India-US Strategic News and Discussion

[anmol]

Who is this "South Asia expert dork" ?

[Philip]

"Live by the bullet,die by the bullet".

This story illustrates the acute problems that American veterans suffer when they return home from doing Uncle Sam's dirty work in his controversial wars,many illegal, worldwide.The last year has been the worst in US history for suicides of US militarymen.sadly,even those who die doing their duty for their country receive scant honour with their coffins flown home discreetly to air bases far from the view of the common man,unlike as in Britain,where returning fallen soldiers received a heroes welcome at Wooten Basset.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... html[quote]

Deadliest American sniper shot dead

A Navy Seal who became the deadliest marksman in US military history has been shot dead at a gun range in Texas after reportedly being attacked by a former marine with mental health issues.
Deadliest marksman in US military history shot dead
Former Navy Seal Chris Kyle Photo: AP Photo/The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Paul Moseley

By Mark Hughes, New York

9:26PM GMT 03 Feb 2013

Chris Kyle, who wrote about his experiences in Iraq in a best-selling autobiography American Sniper, is believed to have been killed by Eddie Routh, a 25-year-old former serviceman who was reportedly suffering from post-traumatic stress.

Kyle, 38, and another man, named as 35-year-old Chad Littlefield, were shot dead at the Rough Creek Lodge near Dallas in Texas at about 3.30pm on Saturday.

Mr Routh is believed to have fled in Kyle's truck but was arrested at his home more than 70 miles from the scene about five hours later He has been charged with two counts of murder.

Local media reports in Texas said that Kyle and Littlefield had been trying to help Mr Routh with his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and had taken him to the shooting range.

Kyle served four tours of Iraq and was highly decorated for his service.
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Obama takes aim at shooting critics
02 Feb 2013

In his book Kyle declared himself the deadliest marksman in US military history. The Pentagon certified 150 of his kills while in Iraq between 1999 and 2009.

At one point he is said to have killed an insurgent from 1.2 miles away. He was nicknamed "the Devil of Ramadi" by Iraqi insurgents due to his prowess.

After he returned to the US Kyle founded FITCO Cares, a non-profit foundation which helped returning servicemen with PTSD.

Travis Cox, the director of Fitco Cares, said that Kyle's wife Taya and their children "lost a dedicated father and husband" and the country has lost a "lifelong patriot and an American hero."

Recently, Kyle spoke out against Barack Obama's gun control proposals.

He accused the US President of being "against the Second Amendment".
[/quote]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/fe ... ic-veteran

US military struggling to stop suicide epidemic among war veterans

Last year, more active-duty soldiers killed themselves than died in combat. And after a decade of deployments to war zones, the Pentagon is bracing for things to get much worse

guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 February 2013 16.42 GMT
Jump to comments (687)

William Busbee
William Busbee was in many ways the archetype of the US soldier, and his mother feels he was let down by the army he loved so much. Photograph: Libby Busbee

Libby Busbee is pretty sure that her son William never sat through or read Shakespeare's Macbeth, even though he behaved as though he had. Soon after he got back from his final tour of Afghanistan, he began rubbing his hands over and over and constantly rinsing them under the tap.

"Mom, it won't wash off," he said.

"What are you talking about?" she replied.

"The blood. It won't come off."

On 20 March last year, the soldier's striving for self-cleanliness came to a sudden end. That night he locked himself in his car and, with his mother and two sisters screaming just a few feet away and with Swat officers encircling the vehicle, he shot himself in the head.

At the age of 23, William Busbee had joined a gruesome statistic. In 2012, for the first time in at least a generation, the number of active-duty soldiers who killed themselves, 177, exceeded the 176 who were killed while in the war zone. To put that another way, more of America's serving soldiers died at their own hands than in pursuit of the enemy.
Soldier suicides Credit: Guardian graphics

Across all branches of the US military and the reserves, a similar disturbing trend was recorded. In all, 349 service members took their own lives in 2012, while a lesser number, 295, died in combat.

Shocking though those figures are, they are as nothing compared with the statistic to which Busbee technically belongs. He had retired himself from the army just two months before he died, and so is officially recorded at death as a veteran – one of an astonishing 6,500 former military personnel who killed themselves in 2012, roughly equivalent to one every 80 minutes.
'He wanted to be somebody, and he loved the army'

Busbee's story, as told to the Guardian by his mother, illuminates crucial aspects of an epidemic that appears to be taking hold in the US military, spreading alarm as it grows. He personifies the despair that is being felt by increasing numbers of active and retired service members, as well as the inability of the military hierarchy to deal with their anguish.

That's not, though, how William Busbee's story began. He was in many ways the archetype of the American soldier. From the age of six he had only one ambition: to sign up for the military, which he did when he was 17.

"He wasn't the normal teenager who went out and partied," Libby Busbee said. "He wanted to be somebody. He had his mind set on what he wanted to do, and he loved the army. I couldn't be more proud of him."

Once enlisted, he was sent on three separate year-long tours to Afghanistan. It was the fulfillment of his dreams, but it came at a high price. He came under attack several times, and in one particularly serious incident incurred a blow to the head that caused traumatic brain injury. His body was so peppered with shrapnel that whenever he walked through an airport security screen he would set off the alarm.

The mental costs were high too. Each time he came back from Afghanistan. between tours or on R&R, he struck his mother as a little more on edge, a little more withdrawn. He would rarely go out of the house and seemed ill at ease among civilians. "I reckon he felt he no longer belonged here," she said.

Once, Busbee was driving Libby in his car when a nearby train sounded its horn. He was so startled by the noise that he leapt out of the vehicle, leaving it to crash into the curb. After that, he never drove farther than a couple of blocks.

Nights were the worst. He had bad dreams and confessed to being scared of the dark, making Libby swear not to tell anybody. Then he took to sleeping in a closet, using a military sleeping bag tucked inside the tiny space to recreate the conditions of deployment. "I think it made him feel more comfortable," his mother said.

