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By Michael Dobbs
$19.11
By Alan Abramowitz
$23
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AP/Jerome Delay
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By Susan Zakin — Are the emirs of the Sahara criminals or revolutionaries? A little bit of both, probably.
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U.S. Air Force/Staff Sgt. Angelita Lawrence
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By Eugene Robinson — Show of hands: Does anybody really understand the U.S. policy in Afghanistan? Can anyone figure out how we’re supposed to stay the course and bring home the troops at the same time?
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DoD
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First the president spoke to the troops, then to the American people. In a live address from Afghanistan, Barack Obama echoed his predecessor: “I will not keep Americans in harm’s way a single day longer than is absolutely required for our national security.”
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AP/K.M.Chaudary
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By Dilip Hiro, TomDispatch —
Why has the Obama administration committed itself to releasing more than $1 billion to a government that has challenged its attempt to bring to justice an alleged mastermind of cross-border terrorism?
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Remember the name Khalid Sheik Mohammed? KSM, as he became known in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is still accused of masterminding those attacks a decade later and is still being detained at Guantanamo Bay, but Wednesday brought news of movement in his case.
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U.S. Air Force / Senior Airman David Carbajal
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By William Pfaff — Terminating the Afghanistan War and ending the global projection of American military power of which it is a part are indispensable steps to saving the nation.
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mobyhill (CC-BY)
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By Ann Jones, TomDispatch —
Since May 2007, 76 NATO soldiers have been killed and an undisclosed number wounded in 46 recorded “deliberate attacks” by members of the Afghan National Security Force. These figures suggest more than a recent “trend of Afghan treachery.”
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Illustration by Mr. Fish
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By Chris Hedges — AIPAC does not speak for Jews or for Israel. It is a mouthpiece for right-wing ideologues and defense contractors.
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AP / Vahid Salemi
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By Robert Scheer — The supreme theocratic ruler of Iran is a dangerous madman never to be trusted with a nuclear weapon. How then to explain his recent seemingly logical and humane religious proclamations?
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DoD
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By William Pfaff — No one yet in Washington seems fully to appreciate or acknowledge the failure, but failure it is.
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AP / Ross D. Franklin
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By Robert Scheer — Here we go again. With the economy showing faint signs of life, the leading Republican candidates have returned to the elixir of warmongering to once again sway the gullible masses.
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U.S. Navy / MC2 Brooks B. Patton Jr.
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By William Pfaff — Stephen Hadley, a former official in ex-Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, said in Munich that Europe must spend more if it wants to be a global player. The Europeans regard the George W. Bush administration record, and now the Obama administration’s, and see the disastrous results of “global playing.”
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U.K.-based investigative reporters working with the Sunday Times have determined that “since Obama took office three years ago, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed [by CIA drone attacks in Pakistan], including more than 60 children.”
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bbc.co.uk
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Claims made by NATO that Pakistan is in cahoots with the Afghan Taliban are tantamount to “old wine in an even older bottle,” according to Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar. However, this particular batch of wine represents thousands of mandatory conversations (read: interrogations) versus Khar’s official denial.
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By Amy Goodman — Ten years ago, Omar Deghayes and Morris Davis would have struck anyone as an odd pair. While they have never met, they now share a profound connection, cemented through their time at the notorious U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By William Pfaff — The Afghan government’s order a week ago to the United States to close its prison at Bagram Air Base near Kabul, where it holds unidentified prisoners, came as a shock to Washington.
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WEF / Andy Mettler (CC-BY-SA)
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Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the former president who was hounded out of the country after nine years atop a military government, has said he will return to Pakistan to participate in elections. (more)
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Wikimedia Commons/Central Intelligence Agency
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Members of al-Qaida, the Taliban and militant groups from Afghanistan and Pakistan met up twice late last year in an effort to combine forces against America’s diminished presence in Pakistan—one common target on which they might agree to focus.
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Wikimedia Commons
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By William Pfaff — A week ago, the publisher of Harper’s Magazine wrote that President Barack Obama, through expedient political compromises, has lost the moral authority that an American president must command, and therefore has lost his right to a second presidential term.
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cnn.com
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At least 63 people were killed in a series of bomb attacks in Afghanistan on Tuesday during ceremonies marking the Shiite holiday of Ashura in three different targeted locations, but the majority of the deaths occurred in Kabul. A Pakistani group claimed responsibility for this sudden and ominous outbreak of sectarian violence.
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RJ Matson, Cagle Cartoons, The St. Louis Post Dispatch —
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Preston Rhea (CC-BY-SA)
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By Barry Lando — For several years now the Pakistanis have found China a very willing and increasingly powerful counterweight to the Americans and their often strident political demands.
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AP / Mike Redwood
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Claiming retaliation for American aggression in Pakistan, al-Qaida said Thursday that it was holding a U.S. citizen, 70-year-old aid worker Warren Weinstein, in that country after capturing him in Lahore four months ago. Al-Qaida boss Ayman al-Zawahiri announced Weinstein’s capture in a video demanding that the U.S. ...
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On Saturday, NATO forces clashed with Pakistani troops near the Afghanistan border, and 24 Pakistani soldiers were reported killed in the airstrike. Those are the facts that both sides agree on, but as Salon’s Glenn Greenwald notes in this “Democracy Now!” interview that aired Monday ... (more)
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White House / Pete Souza
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By William Pfaff — One might think that a bitter Central Asian war in Afghanistan and an ambiguous commitment to Iraq would be enough for President Barack Obama to cope with.
