.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen on Thursday said he believed the top leadership of Al Qaeda, including Osama Bin Laden, was in Pakistan.

Talking to Al Jazeera TV, Mullen said Al Qaeda was on top of the US list of priorities and threats around the world. When asked why the United States was not in FATA despite having the knowledge that Al Qaeda was present there, he said, “Because FATA is in Pakistan and Pakistan is a sovereign country and we don’t go into sovereign countries.”

“We have had trainers there for a significant period of time to train their trainers, which is [an] ongoing support function that is actually moving in the right direction,” he said, adding that some of the US troops were special forces and some were general purpose troops.

Threats: Mullen said there had been a positive shift across Pakistan, especially its military, in recent months against the Taliban.

“One of the things that has happened in Pakistan in recent months and weeks is the Pakistani military – really in response to the people of Pakistan – [and] the government of Pakistan [have] taken the threat against them very, very seriously,” the US joint chief of staff said.

However, Mullen said the Taliban could be politically engaged in the long run. “I think at some point [in the] long-term, they [Taliban] become part of the political process”.

Mullen said Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had to change its strategic thrust in the long run, which, he said, had been to “foment chaotic activity you know in its border countries”.

He said Islamabad’s that “view to its own survival and its own security” had to change at some point in the future.

Daily Timres Monitor

A recently released legal memo describing interrogation techniques showed that Bush Administration lawyers had approved the use of "insects" in interrogations. "You would like to place [Abu] Zubaydeh in a cramped confinement box with an insect," Jay Bybee, then a Justice Department lawyer and now a federal judge, wrote in 2002. He opined that as long as the bug wasn't actually harmful, it would not violate the law to use one to scare a terrorist detainee.

That was the first mention of insects to become public. But the memo's release may make it worth looking back to a brouhaha that occurred in secret at the agency in 2005. A CIA supervisor involved in the "enhanced interrogation" program bragged to other CIA employees about using fire ants while during questioning of a top terror suspect, according to several sources formerly with the Agency. The official claimed to other Agency employees, the sources say, to have put the stinging ants on a detainee's head to help break him.

The CIA insists, however, that no matter what the man said, it never took place. In fact, even though the Bush administration lawyers condoned the use of non-harmful insects, as the memo revealed, the technique wasn't employed, the agency says. "The CIA did not use insects as part of its terrorist interrogation program," said CIA Spokesman Paul Gimigliano. "That didn't happen, period."

The CIA supervisor who purportedly bragged of using insects was, and still is, a high-level official, working at the Senior Executive Service level. Because he is still in the CIA covert side, his name cannot be published. But he was in the field and helped oversee, according to sources, the way "enhanced" interrogation techniques were used.

In fact, he was so close to the program that sources say he was caught on the CIA interrogation tapes made in Thailand inside the secret facility where Zubaydah and other terrorists were questioned. The tapes were later destroyed in circumstances currently under investigation.

"He was on the tapes," a former CIA source said. No one can know if that is true, since they were destroyed. But several sources say that although he may have been on the tapes, he actually had no direct role in interrogating anyone, but that he was present as a high-ranking supervisor. (And there were no reported insects or fire ants on the videotape.)

The official is a storied veteran of covert operations who had just returned from Bagdhad. "He's a bullshitter," said one former officer, explaining that the man had a reputation for telling tall tales and embellishing.
Aram Roston
The Huffington Post
Read Entire Article

In the wilds of Afghanistan, the civilian populace is increasingly turning to the Taliban for aid rather than U.S.-backed police forces, a published report revealed Monday. In some areas of the country, the situation has become so dire that some have begun to see the Taliban movement as ‘liberation’ rather than oppression.

“Afghans across the country complain bitterly about the country’s police, whose junior ranks earn only about $150 a month,” the Associated Press reported. “Police pad their salaries by demanding bribes at checkpoints or kickbacks to investigate complaints, and police in opium poppy-growing regions turn a blind eye to drug smuggling for a cut of the profits, many Afghans complain.”

The wire service continued: “A 2007 International Crisis Group report entitled ‘Reforming Afghanistan’s Police’ found that Afghans often view the police ‘more as a source of fear than of security.’ It said ending corruption was critical if police were to provide a ‘professional, consistent service to citizens.’”

As U.S. and British troops have been battling Taliban forces in Helmand province in one of the largest offensives since the war’s start and as they press further into the territory, more has been revealed about the abuses of government-installed Afghan police forces.