After one especially fraught night, Libby awoke to find that he had slashed his face with a knife. Occasionally, he would allude to the distressing events that led to such extreme behaviour: there was the time that another soldier, aged 18, had been killed right beside him; and the times that he himself had killed.

William told his mother: "You would hate me if you knew what I've done out there."

"I will never hate you. You are the same person you always were," she said.

"No, Mom," he countered. "The son you loved died over there."
Soldiers' psychological damage

For William Nash, a retired Navy psychiatrist who directed the marine corps' combat stress control programme, William Busbee's expressions of torment are all too familiar. He has worked with hundreds of service members who have been grappling with suicidal thoughts, not least when he was posted to Fallujah in Iraq during the height of the fighting in 2004.

He and colleagues in military psychiatry have developed the concept of "moral injury" to help understand the current wave of self-harm. He defines that as "damage to your deeply held beliefs about right and wrong. It might be caused by something that you do or fail to do, or by something that is done to you – but either way it breaks that sense of moral certainty."

Contrary to widely held assumptions, it is not the fear and the terror that service members endure in the battlefield that inflicts most psychological damage, Nash has concluded, but feelings of shame and guilt related to the moral injuries they suffer. Top of the list of such injuries, by a long shot, is when one of their own people is killed.

"I have heard it over and over again from marines – the most common source of anguish for them was failing to protect their 'brothers'. The significance of that is unfathomable, it's comparable to the feelings I've heard from parents who have lost a child."

Incidents of "friendly fire" when US personnel are killed by mistake by their own side is another cause of terrible hurt, as is the guilt that follows the knowledge that a military action has led to the deaths of civilians, particularly women and children. Another important factor, Nash stressed, was the impact of being discharged from the military that can also instil a devastating sense of loss in those who have led a hermetically sealed life within the armed forces and suddenly find themselves excluded from it.
William Busbee Busbee

That was certainly the case with William Busbee. In 2011, following his return to Fort Carson in Colorado after his third and last tour of Afghanistan, he made an unsuccessful attempt to kill himself. He was taken off normal duties and prescribed large quantities of psychotropic drugs which his mother believes only made his condition worse.

Eventually he was presented with an ultimatum by the army: retire yourself out or we will discharge you on medical grounds. He felt he had no choice but to quit, as to be medically discharged would have severely dented his future job prospects.

When he came home on 18 January 2012, a civilian once again, he was inconsolable. He told his mother: "I'm nothing now. I've been thrown away by the army."

The suffering William Busbee went through, both inside the military and immediately after he left it, illustrates the most alarming single factor in the current suicide crisis: the growing link between multiple deployments and self-harm. Until 2012, the majority of individuals who killed themselves had seen no deployment at all. Their problems tended to relate to marital or relationship breakdown or financial or legal worries back at base.

The most recent department of defense suicide report, or DODSER, covers 2011 . It shows that less than half, 47%, of all suicides involved service members who had ever been in Iraq or Afghanistan. Just one in 10 of those who died did so while posted in the war zone. Only 15% had ever experienced direct combat.

The DODSER for 2012 has yet to be released, but when it is it is expected to record a sea change. For the first time, the majority of the those who killed themselves had been deployed. That's a watershed that is causing deep concern within the services.

"We are starting to see the creeping up of suicides among those who have had multiple deployments," said Phillip Carter, a military expert at the defence thinktank Center for a New American Security that in 2011 published one of the most authoritative studies into the crisis . He added that though the causes of the increase were still barely understood, one important cause might be the cumulative impact of deployments – the idea that the harmful consequences of stress might build up from one tour of Afghanistan to the next.

Over the past four years the Pentagon, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs, have invested considerable resources at tackling the problem. The US Department of Defense has launched a suicide prevention programme that tries to help service members to overcome the stigma towards seeking help. It has also launched an education campaign encouraging personnel to be on the look out for signs of distress among their peers under the rubric "never let our buddy fight alone".

Despite such efforts, there is no apparent let up in the scale of the tragedy. Though President Obama has announced a draw-down of US troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, experts warn that the crisis could last for at least a decade beyond the end of war as a result of the delayed impact of psychological damage.

It's all come in any case too late for Libby Busbee. She feels that her son was let down by the army he loved so much. In her view he was pumped full of drugs but deprived of the attention and care he needed.

William himself was so disillusioned that shortly before he died he told her that he didn't want a military funeral; he would prefer to be cremated and his ashes scattered at sea. "I don't want to be buried in my uniform – why would I want that when they threw me away when I was alive," he said.

In the end, two infantrymen did stand to attention over his coffin, the flag was folded over it, and there was a gun salute as it was lowered into the ground. William Busbee was finally at rest, though for Libby Busbee the torture goes on.

"I was there for his first breath, and his last," she said. "Now my daughters and me, we have to deal with what he was going through."

[Satya_anveshi]

Rajiv Malhotra exposes hypocrisy of rice Christian Jindal.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46979745/#50677128

Choti muh badi baat but I am bemused to see Rajiv Malhotra ji appearing on this type of show and be used by the folks to bring down another individual /party. I agree with CRS ji characterization of 'brazenness" in speech against a mainstream politician and political party may have unintented costs and might divert him from his more important goals. But again, I am nobody and probably may have formed a distorted picture of his overall mission/goals as they came out in the two superbly written books and his other lectures.

[Sanku]

Rajiv Malhotra exposes hypocrisy of rice Christian Jindal.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46979745/#50677128

Choti muh badi baat but I am bemused to see Rajiv Malhotra ji ......

My impression is that Rajeev Malhotra is the mentioned case is taking a stand against "digestion" -- by calling out a practice of being brown when convenient and turning coat when not.

I would see his goals are merely being warning beacons to Indian Americans. If that light gets used by others for their purposes? Well what goes of our father onlee?

BJ does need to be exposed as a charlatan among Indians, thoroughly, people like him and Man mohan are basically two sides of the same coin same phenomena, what works in one case, works in another.

