was to cut off all sources of material assistance to any groups the State Department deems to be sources of international terror.

According to Free Expression Policy Project, the measure empowers the State Department to construct a list of "foreign terrorist organizations," and criminalize any "material support" to these groups. While parts of the law were struck down several times by federal courts, plaintiffs in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project are taking legislation that has had the chilling effect of derailing the First Amendment all the way to the Supreme Court.

So, on February 23rd, the highest court in the land will get to decide whether any of the four provisions of AEDPA constitute criminal activity. The penalty for being convicted of providing material support to a State Department blacklisted group can be as much as fifteen years behind bars. The definition of terrorism is said to be simply "any actual or threatened use of a weapon against people or property."

Two years ago, an appeals court found much of the law o be "unconstitutionally vague," and it will soon be the Supreme's turn up at bat to hear a challenge to a measure that, in the words of attorney for the plaintiffs, is "so sweeping that it treats human rights advocates as criminal terrorists...and makes advocating human rights or other lawful, peaceable activity a crime simply because it is done for the benefit of, or in conjunction with, a group the Secretary of State has blacklisted."

Apart from the Carter Center, Human Rights Watch, and coalitions of sociologists and anthropologists, Humanitarian Law Project has another interesting friend.. A group calling itself "Victims of the McCarthy Era," with 32 members many of whom were either themselves blacklisted and/or incarcerated during the 1950's, or had family members blacklisted, for their guilt by association with the Communist Party, has signed onto an amicus brief, and urges that the Supreme Court follow an earlier ruling, Scales v. United States, that suggests "material support" bans must apply only to those who specifically support a group's illegal activities.

When President Obama speaks of threats posed by al Qaeda and what he calls "its affiliates," he invites not only fear and rancor, like his predecessor George W. Bush, but he's essentially comparing political organizations with corporate franchises. Surely, al Qaeda is not the terrorist equivalent of MacDonald's.

The dangers of seeing any one group as if it were an apocalyptic octapus with wide, and unambiguous tentacles, far outweigh any benefits. Any effort that has as its mission the prevention of human rights abuse, and discrimination must not be silenced in the name of making the world safe from terrorism. Indeed, to silence free speech is a form of terrorism, an act of violence against independent thought.

We urge the Supreme Court to uphold the ruling of a federal court and, in effect, nullify any legislation that is "unconstitutionally vague," that confers upon human rights activists guilt by association, and that criminalizes political speech.

The Lockerbie Bomber Is Innocent

Al-Megrahi Is Home. And He Is Innocent

The release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber was long overdue, for the case against him was politically driven

By Christine Grahame
Sunday, 23 August 2009
Courtesy Of The Independent On Sunday

I became involved with Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi quite by accident. Like many people I had been suffering from Lockerbie fatigue. For me, and for you, I suppose, life had moved on from that horrendous crime over 20 years ago and the imprisonment of the Libyan murderer. That was that.

At least it was, until I agreed, by chance, to sponsor the showing of a Dutch documentary about the Lockerbie bombing at Parliament. I invited all MSPs and researchers, and indeed the press corps, to see this film. One MSP and one member of the press came, and I really only saw it because I felt obliged to attend. But that film changed my perspective. From that casual moment, and from much that I have learned since, I am convinced not only that Megrahi was not found guilty "beyond reasonable doubt", the test in Scot's law, but that he is an innocent man.

He is not a saint, of course – he had a history with Libyan intelligence – but his hands are clean over Lockerbie. For you should recall that five months before the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 on that dark, wild December night just before Christmas in 1988, an American military cruiser, the Vincennes, shot down an Iranian passenger plane carrying 290 pilgrims. No one has been charged, let alone prosecuted, over that, even though it was all captured on film.

It is reasonable to deduce that when an American plane carrying, as some believed, military personnel back home to their religious festival, is blasted out of the sky, the finger of suspicion should not point first at Libya. Iran, maybe. However, Iran had to be kept on side because of the Iraq/Kuwait conflict. The Iran/Syria connection was soon dropped, and so Libya was indeed blamed. Here was a credible culprit.