“[Villagers] say the government’s police force was so brutal and corrupt that they welcomed the Taliban as liberators,” noted The Washington Post.

The paper continued:

“The police would stop people driving on motorcycles, beat them and take their money,” said Mohammad Gul, an elder in the village of Pankela, which British troops have been securing for the past three days after flying in by helicopter.

He pointed to two compounds of neighbors where pre-teen children had been abducted by police to be used for the local practice of “bachabazi,” or sex with pre-pubescent boys.

“If the boys were out in the fields, the police would come and rape them,” he said. “You can go to any police base and you will see these boys. They hold them until they are finished with them and then let the child go.”

“On an average basis, six to 10 police lose their lives [every day] while on duty, providing security for the people,” Afghan interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told reporters.

“Last year we had an average of six police dying every day but this year we have six to 10,” he said, referring to the Afghan solar-based calendar which starts in March. Bashary was unable to give an overall toll for the year.

On Monday morning, the police chief of Jalrez, along with three of his deputies, were killed in a roadside bombing. Four other officers were injured.

With AFP.

Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States on Tuesday announced a review of its often-criticized terror alert system created in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The system includes a color-coded public warnings, which range from green, symbolizing a low risk of attack to red, which points to a severe threat.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement a bipartisan panel of experts would report on the efficiency of the system within 60 days.

"My goal is simple: to have the most effective system in place to inform the American people about threats to our country," Napolitano said in a statement.

The secretary -- who heads a department also created after the attacks -- said she had appointed a senior George W. Bush security adviser Fran Townsend to lead the panel.

Critics say such threat coding is too vague and provide little or no actionable information for travelers, while causing alarm.

In 2003, a congressional report warned that levels were so vague that they would lead the public to question their usefulness.

But scrapping the system is likely to provide fodder for President Barack Obama's critics, who accuse him rolling back anti-terror polices to the detriment of national security.

Former vice president Dick Cheney has frequently spared with the Obama since leaving office, accusing him of making the country more vulnerable to attack.

The current threat level is yellow, "a significant risk of terrorist attacks," where it has stood since since 2004, although specific sector or route advisories have changed.

In August 2006, the threat level was raised from orange to red for flights to the United States from Britain, after authorities in London unraveled a plot to blow up as many as 10 trans-Atlantic airliners.

The threat level is published on the Department of Homeland Security's website and features in public service announcements in US airports.

Britain has a similar system, operated by the internal security service commonly known as MI5.

source

The highly controversial no-warrant surveillance program initiated after the September 11 terrorist attacks relied on a "factually flawed" legal analysis inappropriately provided by a single Justice Department official, according to a report to Congress on Friday.

The report was compiled by the inspectors general of the nation's top intelligence agencies, the Pentagon and the Justice Department.

The report, mandated by Congress, provides fresh context to information previously leaked in press accounts and buttressed by both congressional testimony and books written by former officials involved in the surveillance effort.

The 38-page unclassified version of the document reaches a cautious conclusion, stating that any use of the information collected under the surveillance program "should be carefully monitored."

The program, launched by President Bush in the weeks after the September 11 attacks, allowed for -- without court approval -- the interception of communications into and out of the United States if there was a "reasonable basis" that one of the parties was a terrorist.

The report, though not critical of the program's objectives, sharply criticizes the legal advice provided to the White House by the Justice Department.

Among other things, the report cites a Justice Department conclusion that "it was extraordinary and inappropriate that a single DOJ attorney, John Yoo, was relied upon to conduct the initial legal assessment" of the surveillance program.

"The lack of oversight and review of Yoo's work ... contributed to a legal analysis of the [program] that at a minimum was factually flawed," it says.

The report says Yoo largely circumvented both his boss, Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Yoo, described by Bybee in the report as "the White House's guy" on national security, also provided the legal justification for the CIA's controversial harsh interrogation program. Yoo's legal rationale was later repudiated by the Justice Department.

The bitter debate within the Justice Department over the legal basis for the warrantless surveillance and related intelligence efforts is highlighted in references to the much-documented dramatic account of a March 2004 confrontation in Ashcroft's hospital room. Deputy Attorney General James Comey defied then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales by refusing to sign off on the reauthorization of the program.

The report notes that several members of Congress -- including then-House Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Nancy Pelosi -- were briefed on the program on October 25, 2001, and a total of 17 times before the program became public in 2005.