[Satya_anveshi]

I would see his goals are merely being warning beacons to Indian Americans. If that light gets used by others for their purposes? Well what goes of our father onlee?

Sanku ji, No major disagreement but a couple points need clearing. I think the scope of RMji work extends well beyond just Indians in America. His work provides a good template for understanding the designs of and engaging with the "West" overall. Compared to the powerful intellect delivered via the books, his speeches, and his other platform, this type of TV platform was more like kusti in dirt. Not exactly sure if its worth his effort

Secondly, I don't disagree with the points that RM ji made regarding BJ. They need to be said but just that there could be many others who are part of democratic party machinery who can do it with equal effect.

[RamaY]

Just want to put my opinion.

Sri Rajiv Malhotra is one seer I came across in my life. Tasmai Sri Gurave Nama:!

[Philip]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -own-world

US control is diminishing, but it still thinks it owns the world

The United States has long assumed the right to use violence to achieve its aims, but it is now less able to implement its policies

Series: Guardian Comment Network

US control is diminishing, but it still thinks it owns the world

The United States has long assumed the right to use violence to achieve its aims, but it is now less able to implement its policies

Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky for TomDispatch, part of the Guardian Comment Network
guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 February 2013

US soldier pointing gun at Iraqis
'We "stabilise" countries when we invade them and destroy them.' Photograph: Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images

This piece is adapted from Uprisings, a chapter in Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to US Empire, Noam Chomsky's new book of interviews with David Barsamian (with thanks to the publisher, Metropolitan Books). The questions are Barsamian's, the answers Chomsky's.

Does the United States still have the same level of control over the energy resources of the Middle East as it once had?

The major energy-producing countries are still firmly under the control of the western-backed dictatorships. So, actually, the progress made by the Arab spring is limited, but it's not insignificant. The western-controlled dictatorial system is being eroded. In fact, it's been being eroded for some time. So, for example, if you go back 50 years, the energy resources – the main concern of US planners – have been mostly nationalised. There are constantly attempts to reverse that, but they have not succeeded.

Take the US invasion of Iraq, for example. To everyone except a dedicated ideologue, it was pretty obvious that we invaded Iraq not because of our love of democracy but because it's maybe the second- or third-largest source of oil in the world, and is right in the middle of the major energy-producing region. You're not supposed to say this. It's considered a conspiracy theory.

The United States was seriously defeated in Iraq by Iraqi nationalism – mostly by nonviolent resistance. The United States could kill the insurgents, but they couldn't deal with half a million people demonstrating in the streets. Step by step, Iraq was able to dismantle the controls put in place by the occupying forces. By November 2007, it was becoming pretty clear that it was going to be very hard to reach US goals. And at that point, interestingly, those goals were explicitly stated. So in November 2007 the Bush II administration came out with an official declaration about what any future arrangement with Iraq would have to be. It had two major requirements: one, that the United States must be free to carry out combat operations from its military bases, which it will retain; and, two, "encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq, especially American investments". In January 2008, Bush made this clear in one of his signing statements. A couple of months later, in the face of Iraqi resistance, the United States had to give that up. Control of Iraq is now disappearing before their eyes.

Iraq was an attempt to reinstitute by force something like the old system of control, but it was beaten back. In general, I think, US policies remain constant, going back to the second world war. But the capacity to implement them is declining.

Declining because of economic weakness?

Partly because the world is just becoming more diverse. It has more diverse power centres. At the end of the second world war, the United States was absolutely at the peak of its power. It had half the world's wealth, and every one of its competitors was seriously damaged or destroyed. It had a position of unimaginable security and developed plans to essentially run the world – not unrealistically at the time.

This was called "grand area" planning?

Yes. Right after the second world war, George Kennan, head of the US state department policy planning staff, and others sketched out the details, and then they were implemented. What's happening now in the Middle East and north Africa, to an extent, and in South America substantially goes all the way back to the late 1940s. The first major successful resistance to US hegemony was in 1949. That's when an event took place that, interestingly, is called "the loss of China". It's a very interesting phrase, never challenged. There was a lot of discussion about who is responsible for the loss of China. It became a huge domestic issue. But it's a very interesting phrase. You can only lose something if you own it. It was just taken for granted: we possess China – and, if they move toward independence, we've lost China. Later came concerns about "the loss of Latin America", "the loss of the Middle East", "the loss of" certain countries, all based on the premise that we own the world and anything that weakens our control is a loss to us and we wonder how to recover it.

Today, if you read, say, foreign policy journals or, in a farcical form, listen to the Republican debates, they're asking, "How do we prevent further losses?"

On the other hand, the capacity to preserve control has sharply declined. By 1970, the world was already what was called tripolar economically, with a US-based North American industrial centre, a German-based European centre, roughly comparable in size, and a Japan-based east Asian centre, which was then the most dynamic growth region in the world. Since then, the global economic order has become much more diverse. So it's harder to carry out our policies, but the underlying principles have not changed much.

Take the Clinton doctrine. The Clinton doctrine was that the United States was entitled to resort to unilateral force to ensure "uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources". That goes beyond anything that George W Bush said. But it was quiet and it wasn't arrogant and abrasive, so it didn't cause much of an uproar. The belief in that entitlement continues right to the present. It's also part of the intellectual culture.

Right after the assassination of Osama bin Laden, amid all the cheers and applause, there were a few critical comments questioning the legality of the act. Centuries ago, there used to be something called presumption of innocence. If you apprehend a suspect, he's a suspect until proven guilty. He should be brought to trial. It's a core part of American law. You can trace it back to Magna Carta. So there were a couple of voices saying maybe we shouldn't throw out the whole basis of Anglo-American law. That led to a lot of very angry and infuriated reactions, but the most interesting ones were, as usual, on the left-liberal end of the spectrum. Matthew Yglesias, a well-known and highly respected left-liberal commentator, wrote an article in which he ridiculed these views. He said they were "amazingly naive" and silly. Then he explained the reason. He said: "One of the main functions of the international institutional order is precisely to legitimate the use of deadly military force by western powers." Of course, he didn't mean Norway. He meant the United States. So the principle on which the international system is based is that the US is entitled to use force at will. To talk about the US violating international law or something like that is amazingly naive, completely silly. Incidentally, I was the target of those remarks, and I'm happy to confess my guilt. I do think that Magna Carta and international law are worth paying some attention to.

