Bharat Rakshak

Satya_anveshi wrote:Why did it take so long for that lady to resign?

Top diplomatic sources said that Powell authorised cables during diplomat Devyani Khobragade arrest row described the Indian position as weak and that it will not escalate the matter as the country was in an election mode, the reverse happened because of elections round the corner there was an unprecedented Indian anger and response which dipped the relationship to an all time low.
Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/nanc ... 52197.html

Neela wrote:One thing I dont understand is this - why did Powell meet Shri Narendra Modi at all?
She could have walked off?
Could "Look you nucked it up ...you make it easier for the next one before you go"? have been the words from soneone in Washington?

kancha wrote:From the above link

Similar facilities at other embassies are not threatened. To mollify the Indians, the club, financed by fees from expatriates, is now closed on Mondays.

What does this mean??

harbans wrote:+1 JeM: While i do like to see the CT aspect, i get the feeling CTs originate more from folks that have cognitive dissonance in processing information rationally. Places like Pakistan are rife with CTs, everyone has one.

vina wrote:

Neela wrote:One thing I dont understand is this - why did Powell meet Shri Narendra Modi at all?
She could have walked off?
Could "Look you nucked it up ...you make it easier for the next one before you go"? have been the words from soneone in Washington?

She would have been ordered to. The ambassador follows orders , the personal, initiative and even any room for that would be rather limited.

The order to ship out Sangerta Richards family would have come from Washington. She and the Mays messed up the execution by buying a diplomat ticket where taxes are not liable. Yeah, at worst she would have said that Yindoos would be shivering in their dhoti because of lack of proteins like Paco sahib when her input was asked for reaction in India to a Khobragade arrest and. I am sure she would have factored in the usual sob story of rich powerful upper caste oppressing etc, and with the anti corruption agitation in Delhi etc, would have thought bingo.

Unfortunately Khobragade turned out to be Daleeet and well connected and it being election season no way it could have been brushed under the carpet. Lesson, next time pick last names of Mishra, Iyer,Thakur, Rathod etc, but oops , if you atrocitied Chokila Iyer, you get hammered for abusing a tribal, or if Khobragade had taken her husbands name , same mistake

She was indicted again earlier this month, but the charges were dismissed.

Cosmo_R wrote:Nancy Powell's replacement:

1. Shah would be a huge mistake. I for one, will dread the MUTU arguments to come on BRF.
2. Alternative 1: Bill Gates.
3. Alternative 2: George Clooney

Inspired I think

Cosmo_R wrote:Nancy Powell's replacement:
1. Shah would be a huge mistake. I for one, will dread the MUTU arguments to come on BRF.2. Alternative 1: Bill Gates. 3. Alternative 2: George Clooney
Inspired I think

TKiran wrote:As pointed, expect a very competentUS Ambassador to India who can create situations like Egypt, Libya Ukraine in the next 2 to 3 years time in India

In the hope that a Gujju Amby will have a more say if a Gujju PM will be in place?

UlanBatori wrote:

In the hope that a Gujju Amby will have a more say if a Gujju PM will be in place?

Err. in the sure KNAWLIDJ that ONLY a **** can negotiate with a ***** PM OK, time to get out of here..

Teri Behnki • 1 hour ago

The underlying issue here is that a gang at the State Department decided that they could extort money from foreign diplomats. The whole "complaint" against the Indian acting Consul was a scam based on utterly unsustainable distortions of the facts and the laws - but they figured that no foreigner would stand and fight. Well, this was the 3rd time against Indian diplomats, and they went way too far.The disgraceful revelation that the American Embassy School, with the Ambassador as Chair of its Board, has been cheating on both Indian AND American taxes for the past decades, coupled with the gross arrogance of the "nanny" prosecution and the "T-2/T-3 visa" scam, have all damaged American credibility and integrity in a very serious way - it goes faaar beyond any anger of diplomats or bureaucrats. If POTUS BO wants to clean up his State Department, he needs to start with a pretty strong and wide broom. Start at the Asst SoS level, and also look at the competence of various other political appointees. A sorry mess indeed, I look forward to watching the pompous entities squirm "I do not recall" or taking the 5th, at the Congressional Hearings on TV.
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allaisa • 3 hours ago

Whatever we may say the poor diplomat was cavity searched and that enraged the whole nation. In India I am told they do not even hand cuff undertrials leave alone cavity searching females. They gave us lot of privileges unasked which their own diplomat do not get here and now they have taken them away. That cannot be called retaliation.
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luuke • 20 hours ago

Kick them out...Anyone connected to the Obama circle needs to be booted out...Nuland too comes to mind...