The document repeats the public assertion by former National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden that no member of Congress had urged that the program be stopped.

The new report makes clear that the President's Surveillance Program was only a small part of the counterterrorism intelligence efforts in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, and its impact even today remains unclear.

Most of the intelligence officials interviewed by the inspectors general had, according to the report, "difficulty citing specific instances where PSP reporting had directly contributed to counterterrorism successes."

The report was compiled by inspectors general of five agencies despite the apparent refusal by key figures -- including Yoo, former Attorney General John Ashcroft and former CIA Director George Tenet -- to be interviewed by investigators.

Governments and companies should limit the snooping they do on web users.

So said Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, who said that growing oversight of browsing could have a pernicious effect.

A greater part of the value of the web lay in the lack of constraints on what people could do with it.

He also warned that attempts to censor what people could say or what they could do online were ultimately doomed to failure.

Open triumph

"When you use the internet it is important that the medium should not be set up with constraints," he said.

The internet, said Sir Tim, should be like a blank piece of paper. Just as governments and companies cannot police what people write or draw on that sheet of paper so they should not be restricted from putting the web to their own uses.

"The canvas should be blank," he said

While governments do need some powers to police unacceptable uses of the web; limits should be placed on these powers, he said.

A car bomb has killed four people and injured 40 at a market on the outskirts of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, police sources told the BBC.

All of those killed or injured in the blast in Kukchali, a mixed Sunni-Shia area to the east of Mosul, are believed to be civilians.

Mosul, with its volatile ethnic and religious mix, has seen numerous attacks by insurgents.

The blast comes less than two weeks after US troops left Iraqi cities.

Correspondents say the bomb went off in an area with a predominantly Shia population, thought to be from Iraq's Shabak community.

On Wednesday two car bombs went off outside Shia mosques in Mosul, killing at least 14 people and injuring about 30. According to Reuters news agency, Shabak areas were targeted in both attacks.

Mosul, a city of about 1.8 million people about 400km (250 miles) north-west of the capital Baghdad, is mainly populated by Iraqi Arabs with Kurdish and other ethnic minorities.

US and Iraqi officials have described the city as al-Qaeda in Iraq's last major urban stronghold in the country.

BBC

Early Friday morning, MSNBC followed up on a theory posted Thursday on the Huffington Post which alleged that a secret CIA program shut down in June by director Leon Panetta could have been related to a purported effort led by Vice President Dick Cheney to assassinate intelligence targets abroad.

This past March, as RAW STORY reported, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that the Bush Administration was running an “executive assassination ring” which reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

“It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on,” Hersh stated. “Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.”

“The revelation from seven Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee that they were misled about a critical CIA program has sparked a debate that touches on the most sensitive areas of national security policy,” Huffington Post’s Sam Stein wondered aloud Thursday. “What program, exactly, was being kept secret?”

Panetta admitted that the CIA had been “concealing significant actions” from Congress since 2001.

Stein wrote that one “theory being bandied about concerns an ‘executive assassination ring’ that was allegedly set up and answered to former Vice President Dick Cheney,” though his article didn’t cite sources for the claim. The reporter spoke to Rep. Anna Eshoo, (D-Calif.), a signatory to the CIA letter, about the theory.

Asked if this was the basis of her letter to Panetta, Eshoo said she could not discuss what was a “highly classified program.” She did, however, note that when Panetta told House Intelligence Committee members what it was that had been kept secret, “the whole committee was stunned, even Republicans.” A Republican committee member told Who Runs Gov’s Greg Sargent it was something they hadn’t heard before.

MSNBC took another shot at asking Eshoo about it on Friday morning.

After correspondent Contessa Brewer summed up the “Cheney assassination ring” backstory, MSNBC anchor Dylan Ratigan remarked, “That’s one of those ‘it’s horrifying and not surprising’ in the same sentence for a lot of folks I know.”

Ratigan asked Eshoo,

“No, I can’t,” Eshoo responded, “it’s highly classified and I can’t discuss it.”

Ratigan shot back, “Right, cause my theory is we were about to invade Canada, we were going to pick up St. Bart’s from the French, or Cheney had a private army.”

Eshoo kept firm, and wouldn’t divulge details about the program. She did, however, drop some clues.