I merely mention that to illustrate that, in the intellectual culture, even at what's called the left-liberal end of the political spectrum, the core principles haven't changed very much. But the capacity to implement them has been sharply reduced. That's why you get all this talk about American decline. Take a look at the year-end issue of Foreign Affairs, the main establishment journal. Its big front-page cover asks, in bold face, "Is America Over?" It's a standard complaint of those who believe they should have everything. If you believe you should have everything and anything gets away from you, it's a tragedy, and the world is collapsing. So is America over? A long time ago we "lost" China, we've lost southeast Asia, we've lost South America. Maybe we'll lose the Middle East and north African countries. Is America over? It's a kind of paranoia, but it's the paranoia of the super-rich and the super-powerful. If you don't have everything, it's a disaster.

The New York Times describes the "defining policy quandary of the Arab spring as how to square contradictory US impulses, including support for democratic change, a desire for stability, and wariness of Islamists who have become a potent political force". The Times identifies three US goals. What do you make of them?

Two of them are accurate. The United States is in favour of stability. But you have to remember what stability means. Stability means conformity to US orders. So, for example, one of the charges against Iran, the big foreign policy threat, is that it is destabilising Iraq and Afghanistan. How? By trying to expand its influence into neighbouring countries. On the other hand, we "stabilise" countries when we invade them and destroy them.

I've occasionally quoted one of my favourite illustrations of this, which is from a well-known, very good liberal foreign policy analyst, James Chace, a former editor of Foreign Affairs. Writing about the overthrow of the Salvador Allende regime and the imposition of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in 1973, he said that we had to "destabilise" Chile in the interests of "stability". That's not perceived to be a contradiction – and it isn't. We had to destroy the parliamentary system in order to gain stability, meaning that they do what we say. So yes, we are in favour of stability in this technical sense.

Concern about political Islam is just like concern about any independent development. Anything that's independent you have to have concern about, because it may undermine you. In fact, it's a little paradoxical, because traditionally the United States and Britain have by and large strongly supported radical Islamic fundamentalism, not political Islam, as a force to block secular nationalism, the real concern. So, for example, Saudi Arabia is the most extreme fundamentalist state in the world, a radical Islamic state. It has missionary zeal, is spreading radical Islam to Pakistan and funding terror. But it's the bastion of US and British policy. They've consistently supported it against the threat of secular nationalism from Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt and Abd al-Karim Qasim's Iraq, among many others. But they don't like political Islam because it may become independent.

The first of the three points, our yearning for democracy, that's about on the level of Joseph Stalin talking about the Russian commitment to freedom, democracy and liberty for the world. It's the kind of statement you laugh about when you hear it from commissars or Iranian clerics, but you nod politely, and maybe even with awe, when you hear it from their western counterparts.

If you look at the record, the yearning for democracy is a bad joke. That's even recognised by leading scholars, though they don't put it this way. One of the major scholars on so-called democracy promotion is Thomas Carothers, who is pretty conservative and highly regarded – a neo-Reaganite, not a flaming liberal. He worked in Reagan's state department and has several books reviewing the course of democracy promotion, which he takes very seriously. He says, yes, this is a deep-seated American ideal, but it has a funny history. The history is that every US administration is "schizophrenic". They support democracy only if it conforms to certain strategic and economic interests. He describes this as a strange pathology, as if the United States needed psychiatric treatment or something. Of course, there's another interpretation, but one that can't come to mind if you're a well-educated, properly behaved intellectual.

Within several months of the toppling of [President Hosni] Mubarak in Egypt, he was in the dock facing criminal charges and prosecution. It's inconceivable that US leaders will ever be held to account for their crimes in Iraq or beyond. Is that going to change anytime soon?

That's basically the Yglesias principle: the very foundation of the international order is that the United States has the right to use violence at will. So how can you charge anybody?

And no one else has that right?

Of course not. Well, maybe our clients do. If Israel invades Lebanon and kills 1,000 people and destroys half the country, OK, that's all right. It's interesting. Barack Obama was a senator before he was president. He didn't do much as a senator, but he did a couple of things, including one he was particularly proud of. In fact, if you looked at his website before the primaries, he highlighted the fact that, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006, he co-sponsored a Senate resolution demanding that the United States do nothing to impede Israel's military actions until they had achieved their objectives, and censuring Iran and Syria because they were supporting resistance to Israel's destruction of southern Lebanon, incidentally, for the fifth time in 25 years. So they inherit the right. Other clients do, too.

But the rights really reside in Washington. That's what it means to own the world. It's like the air you breathe. You can't question it. The main founder of contemporary IR [international relations] theory, Hans Morgenthau, was really quite a decent person, one of the very few political scientists and international affairs specialists to criticise the Vietnam war on moral, not tactical, grounds. Very rare. He wrote a book called The Purpose of American Politics. You already know what's coming. Other countries don't have purposes. The purpose of America, on the other hand, is "transcendent" – to bring freedom and justice to the rest of the world. But he's a good scholar, like Carothers. So he went through the records. He said that, when you studied the record, it looked as if the United States hadn't lived up to its transcendent purpose. But then he says that to criticise our transcendent purpose "is to fall into the error of atheism, which denies the validity of religion on similar grounds" – which is a good comparison. It's a deeply entrenched religious belief. It's so deep that it's going to be hard to disentangle it. And if anyone questions that, it leads to near-hysteria and often to charges of anti-Americanism or "hating America" – interesting concepts that don't exist in democratic societies, only in totalitarian societies and here, where they're just taken for granted.