To successfully frame a nation, pick one like Libya, in which all the baddies of the Middle East are personified in a recognisable hate figure like Gadhafi. If you want to frame a man, pick one with a feasible track record. Then first sell it to the world through the press and, hey presto!

But back to that film, which has not yet been seen here. After watching this disconcerting documentary, which challenged the reliability of key evidence, I got into conversations that night with Dr Jim Swire, with a forensic police scientist who had to label those bodies scattered across hundreds of acres of dark wintry hillside, with Father Patrick Keegan, the priest who lived in Sherwood Crescent (the only person who survived in that street) and with others. None of them supported the case against al-Megrahi.

Since then I have met the man at the centre of it all on several occasions. Our first meeting took place on a blustery morning some months ago. Afterwards I was confronted by a crowd of reporters who waited until I emerged one hour later from speaking to a man so detested, so reviled by many that death in prison from cancer would be too good for him.

He was sitting in front of a laptop, across the table in a room set aside of lawyers and their clients. His English was excellent and I remember trying to impress upon him that I was there for the duration, and not just this one visit. I told him that if I thought for one minute he was guilty I would walk out of the room. But he was intent on scrolling through the pages of the trial, pausing now and then to emphasise a point. Perhaps he was listening.

On subsequent visits we could go straight to the point, and deal with "prisoner transfer": to qualify he would have to abandon the appeal which could allow him to clear his name. We also talked more of his family and the growing need, as his health worsened, as it clearly was doing, to be with them. It was then that his composure was momentarily lost; the emotion and tension were tangible. But although his priority was to be with them in his last days, he told me he did not want his name to go down in history as the Lockerbie bomber. He told me, in short, that he did not do it. I told him again that I thought he was innocent.

Let me make one thing clear: I understand the hatred some feel for him, particularly the US relatives of the dead. It is, however, misplaced and it is in order to unravel for them the true story of Lockerbie, as much as to liberate an innocent man, that I and others worked hard for his compassionate release. This would have allowed the appeal process to be exhausted and evidence-led. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission considered there was evidence vital enough for it to consider that there might have been a miscarriage of justice. That evidence, particularly relating to the identification of al-Megrahi linking him directly to the bombing has never and will now never be tested in a Scottish court.

My final meeting with him was on 23 July. He requested that it be private and I have kept my word till now. Apart from discussing his deteriorating health, increasing frailty and his family, we discussed at length his compassionate release. He wanted my advice. I told him I thought he had nothing to lose because if it was rejected he could abandon his appeal and take the prisoner transfer route. I advised him to consult his legal team.

The next day he applied for compassionate release. Stupidly, I thought there was a good chance that after his death at home his appeal could still be pursued, by his family. But, like al-Megrahi, I am a tiny cog in an elaborate mechanism. Last week he abandoned his appeal. His counsel advised the court that he believed that to do so would "assist" with his "applications".

The previous week I had received an email from a whistleblower in the Justice Department telling me that the Libyan officials were being told in no uncertain terms that he must drop his appeal or there would be no compassionate release.

Al-Megrahi was a desperate man, but I believe there are other desperate men and women – in the US Justice Department and in Whitehall, – all with their own reasons for wanting that appeal to be ditched. Now he is home, but he is still, officially, a guilty man.

Those who believe him guilty are crying foul. So are those of us who believe him innocent. And then there are those who are happily sipping their claret, their eyes on a comfortable unblemished retirement. As for any inquiry, that's out there in the long grass. They are people in authority who are relying on Lockerbie fatigue setting in again. It mustn't.

The SNP's Christine Grahame is a Member of the Scottish Parliament

The Return Of The Old Middle East

How to Win at Balance-of-Power Politics

By F. Gregory Gause III
March 12, 2009
Courtesy of Foreign Affairs

Summary -- In the Middle East, old-fashioned balance-of-power politics are back. To successfully play the game, the United States should pay close attention to the Arab-Israeli peace process, while keeping Iran off balance.