Some of my colleagues have, in many ways, pooh-poohed it and said it wasn’t this and it wasn’t that. I believe that’s a complete mischaracterization of what director Leon Panetta informed the committee.

Now, I give him credit for coming up to the Hill the day after he was informed about this program. I also think it’s quite curious that his own people didn’t brief him when he first became director after he was confirmed.

….

But what I can tell you is that people were instructed not to inform the Congress. Now, that’s in direct violation of the law. The National Security Act… When the committee was informed by Director Panetta, everyone was stunned across the board, Republicans and Democrats. As well as we should be in terms of having something absolutely concealed from all members of Congress. The top leadership of the Congress didn’t know. So this is serious.

A report in Friday’s Washington Post, however, seemed to throw water on the “secret CIA program may be an assassination ring” theory.

Paul Kane and Ben Pershing penned:

The program remains classified, and those knowledgeable about it would describe it only vaguely yesterday. Several current and former administration officials called it an “on-again, off-again” attempt to create a new intelligence capability and said it was related to the collection of information on suspected terrorists that was instituted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Congressional Republicans said no briefing about the program was required because it was not a major tool used against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. They accused Democrats of using the matter to divert attention away from Pelosi’s accusation that CIA officials intentionally misled her in 2002 about the agency’s interrogations of suspected terrorists.

But Democrats waved away such claims and said they may open a congressional investigation of the concealment of the program.

“Current and former administration officials familiar with the program said it was not directly related to previously disclosed high-priority programs such as detainee interrogations or the warrantless surveillance of suspected terrorists on U.S. soil,” the Post reporters added. “It was a intelligence-collection activity run by the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, officials said. It was not a covert action, which by law would have required a presidential finding and a report to Congress.”

A “former top Bush administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the issue,” told the Post, “This characterization of something that began in 2001 and continued uninterrupted for eight years is just wrong. Honest men would question that characterization. It was more off and on.”

The paper adds, “The official said he was certain that, if the nature of the program could be revealed, it would be seen as ‘no big deal.’”

Another report out late Thursday also seemed to rule out the “Cheney’s private army” theory.

Newsweek reports that “Panetta has ordered an internal inquiry into the agency’s handling of a contentious and still highly classified intelligence program that has caused a heated dispute between the CIA and Democrats on the House intelligence committee. The move by Panetta appears to be an implicit acknowledgment by the agency that it should have disclosed information about the post-9/11 secret program to Congress much earlier than it did.”

More from Newsweek:

One question Congressional Democrats still want answered: was the program an idea CIA officials had just talked about as a possibility, or had they actually put it into operation? If it was just talk, as some in the intelligence community insist, the argument could be made that there was no requirement to notify Congress. “This program came in post-9/11, and it was indeed on-again, off-again,” the official said. “You could argue that it never really took shape.” The implication is that whatever the details of the program, it carried risks that some officials at the agency strongly felt might not be worth taking.

“You’ve got a lot of people [at the agency] who, after September 11, were thinking of creative ways of doing things,” said one former senior CIA official. “That doesn’t mean you have to run up and tell Congress about it.”

….

Three officials familiar with still-secret details of the dispute said Panetta was not himself complicit in authorizing or covering up the program. One of the officials described the CIA director as a good guy for having voluntarily informed Congress about the information. Two officials also said there was no reason to believe that information about the secret program was about to come out in the media; rather, they give Panetta credit for finding out about it and quickly reporting what he knew to the Hill.

The former speaker of the US House of Representatives has said that the US should “sabotage” Iran’s oil and gas infrastructure as part of its efforts to bring down the government.
In an interview with Al Jazeera’s Avi Lewis for the Fault Lines programme, Republican Newt Gingrich said targeting Iran’s refinery would spark an economic crisis that would destabilise the government in Tehran.

He said the US should “use covert operations … to create a gasoline-led crisis to try and replace the regime”.

“I think we have a vested interest, the world has a vested interest, in a responsible Iranian government, just as we have a vested interest in a responsible North Korean government,” he said.

In depth

Newt Gingrich speaks to Al Jazeera on Iran

While Barack Obama, the US president, has attempted diplomatic engagement with Iran following years of icy relations, some of his administration’s critics have been calling for destabilisation instead.

But Gingrich qualified that such a tactic to destabilise would only be “one piece out of many”.

“I think that the Reagan strategy in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s is the right strategy: we use economic, diplomatic, psychological pressures to try to change the regime.”