[krisna]

Congressmen seek US postage stamp on Diwali festival

Congresswomen Carolyn B Maloney and Grace Meng, besides Indian-American Congressman Ami Bera, have introduced the resolution in the House of Representatives, urging the United States Postal Service (USPS) to create a stamp as per the Diwali Stamp resolution.

She added that this festive and important Indian holiday is also observed in America. "But despite the significance of this holiday, the United States Postal Service has yet to merit Diwali with the same recognition as other major religious holidays for which stamps are issued such as Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Eid," Maloney said.

It is long overdue that we honor this significant holiday with a postage stamp of its own," she said. Adding to this, Congressman Ami Bera said that he felt honored to celebrate the Republic Day with Ambassador Rao and other Indian leaders in DC.

[Philip]

Ironic that MMS's daughter should be a human rights crusader an is helping expose the CAI/US's dirty secret rendition concentration camps worldwide.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/fe ... t-uk-court

CIA rendition report author believes UK could face human rights court

British and 24 other European governments accused by OSJI of co-operating in global kidnap, detention and torture operation

CIA rendition report author believes UK could face human rights court

British and 24 other European governments accused by OSJI of co-operating in global kidnap, detention and torture operation
Ian Cobain
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 February 2013

Up to two dozen European countries including the UK could face proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights from their involvement in the CIA's extraordinary rendition operations after 9/11, according to a human rights organisation that has documented worldwide secret support for the programme.

At least 54 different governments – more than a quarter of the world's total – were covertly engaged with the global kidnap, detention and torture programme, according to a report published on Tuesday by the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), a New York-based NGO. The greatest number – 25 – were in Europe, while 14 were in Asia and 13 in Africa.

Among the European participants, Macedonia has been found guilty by the European Court of the illegal imprisonment and torture of a German national. Proceedings are being brought against Poland, Lithuania and Romania after they permitted the CIA to operate secret prisons on their territory. Italy is facing proceedings in the European court over the state's involvement in the abduction of a Muslim cleric, who was kidnapped in Milan and flown to Egypt to be tortured. Last week an Italian appeal court upheld the conviction of the CIA's local station chief and two other Americans involved in the kidnap.

Amrit Singh, the author of the OSJI report, said she believes that other European countries that were involved in the CIA's rendition could also find themselves before the European Court. "The moral cost of these programs was borne not just by the US but by the 54 other countries it recruited to help," she said.

So extensive was the participation of governments in Europe and elsewhere across the world that the OSJI believes the CIA could not have operated its programme without their support.

"There is no doubt that high-ranking Bush administration officials bear responsibility for authorising human rights violations associated with secret detention and extraordinary rendition, and the impunity that they have enjoyed to date remains a matter of significant concern," the report says.

"But responsibility for these violations does not end with the United States. Secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations, designed to be conducted outside the United States under cover of secrecy, could not have been implemented without the active participation of foreign governments. These governments too must be held accountable."

The states identified by the OSJI include those such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt and Jordan, where the existence of secret prisons and the use of torture has been well-documented for many years. But the OSJI's rendition list also includes states such as Ireland, Iceland and Cyprus, which are accused of granting covert support for the programme by permitting access to air space and airports by aircraft that the CIA used during its rendition operations. Canada not only permitted the use of its air space, but provided information that led to one of its one nationals being taken to Syria, where he was held for a year and tortured.

Iran – one of the states within President George W Bush's so-called axis of evil – is identified by the OSJI as having participated in the rendition programme, handing 15 individuals over to Kabul shortly after the US invasion of Afghanistan, in the full knowledge that they would fall under US control. Syria, another state that does not enjoy friendly diplomatic relations with the US, is said to have been one of the "most common destinations for rendered suspects".

Other countries are conspicuous by their absence from the rendition list: Sweden and Finland are present, but there is no evidence of Norwegian involvement. Similarly, while many Middle Eastern countries did become involved in the rendition programme, Israel did not, according to the OSJI research.

Many of the countries on the list are European. Germany, Spain, Portugal and Austria are among them, but France, Holland and Hungary are not. Georgia stands accused of involvement in rendition, but Russia does not.

The OSJI reports that the UK supported CIA rendition operations, interrogated people being secretly detained, and allowed the use of British airports and air space. The organisation concludes that the UK also arranged for one man, Sami al-Saadi, to be rendered, along with his entire family, to Libya, where he was subsequently tortured, and provided intelligence that allowed a second similar operation to take place.

It has recently emerged that many European countries became involved in the rendition programme as a consequence a series of decisions taken in secret at a Nato conference three weeks after 9/11. Subsequently, British intelligence officials maintained for several years that they had been kept in the dark about the programme, although it is now known that the CIA briefed MI6 about its plans five days after 9/11.Shortly after entering the White House, Obama rejected calls for an inquiry into the CIA's operations. Last December the US Senate's Intelligence Committee completed a 6,000-page study of the rendition programme, but it is unclear whether it will ever be published. Democrat committee members say the report shows the CIA committed "terrible mistakes", but Republican members are refusing to endorse it.

Publication of the 213-page OSJI report, entitled Globalizing Torture, appears to have been timed to coincide with the confirmation hearing on Thursday of John Brennan, President Obama's choice to head the CIA. Brennan is widely expected to be questioned about his association with the so-called enhanced interrogation practices adopted during the Bush years.

In 2005, Brennan said that he was "intimately familiar" with some rendition cases, and that he regarded it as "an absolutely vital tool" in countering terrorism.

Brennan withdrew from consideration as CIA chief four years ago because of his association with those practices, and instead became a senior White House adviser. He is expected to be questioned not only about the rendition programme, but about the Obama-era drone operations, and the so-called kill list over which he is reported to wield great influence.

The report says that the full scope of non-US government involvement may still remain unknown. "Despite the efforts of the United States and its partner governments to withhold the truth about past and ongoing abuses, information relating to these abuses will continue to find its way into the public domain," it says.