As the United States has learned from its failures at transforming the Middle East, old-fashioned balance-of-power politics are once again driving events in the region.

In the 1990s, the Clinton administration hoped that settling the Arab-Israeli conflict would stabilize the region by marginalizing Iran and strengthening pro-American regimes, from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. In turn, the theory went, this would lead to unprecedented economic cooperation among states in the region and the emergence of what Shimon Peres, Israel's prime minister in 1995-96 and its president today, called a "new Middle East." The diagnosis was not bad, but the treatment did not work, and the patient remained as sick as ever.

Then, in the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration developed its own grand design for the region. The centerpiece of the plan was to replace the repressive regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq with a thriving democracy. A successful U.S. intervention in Iraq was supposed to intimidate anti-American actors in the Middle East, start a democratic chain reaction throughout the region, encourage Arab-Israeli peace, and reduce the threat of terrorist attacks against the United States.

But despite some modest successes, the Bush administration's "forward strategy of freedom" -- much like Clinton's efforts at engagement -- ultimately failed to remake the Middle East. As Iraq became weaker, Iran grew stronger and both the fundamentalist parties within Iraq and Islamic groups elsewhere, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, gained political ground.

The Bush administration’s “forward strategy of freedom” -- much like Clinton’s efforts at engagement -- ultimately failed to remake the Middle East.

The Obama administration seems to have more realistic goals in the Middle East. The new team realizes that the Iranian leadership has to be engaged rather than isolated in the hope that it might just go away. The Obama administration seems appropriately humble about the prospects for achieving Arab-Israeli peace but also determined to try.

All this is sensible, but to best secure U.S. interests in the Middle East, the new administration needs to remind itself of the rules of the local game -- the traditional contest for influence among regional states. It is played out more in political terms than in military ones, although the possibility of violence is never far. The players are the stronger regional powers (Egypt, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey) and the playing fields are the weaker powers (Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories) whose governments cannot prevent outsiders from interfering in domestic politics. The tools of influence are money, guns, and ideology -- and the scorecard is judged by the political orientations of the weaker states.

By this metric, Iran is doing rather well. In Iraq, its influence is greater than that of any other regional power. Iran's closest Iraqi ally, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, did not do well in recent provincial elections, but Tehran's ties to the political party of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and to the Sadrist movement, a Shia party built around Muqtada al-Sadr -- both of which fared better in provincial elections -- remain strong. Meanwhile, Hamas, Iran's longtime client, emerged from this winter's war against Israeli forces in Gaza bloodied but unbowed, much as Iran's ally Hezbollah did from its own war with Israel in 2006. Hamas and Hezbollah now dictate the course of politics in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon, respectively -- far more so than the central governments controlled by "moderate" Arabs with pro-Western inclinations.

Still, the game is far from over. In fact, it never ends. After World War II, the Hashemite kings of Iraq and Jordan hoped to unite the Arab world under their leadership. They played politics in Syria and among Palestinians to garner support for Arab nationalism. In the late 1950s, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser used Arab nationalism and a confrontational stance toward Israel to rally Arab public opinion behind his leadership and pressure Arab governments to do his will. Nasser looked to be a winner when he united Syria and Egypt in the United Arab Republic and helped cause the downfall of Iraq's pro-Western monarchy. But regional alliances soon formed to balance against him, and eventually, Egypt's defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War fully ended Nasser's regional appeal.

After the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini hoped that the Islamic Revolution would spread beyond Iran's borders. He had some luck in Lebanon -- where Iran created Hezbollah after the Israeli invasion of 1982 -- and elsewhere. But Khomeini's revolution had limited appeal, and ultimately, no Arab government fell to a sister revolution. Saddam, who played an important role in checking Iran's power, learned a similar lesson during the first Gulf War in the early 1990s. He combined Arab nationalism with Islamism to try to create instability in Arab states that had joined the coalition against him. He failed.

The U.S. government can learn three lessons from this history. First, the United States is not the only player that has failed to organize the Middle East under its own leadership and power. Lots of local players who understand the region much better than the United States have failed as well. Iran, for example, is unlikely to consolidate its regional hegemony either, so Washington should not overreact to Iran's tactical victories.