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Obamaroid_Ointment • a day ago

India's been hatin' on us since Barry's been POTUS, this ambassadorship opening may go for a bargain price.
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Obamaroid_Ointment • a day ago

Wait did Hillary hand the Indians a reset button like the Russians? It seems whatever this administration touches turns to complete crap.
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UlanBatori wrote:Hmmm! Senior US diplomats are beginning to comment on the Capital Hill thing:

Teri Behnki • 1 hour ago


Maybe the US Ambassadors to Scandalnavia will be there soon too.

prasannasimha wrote:Shes (Alicia Muller May) back on FB after running away !! Is Wayne back there too (cant find him)
https://www.facebook.com/alicia.m.may?fref=ts

The CIA misled the US government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation programme for years – concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques, a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded.

The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use – and later tried to defend – excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to US officials who have reviewed the document.

“The CIA described [its programme] repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives,” said one US official briefed on the report. “Was that actually true? The answer is no.”

Current and former US officials who described the report spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue and because the document remains classified. The 6,300-page report includes what officials described as damning new disclosures about a sprawling network of secret detention facilities, or “black sites”, which was dismantled by President Obama in 2009.

Classified files reviewed by committee investigators reveal internal divisions over the interrogation programme, officials said, including one case in which CIA employees left the agency’s secret prison in Thailand after becoming disturbed by brutal measures employed there. The report also cites cases in which officials at CIA headquarters demanded the continued use of harsh interrogation techniques even after analysts were convinced that prisoners had no more information.

The report describes previously undisclosed cases of abuse, including the alleged repeated dunking of a terrorism suspect in tanks of ice water at a detention site in Afghanistan – a method that bore similarities to waterboarding but never appeared on any Justice Department-approved list of techniques.

The Senate report is by far the most comprehensive account to date of a highly classified programme that was established within months of the 11 September attacks.

Several officials who have read the document said some of its most troubling sections deal not with detainee abuse but with discrepancies between the statements of senior CIA officials in Washington and the details revealed in the written communications of lower-level employees directly involved.

Officials said millions of records make clear that the CIA’s ability to obtain the most valuable intelligence against al-Qa’ida, including tips that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, had little, if anything, to do with “enhanced interrogation techniques”.

Men who have been held by the CIA (from left): Abu Zubaydah; Abd al- Rahim al-Nashiri, Ammar al-Baluchi and Khalid al-Sharif (REUTERS/FBI; muslm.net/AP; Human Rights Watch) Men who have been held by the CIA (from left): Abu Zubaydah; Abd al- Rahim al-Nashiri, Ammar al-Baluchi and Khalid al-Sharif (REUTERS/FBI; muslm.net/AP; Human Rights Watch)
The report is divided into three volumes – one that traces the chronology of interrogation operations, another that assesses intelligence officials’ claims, and a third that contains case studies on virtually every prisoner held in CIA custody since 2001.

One official said almost all of the critical threat-related information from Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, the suspected al-Qa’ida operative better known as Abu Zubaydah, was obtained during the period when he was questioned at a hospital in Pakistan, well before he was interrogated by the CIA and waterboarded 83 times.

Information obtained by the CIA, however, was passed up through the ranks of the US intelligence community, the Justice Department and Congress as though it were part of what CIA interrogators had obtained, according to the committee report.

“The CIA conflated what was gotten when, which led them to misrepresent the effectiveness of the programme,” said a second US official who has reviewed the report. The official described the persistence of such misstatements as among “the most damaging” of the committee’s conclusions.

Detainees’ credentials also were exaggerated, officials said. Agency officials described Abu Zubaydah as a senior al-Qa’ida operative – and, therefore, someone who warranted coercive techniques – although experts later determined that he was essentially a facilitator who helped to guide recruits to al-Qa’ida training camps.

The CIA also oversold the role of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in the 2000 bombing of the warship USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 US sailors. CIA officials claimed he was the “mastermind”.

The committee described a similar sequence in the interrogation of Hassan Ghul, an al-Qa’ida operative who provided a critical lead in the search for bin Laden: the fact that the al-Qa’ida leader’s most trusted courier used the name “al-Kuwaiti”. But Ghul disclosed that detail while being interrogated by Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq who posed questions scripted by CIA analysts.

If declassified, the report could reveal new information on the treatment of high-value detainee Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, the nephew of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 11 September attacks. Pakistan captured Ali, known also as Ammar al-Baluchi, on 30 April, 2003, in Karachi and turned him over to the CIA about a week later. He was taken to a CIA black site called “Salt Pit” near Kabul.

There Baluchi endured a regime that included being dunked in a tub of ice water. CIA interrogators forcibly kept his head under the water while he struggled to breathe and beat him repeatedly, hitting him with a truncheon-like object and smashing his head against a wall, officials said.

As with Abu Zubaida and even Nashiri, officials said, CIA interrogators continued the harsh treatment even after it appeared that Baluchi was co-operating. On 22 September, 2003, he was flown from Kabul to a CIA black site in Romania. In 2006, he was taken to Guantanamo Bay. His attorneys contend that he suffered head trauma while in CIA custody.