"At the same time, while US courts have closed their doors to victims of secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations, legal challenges to foreign government participation in these operations are being heard in courts around the world."

The OSJI is calling on the US government to repudiate the rendition programme, close all its remaining secret prisons, mount a criminal investigation into human rights abuses – including those apparently endorsed by government lawyers – and create and independent and non-partisan commission to investigate and publicly report on the role that officials played in such abuses.

The organisation is also calling on non-US governments to end their involvement in rendition operations, mount effective investigations – including criminal investigations – to hold those responsible to account, and institute safeguards to ensure that future counter-terrorism operations do not violate human rights standards.

More on this story

John Brennan

CIA rendition: more than a quarter of countries 'offered covert support'

Report finds at least 54 countries co-operated with global kidnap, detention and torture operation mounted after 9/11 attacks

Report reveals massive scale of European assistance

Interactive How countries around the world were allegedly involved in CIA rendition – interactive

Rendition, Zero Dark Thirty and the brutal reality of Britain's secret services

CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou given more than two years in prison

CIA 'tortured and sodomised' terror suspect, human rights court rules

PS:Pak and the ISI also helped the CIA considerably,just another reason why the US will never dump its favourite rent boy Pak!

[Sanku]

WoW oh WoW!! Was this posted here before?

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/a-whi ... /1076579/0

A White House that shuns diplomacy

It demonstrates the emasculation of the State Department: Vasr quotes Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, telling him of Hillary Clinton that, "It is incredible how little support she got from the White House. They want to control everything." And it paints a persuasive picture of an American decline driven not so much by the inevitable rise of other powers as by "inconsistency" that has "cast doubt on our leadership."

Nowhere was this inconsistency more evident than in Afghanistan. Obama doubled-down by committing tens of thousands more troops to show he was no wimp, only to set a date for a drawdown to show he was no warmonger. Marines died; few cared. He appointed Holbrooke as his point man only to ensure that he "never received the authority to do diplomacy."

We are just washing our hands of it, hoping there will be a decent interval of calm — a reasonable distance between our departure and the catastrophe to follow."

In Pakistan, too nuclear to ignore, the ultimate "frenemy," Nasr observed policy veering between frustrated confrontation and half-hearted attempts to change the relationship through engagement. "The crucial reality was that the Taliban helped Pakistan face down India in the contest over Afghanistan," Nasr writes. America was never able to change that equation. Aid poured in to secure those nukes and win hearts and minds: Drones drained away any gratitude. A proposed "strategic dialogue" went nowhere. "Pakistan is a failure of American policy, a failure of the sort that comes from the president handing foreign policy over to the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies."

A 100% confirmation of BRF analysis on the topic.

[abhishek_sharma]

>> He appointed Holbrooke as his point man only to ensure that he "never received the authority to do diplomacy.

Holbrooke was Hillary Clinton's guy. No one else liked him. Pentagon, Doug Lute, Obama etc hated him. He was about to be fired by Jim Jones when Hillary saved him.

White House thinks that after leaving Af-Pak, following events will happen:

1. Al qaeda will not return.
2. All violence in Af-Pak will be tribal/local affair. And they will have no incentive to attack others/Americans.
3. Karzai govt will be forced to deal will all tribes and it will make everything better.

Pentagon disagrees with this analysis.

[Karan Dixit]

Pakistan will renew its fervor for using Afghanistan as strategic depth which means, it will start arming and supporting Al Qaeda and Taliban to overthrow democratic government in Afghanistan. Once the democracy leaves Afghanistan, it will come under the control of Pakistani military. This will bring back the situation to pre 9-11 days. It is quite possible that Pakistani military may choose not to target US interests if US continues to provide billions of dollars to Pakistan. US has to choose between giving billions of dollars to Pakistan versus standing up to Pakistan. As far as India is concerned, Pakistan will use yet new found strategic depth to open training camps for LeT and other terrorists organizations which attack India.

Some "smart" thinkers in Obama administration may think that giving billions to Pakistan will make US safer but I disagree. Good chunk of these billions will go to LeT and other anti-India terrorists organization. That is for certain. What is also certain is that all Islam based terrorist organizations cooperate with each other. These billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan can never guarantee that Pakistan will not hit US interests.

[ramana]

Sanku, Chanakya shows how to handle frenemies very well.

What Vali Nasar doesn't get is that its the USA that doesn't want India in Afghanistan for her own reasons and allows the TSP to be in front of this interest.


BTW that article writer created a new name Vasr!

[Sanku]

Sanku, Chanakya shows how to handle frenemies very well.

What Vali Nasar doesn't get is that its the USA that doesn't want India in Afghanistan for her own reasons and allows the TSP to be in front of this interest.


BTW that article writer created a new name Vasr!

Fully agree Guru, just that most honest admission from a insider so far, and also best aligned/proof of the BRF thoughts.

[Rudradev]

WoW oh WoW!! Was this posted here before?

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/a-whi ... /1076579/0

A White House that shuns diplomacy



We are just washing our hands of it, hoping there will be a decent interval of calm — a reasonable distance between our departure and the catastrophe to follow."

In Pakistan, too nuclear to ignore, the ultimate "frenemy," Nasr observed policy veering between frustrated confrontation and half-hearted attempts to change the relationship through engagement. "The crucial reality was that the Taliban helped Pakistan face down India in the contest over Afghanistan," Nasr writes. America was never able to change that equation.

A 100% confirmation of BRF analysis on the topic.

Not really 100%. Most BRF analysis says: "The crucial reality was that Unkil guaranteed that India could not face down Pakistan in the contest over Afghanistan... because Unkil supported Pakistan against India while Pakistan supported the Taliban against Unkil."