Second, since the game is played in the region's weaker states, where Tehran has recently done well, Washington should try to strengthen the central governments there. Iraq is a case in point. A year ago, Prime Minister Maliki appeared so weak as to be almost irrelevant, but now he seems to be emerging as the strongman of Iraqi politics. Washington helped him get there, and it makes sense to continue supporting him -- even at the price of tension with America's Kurdish allies (who fear that Maliki's plans for a strong central government will lessen their autonomy). With the United States planning a military withdrawal, American influence over Iraqi politics is a wasting asset, but Washington can still use it to improve, on the margins, the governing capacity of the Iraqi state.

Third, the United States should also pay close attention to the Arab-Israeli peace process. Iran's rulers -- much like Nasser, Khomeini, and Saddam in the past -- use the Palestinian issue to mobilize popular support at home and pressure pro-American governments throughout the region. At the moment, conditions are not propitious for solving the Palestinian question, and the results of the recent Israeli elections make them even less so. Strengthening the Palestinian Authority would be a positive step, but it would require reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah of a sort that seems distant. So working through Syria looks like a more promising approach -- as the Obama administration has apparently recognized, judging from the recent stirrings of diplomatic activity on this front.

Israel and Syria have been negotiating indirectly for some time through Turkey -- although Syria suspended talks during the war in Gaza -- and the outlines of a settlement are clear. If Washington could help broker a Syrian-Israeli deal, it would open up some distance between Tehran and Damascus, refute Iran's argument that confrontation pays, and give new momentum to the idea that the larger Arab-Israeli conflict is moving toward resolution.

Using traditional tools of influence to counter opponents and shift the strategic orientation of secondary regional actors would be a classic move -- and just the sort to get the United States right back in the game.

Using traditional tools of influence to counter opponents and shift the strategic orientation of secondary regional actors would be a classic move.

F. GREGORY GAUSE III is Professor of Political Science at University of Vermont, Kuwait Foundation Visiting Professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and a Fulbright Scholar at the American University in Kuwait.

Proof: Israeli Effort To Destabilize Iran Via Twitter

Monday, June 15, 2009 19:52
Courtesy Of Charting Stocks

Right-wing Israeli interests are engaged in an all out Twitter attack with hopes of delegitimizing the Iranian election and causing political instability within Iran.

Anyone using Twitter over the past few days knows that the topic of the Iranian election has been the most popular. Thousands of tweets and retweets alleging that the election was a fraud, calling for protests in Iran, and even urging followers hack various Iranian news websites (which they did successfully). The Twitter popularity caught the eye of various blogs such as Mashable and TechCrunch and even made its way to mainstream news media sites.

Were these legitimate Iranian people or the works of a propaganda machine? I became curious and decided to investigate the origins of the information. In doing so, I narrowed it down to a handful of people who have accounted for 30,000 Iran related tweets in the past few days. Each of them had some striking similarities -

1. They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th.
2. Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their profiles.
3. “IranElection” was each of their most popular keyword
4. With some very small exceptions, each were posting in ENGLISH.
5. Half of them had the exact same profile photo
6. Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of their friends were EACH OTHER.

Why were these tweets in English? Why were all of these profiles OBSESSED with Iran? It became obvious that this was the work of a team of people with an interest in destabilizing Iran. The profiles are phonies and were created with the sole intention of destabilizing Iran and effecting public opinion as to the legitimacy of Iran’s election.

I narrowed the spammers down to three of the most persistent - @StopAhmadi @IranRiggedElect @Change_For_Iran

I decided to do a google search for 2 of the 3 - @StopAhmadi and @IranRiggedElect. The first page to come up was JPost (Jerusalem Post) which is a right wing newspaper pro-Israeli newspaper.

JPost actually ran a story about 3 people “who joined the social network mere hours ago have already amassed thousands of followers.” Why would a news organization post a story about 3 people who JUST JOINED TWITTER hours earlier? Is that newsworthy? JPost was the first (and only to my knowledge) major news source that mentioned these 3 spammers.