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America is putting too much weight on Twitter Trends; Sarkozy is caught talking smack about Netanyhu; meanwhile, Google+ lost its chance to outshine Facebook. These discoveries and more after the jump.
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The search term “Occupy” is now banned in China; online anonymity is becoming a thing of the past; and a new app called Bully Button protects children but it might just be another Big Brother act. These discoveries and more after the jump.
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Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey (CC-BY)
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This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Code Pink challenges Occupy movement “manarchists,” Oliver Stone talks history and Tariq Ali argues that President Obama is a continuation of President George W. Bush. Plus the winner of our protest song contest.
Posted on Nov 3, 2011
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This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Code Pink challenges Occupy movement “manarchists,” Oliver Stone talks history and Tariq Ali argues that President Obama is a continuation of President George W. Bush. Plus the winner of our protest song contest. Update: Full transcript.
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U.S. State Department
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By William Pfaff — The United States simply does not know how to disentangle itself from this menacing situation.
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CIA
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Here’s a spooky story: The Central Intelligence Agency has once again called unwanted attention to its clandestine collaboration with the New York Police Department, a relationship that was fortified after 9/11 and led to special NYPD surveillance of the city’s Muslim communities, as it has come to the notice of select lawmakers and media outlets that an experienced CIA operative ... (more)
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U.S. Air Force / Staff Sgt. Angelita Lawrence
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By William Pfaff — The Gordian knot by which this American project is bound is the simultaneous conflict and collaboration of the United States and nuclear Pakistan.
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Flickr / JimNtexas
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Improvements in the technology behind the predator drone are advancing at a rate faster than a half-naked Arnold Schwarzenegger fleeing extra-terrestrial assassins in an alien jungle. Two new books bring us up to date. (more)
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U.S. Navy / Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley
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Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen was unusually harsh in his criticism of Pakistan on Thursday, saying an insurgent network behind several Afghanistan bombings, including the recent attack on the U.S. Embassy, “acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.” (more)
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Flickr / asterix611
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Seven years into the Soviet Union’s fatal adventure in Afghanistan, U.S. President Ronald Reagan stood before the international community in West Berlin and demanded that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev tear down the wall that separated East Germany from the West. (more)
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AP / Brennan Linsley
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By Robert Scheer — For a decade, the main questions about 9/11 have gone unanswered while the alleged perpetrators who survived the attacks have never been publicly cross-examined as to their methods and motives.
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AP / Sergey Ponomarev
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By Chris Hedges — I know enough of Libya, a country I covered for many years as the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times, to assure you that the chaos and bloodletting have only begun.
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AP / John Bazemore
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By Bill Boyarsky — Republican spending knows no limits when it comes to going into debt for failed and useless wars. But it’s another story when it comes to providing federal assistance for victims of Hurricane Irene or other catastrophes we may face in the months ahead.
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AP / Ed Zurga
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By Robert Scheer — Behold this unctuous knave, a disgrace to his nation as few before him, yet boasting unvarnished virtue.
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AP / National Counterterrorism Center
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Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, al-Qaida’s second in command and trusted confidant of Osama bin Laden, has been killed in Waziristan, Pakistan’s tribal region, a U.S. government official announced Saturday. The State Department had placed a $1 million reward on his head. (more)
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AP / Alexandre Meneghini
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By William Pfaff — If the U.S. had gone seriously into the war, and behaved characteristically, Libya’s revolution would not have succeeded this week.
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The “haves” have been subjecting the “have-nots” to lives of miserable, crushing toil since polarized hierarchies appeared behind the walls of the world’s first city some 10,000 years ago. The names, faces and technologies change, but so far, the legacy of exploitation remains. (more)
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Paul Keller (CC-BY)
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By Karen J. Greenberg, TomDispatch —
As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the unexpected extent of the damage Americans have done to themselves and their institutions is coming into better focus.
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U.S. Department of Defense / Master Sgt. Jerry Morrison
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After allegations that top-level Pakistani officials have secretly aided al-Qaida and the Taliban, sheltering Osama bin Laden himself, now comes a startling new charge: “FBI Says Pakistan’s Military Plotted to Tilt U.S. Policy.” (more)
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Flickr / badjonni
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Documents taken from Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan compound indicate that the head of al-Qaida was plotting an attack to mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11. The records contained names of possible operatives, but little else that was useful, according to Siobhan Gorman of The Wall Street Journal.
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Illustration by Mr. Fish
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By Chris Hedges — Torture, prolonged detention without trial, sexual humiliation, rape, disappearance, extortion, looting, random murder and abuse have become, as in Argentina during the Dirty War, part of our own subterranean world of detention sites and torture centers.
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AP / Carolyn Kaster
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By Fred Branfman — Nothing reveals the true state of American politics today more than the fact that Democratic President Barack Obama has left the Democratic Party far weaker than it would have been had McCain been elected.
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Flickr / DVIDSHUB
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Fred Branfman was in Laos when the U.S. began covertly dropping bombs on the country’s civilian population in 1969 as part of its military operations in neighboring Vietnam. Today, he writes about the Obama administration’s international counterterrorism plan, which involves 60,000 Special Operations forces worldwide. (more)
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