[Cosmo_R]

Pakistan will renew its fervor for using Afghanistan as strategic depth which means, it will start arming and supporting Al Qaeda and Taliban to overthrow democratic government in Afghanistan. Once the democracy leaves Afghanistan, it will come under the control of Pakistani military. This will bring back the situation to pre 9-11 days. It is quite possible that Pakistani military may choose not to target US interests if US continues to provide billions of dollars to Pakistan. US has to choose between giving billions of dollars to Pakistan versus standing up to Pakistan. As far as India is concerned, Pakistan will use yet new found strategic depth to open training camps for LeT and other terrorists organizations which attack India.

Some "smart" thinkers in Obama administration may think that giving billions to Pakistan will make US safer but I disagree. Good chunk of these billions will go to LeT and other anti-India terrorists organization. That is for certain. What is also certain is that all Islam based terrorist organizations cooperate with each other. These billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan can never guarantee that Pakistan will not hit US interests.

I would like to suggest that the 'strategic depth against India' argument by the Pakis is a red herring. It is intended to cloak their real intentions: to bury the Durand Line problem for as long as possible—and to prevent a Pashtunistan from taking hold.

Militarily, the SD concept is rubbish. The idea of the paki army darting back and forth from Afghanistan against invading forces from the east or preventing India from attacking from the west is plain stupid. One look at the major border crossing points

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:A ... _crossings

where traffic piles up at the best of times is to realize that it would be a turkey shoot for the IAF against pa columns that would dwarf Longewala.

The pakis know that an SD argument based on the truth would gain them little so they couch in terms of 'facing down' India etc. And the cretins in the WH and DoS/DoD buy it—for their own reasons. BTW, even the Taliban have refused to recognize the Durand Line.

I would like to suggest a 're-education' effort aimed at this canard/cliche which just drips off the tongues of lazy journalists. In the comments sections, we should try and make this point.

[Sanku]

Not really 100%. Most BRF analysis says: "The crucial reality was that Unkil guaranteed that India could not face down Pakistan in the contest over Afghanistan... because Unkil supported Pakistan against India while Pakistan supported the Taliban against Unkil."

I agree RD ji, maafi de do. 100% galat ho gaya.


I was just excited about a GotUS insider being remarkably open in public.

[svinayak]

We are just washing our hands of it, hoping there will be a decent interval of calm — a reasonable distance between our departure and the catastrophe to follow."
In Pakistan, too nuclear to ignore, the ultimate "frenemy," Nasr observed policy veering between frustrated confrontation and half-hearted attempts to change the relationship through engagement. "The crucial reality was that the Taliban helped Pakistan face down India in the contest over Afghanistan," Nasr writes. America was never able to change that equation.
"

Nobody knows for sure how true these statements are. But these are policy for cut and run after spending more than $1T in Afgan war and overthrowing the Taliban govt.

Also this must be way for them to do the Takiya on Pakistan and create a new policy for Af Pak. They may want a non intervention and indirect policy just like what they are doing in Egypt/Syria etc.

[Philip]

The "Saigon Syndrome" has haunted the White House,Pentagon,State Dept. ,et al,ever since the immortal haunting pics of the last hours of the Vietnam War.The stunning clips of helos lifting off the US embassy in Saigon ,with panic stricken South Vietnamese civilians desperately trying to enter the embassy and be saved,helos being pushed off carrier decks after disgorging their recused,is etched in the memory of the US establishment and the world.It marked the lowest point in US diplomacy,where the world's greatest military power was brought to its knees by a nation of peasants!

The fear of the same happening in Iraq and Afghanistan has seen the US adopt a different style of leaving with its tail tucked firmly between its legs.The rats leave in regular small batches under air support,where the air bases are heavily defended against enemy assault.But leave they will and leave Afghanistan and its people to its fate...to be overwhelmed the anti-human Taliban and the fundoos in the Paki Military/ISI.By failing to enter into serious discussions on the country's fate with the former Northern Alliance of Central Asian states ,who will be the most affected,earlier part of the Soviet Bloc,Russia,India,Iran and other nations who will be most affected,like Pope Benedict XVI,the US has actually abdicated its claim to international leadership.Leading bookmakers have as odds-on favourite the next Pope,who will be a Chinaman!

[TSJones]

"The "Saigon Syndrome" has haunted the White House,Pentagon,State Dept. ,et al,ever since the immortal haunting pics of the last hours of the Vietnam War.The stunning clips of helos lifting off the US embassy in Saigon ,with panic stricken South Vietnamese civilians desperately trying to enter the embassy and be saved,helos being pushed off carrier decks after disgorging their recused,is etched in the memory of the US establishment and the world.It marked the lowest point in US diplomacy,where the world's greatest military power was brought to its knees by a nation of peasants!"

I know that I swore off from ever posting on this side of the forum but when something is in error I cannot help myself. I also know that whatever I have to say will be completely disregarded but it is better to have done something than never having anything done at all. I'm talking about setting the record straight. And the record is this:

Those helocopters were not taking off from the US embassy they were taking off from a CIA safe house apartment building. Those people in the pictures that you see trying to get on those copters were the people and their families who had cooperated with the CIA. They figured they and their families were doomed and were desperate to leave with the last remnants of CIA personnel who had volunteered to stay until the last dying minute in order to give situation reports to the US government. It was a very dangerous and foolish in my view, operation. It was also a failure of the CIA to calculate all the people on the fringe of CIA ops that had cooperated over the years. The main agents had already made plans, but the fringe people? No one had made plans for them and they figured their goose was cooked. Thus the mad rush to the CIA apartment building and the helocopter ditchings off of US AC carriers.

Whether or not this will be repeated in Afghanistan I don't know. Will there be a last minute CIA operation going on until the Taliban retakes everything? I don't know. Will the CIA make arrangement for all the "fringe people" that cooperated? I don't know and furhtermore I don't know if they can be trusted. The Vietnamese never donned police uniforms and killed our troops like the Afghans have. If I have to guess I would say that no, there will not under any circumstances be a mad rush allowed to jump on helocopters and come to US safe areas.. Just my thoughts, disregard at your leisure.