JPost, a major news organization, promoted these three Twitterers who went on the be the source of the IranElection Twitter bombardment. Why is JPost so concerned about Iranian students all of a sudden (which these spammers claim to be)? I must admit that I had my suspicions. After all, Que Bono? (who benefits).

There’s no question that Israel perceives Iran as an enemy, more so than any other nation. According to a recent poll, more than half of Israel’s population support using military force against Iran if they do not cease from developing nuclear energy (which they have the legal right to do as per the NNP treaty). Oddly enough, this comes out of a country which is not a cosigner to the NNP treaty and has no right to develop nuclear energy, yet posses an arsenal of nuclear BOMBS.

Of course, Mousavi himself plays an important role in causing the social unrest within Iran. How often do you see a candidate declare himself the winner before any votes are counted and then, when faced with defeat, call the entire election process a fraud? As obvious as it was in our own 2000 election, Al Gore would not touch the topic of voter fraud. No major US politician goes near the subject. They know full well that such an accusation would shake the entire foundation of our democracy and threaten the political structures that are in place.

These twitting spammers began crying foul before the final votes were even counted, just as Mousavi had. The spammer @IranRiggedElect created his profile before a winner was announced and preformed the public service of informing us in the United States , in English and every 10 minutes, of the unfair election. He did so unselfishly, and without any regard for his fellow friends and citizens of Iran, who don’t speak English and don’t use Twitter!

Meet The Spammers

IranRiggedElect
3146 followers. 31 friends.
340 tweets in past 4 days. none before that.
Top 5 words - iranelection, cnnfail, mousavi, tehran,
All tweets in English
Time: Bulk between 12pm and 2pm eastern standard time
Most retweets: @StopAhmadi @IranElection09 @change_for_iran

Change_for_Iran
14,000 followers. 0 friends
117 tweets in 2 days. none before that.
All tweets in English
Time: Bulk between 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm eastern.
Top 5 words: iranelection, people, police, right, students
No retweets

IranElection09
800 followers. 9 friends.
196 tweets in 3 days. none before that.
185 in English. 11 in Farsi (Arabic appearing letters. Not sure if it’s Farsi)
Time: bulk between 2:00pm and 6:00pm eastern. Also 1:00am.
Top 5 words: iranelection, rt, mousavi, tehran, march
Most retweets: @IranRiggedElect @StopAhmadi

StopAhmadi
6199 followers. 53 friends.
1107 tweets in past 3 days. None before then.
top 5 words: iranelection, ppl, news, rt, iran.
All tweets in English
Time: bulk between 9:00am and 5:00pm eastern
Most retweets: @mohamadreza @mahdi

mohamadreza
1433 followers. 142 friends
(protected account. cant see data)

The following all have the same photo in their profile and are followed by the profiles previously mentioned.

http://twitter.com/SadeqEn
http://twitter.com/greenvote
http://twitter.com/Change_for_Iran (14,000 followers)
http://twitter.com/iranbaan
http://twitter.com/sdavood
http://twitter.com/IranElection09 (800 followers. 9 friends.)

Click below for the JPost Article

[Update 1] Reuter’s on Pre-election Polling: Ahmadinejad lead by a 2-to-1 ratio, greater than the announced results of the “contested” vote.

[Update 2] NBC foreign correspondent Richard Engel says Twitter and Facebook are helping Iranians organize a “revolution.”

[Update 3] Wonder where all of the nasty comments are coming from? FYI- DDOS = distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is one in which a multitude of compromised systems attack a single target, thereby causing denial of service for users of the targeted system. (Recognize the avatar?) BUT….their latest spamming campaign (Against CS) is backfiring.

Spammers get a taste of their own medicine!: Block CS eh? It’s not us being blocked…..

[Update 4] The Guardian: Iran’s election result may not be fraudulent. Our polling suggests that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory is what voters wanted

[Update 5] Iran blocked access to twitter yesterday BUT that doesn’t stop the “Iranian Students” from continuing to tweet every 10 or so minutes.

Disclaimer: Before I get attacked as being an Anti-Semite,you should know that I am half Jewish. Alternatively, I hope that people do not misinterpret this as some “JEWISH” conspiracy. It isn’t. These are the workings of the extreme right wing of Israeli politics. They have their own Bush’s and Cheney’s there too.

Arabs Know Obama Will Make Little Difference

I suspect that what the Arab world wants to hear is that Obama will take his soldiers out of Muslim lands

By Robert Fisk
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
Courtesy Of The Independent

More and more, it looks like the same old melody that Bush's lads used to sing. We're not against the Muslim world. In fact, we are positively for it. We want you to have democracy, up to a point. We love Arab "moderates" and we want to reach out to you and be your friends. Sorry about Iraq. And sorry – again, up to a point – about Afghanistan and we do hope that you understand why we've got to have a little "surge" in Helmand among all those Muslim villages with their paper-thin walls. And yes, we've made mistakes.

Everyone in the world, or so it seems, is waiting to see if this is what Barack Obama sings. I'm not sure, though, that the Arabs are waiting with such enthusiasm as the rest of the world.

I haven't met an Arab in Egypt – or an Arab in Lebanon, for that matter – who really thinks that Obama's "outreach" lecture in Cairo on Thursday is going to make much difference.

They watched him dictate to Bibi Netanyahu – no more settlements, two-state solution – and they saw Bibi contemptuously announce, on the day that Mahmoud Abbas, the most colourless leader in the Arab world, went to the White House, that Israel's colonial project in the West Bank would continue unhindered. So that's that, then.

And please note that Obama has chosen Egypt for his latest address to the Muslims, a country run by an ageing potentate – Hosni Mubarak is 80 – who uses his secret police like a private army to imprison human rights workers, opposition politicians, anyone in fact who challenges the great man's rule. At this point, we won't mention torture. Be sure that this little point is unlikely to get much play in the Obama sermon, just as he surely will not be discussing Saudi Arabia's orgy of head-chopping when he chats to King Abdullah on Wednesday.

So what's new, folks? Arabs, I find, have a very shrewd conception of what goes on in Washington – the lobbying, the power politics, the dressing up of false friendship in Rooseveltian language – even if ordinary Americans do not. They are aware that the "new" America of Obama looks suspiciously like the old one of Bush and his lads and ladies. First, Obama addresses Muslims on Al-Arabiya television. Then he addresses Muslims in Istanbul. Now he wants to address Muslims all over again in Cairo.

I suppose Obama could say: "I promise I will not make any decision until I first consult with you and the Jewish side" along with more promises about being a friend of the Arabs. Only that's exactly what Franklin Roosevelt told King Abdul Aziz on the deck of USS Quincy in 1945, so the Arabs have heard that one before. I guess we'll hear about terrorism being as much a danger to Arabs as to Israel – another dull Bush theme – and, Obama being a new President, we might also have a "we shall not let you down" theme.

But for what? I suspect that what the Arab world wants to hear – not their leaders, of course, all of whom would like to have a spanking new US air base on their property – is that Obama will take all his soldiers out of Muslim lands and leave them alone (American aid, doctors, teachers, etc, excepted). But for obvious reasons, Obama can't say that.

He can, and will, surely, try his global-Arab line; that every Arab nation will be involved in the new Middle East peace, a resurrection of the remarkably sane Saudi offer of full Arab recognition of Israel in return for an Israeli return to the 1967 borders in accordance with the UN Security Council Resolution 242. Obama will be clearing this with King Abdullah on Wednesday, no doubt. And everyone will nod sagely and the newspapers of the Arab dictatorships will solemnly tip their hats to the guy and the New York Times will clap vigorously.

And the Israeli government will treat it all with the same amused contempt as Netanyahu treated Obama's demand to stop building Jewish colonies on Arab land and, back home in Washington, Congress will fulminate and maybe Obama will realise, just like the Arab potentates have realised, that beautiful rhetoric and paradise-promises never, ever, win against reality.