[ShyamSP]

Not sure where to post, but here is Tope vs HAF on gun control. (Mr Tope was a BRF member I think)

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/ ... ciety.html

http://www.hinducurrents.com/articles/1 ... ed-and-vi/

[svinayak]

I discussed this topic with him in the car when driving

[Philip]

Thanks TSJ.You are right about the CIA centre.The haunting pics are well described here.

http://www.mishalov.com/Vietnam_finalescape.html


However,helo evacuation DID take place from the Embassy roof too and Viet civvies did break through and were frantically trying to get to the roof top.Here is the tale from the "last to leave" soldier who left Saigon.

The Last to Leave
MGySgt John J. Valdez
Staff Non Commission Officer in charge
American Embassy, Saigon, R. South Vietnam

We secured the final door on the roof and people began coming up toward the roof. They had forced open the main door of the embassy and were appearing on the roof's hello pad. About 30 to 40 people. They never actually got on the main roof.

We took wall lockers that we had staged reactionary gear in and tipped them over and put them against the door. And then we had those large fire extinguishers on the roof - the kind with wheels - and we brought them inside and put them against the wall lockers to reinforce the door.

We were told to take off our packs so we could get more people on the choppers. Then everything came to a standstill and we just sat. All the Marines were up there. No birds in sight. But I never thought for one minute that the choppers would leave us behind.

We realized that the ships were pretty far out and the choppers were taking a long time getting to the ships and back. We were afraid the enemy might re-direct their artillery and rocket fire on top of the roof. We could see that rockets had picked up again on Tan Son Nhut and we wondered "What if they lift the rockets at us?" There was no place to disperse.

We were up there pretty close to an hour before any birds showed up. The ARVNs down below were doing a lot of "cowboy shooting." We figured we'd need nine helicopters to take all of the Marines off the roof. The infantry went first. The MSGs asked to be the last out of Vietnam.

Later I was told that every chopper participating in the evacuation had eight to ten bullet holes from ARVN soldiers. Nobody was hit. I was the last Marine out. I think we got all the Americans out who wanted to leave. Some of them elected to stay there, mostly reporters.

When we got on those birds, all we had was what was on our backs. We were told a couple of days before the evacuation to crate up our gear for shipment home, but we don't think any of it got out. I was in my gear for almost a week. When we got to Manila we changed clothes, given $100 and I bought some civilian clothes. We showered and shaved aboard the ship.

The men were great, and I'm not exaggerating. These kids were really good. They responded to all my commands. Considering how many young, new troops I had, they all worked as a unit. The kids were great ....I should say, the Marines were great.

Let me say this. The primary mission of the MSG is the protection of classified material. Our secondary mission is the protection of American lives.

I believe we did it all.....

PS:I doubt that we will see the same scenes in Afghanistan.If the air bases are to remain in western hands for some time to support Af. forces,eventually the Af forces will take over and the final evacuation will take place.But who knows how many "contractors" will remain in te country.However,if the talibs turn towards capturing Kabul,we will see quite a lot of airborne rescue if evacuation of many embassies has not taken place earlier.I shudder to think what will happen to the Indian embassy if the Talibs take Kabul.Karzai and the west should start talking soon to the erstwhile Northern Alliance survivors to protect Karzai's backside.

[TSJones]

PS:I doubt that we will see the same scenes in Afghanistan.If the air bases are to remain in western hands for some time to support Af. forces,eventually the Af forces will take over and the final evacuation will take place.But who knows how many "contractors" will remain in te country.However,if the talibs turn towards capturing Kabul,we will see quite a lot of airborne rescue if evacuation of many embassies has not taken place earlier.I shudder to think what will happen to the Indian embassy if the Talibs take Kabul.Karzai and the west should start talking soon to the erstwhile Northern Alliance survivors to protect Karzai's backside.

I don't know. When it comes to things like state craft and diplomacy the US is dumber than a box of rocks. They will gladly get their people killed because everybody respects embassies, right? So they will wait to the last freaking minute before trying to evacuate because it will look good on their report. Tip of the spear nonsense, hot report from our men on the front lines of spying and diplomacy. Only the US. It happened before in Afghanistan and it will happen again. Just like in Iran, just like in Libya, just like in Lebanon, on and on. I expect nothing but complete idiocy and shameful casualties from that crew.

[nawabs]

Chuck Hagel’s Indian Problem

http://freebeacon.com/chuck-hagels-indian-problem/

(Videos available in the link)

Secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel suggested in a previously unreleased 2011 speech that India has “for many years” sponsored terrorist activities against Pakistan in Afghanistan.

“India has over the years financed problems for Pakistan” in Afghanistan, Hagel said during a 2011 address regarding Afghanistan at Oklahoma’s Cameron University, according to video of the speech obtained by the Free Beacon.

The controversial comments mark a departure from established United States policy in the region and could increase tensions between the Obama administration and India should the Senate confirm Hagel on Tuesday, according to experts.

“It’s both over-the-top and a sharp departure from a U.S. position that has seen democratic India as a stabilizing influence in Afghanistan and Asia more broadly,” said Sadanand Dhume, former India bureau chief at the Far Eastern Economic Review and current resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“It’s also exactly the sort of statement that would have frayed ties with New Delhi, which has been watching the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan with concern,” Dhume said, referring to the administration’s plan to remove most military forces from the war-torn country in the coming months.

Hagel’s nomination has been stalled for more than a week after Senate Democrats failed to secure the 60 votes needed to end a Republican filibuster of the nomination. GOP lawmakers have continued to express concern over Hagel’s controversial stance on Israel, the Jewish community, and Iran, positions they say leave him unfit to serve in such a sensitive post.

The U.S. has long viewed India as a key ally in its fight against terrorism in the porous border regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Tensions have arisen between India and Pakistan over the latter’s failure to stymie terrorist activities.

Hagel appears to accuse India of fueling tensions with Pakistan, claiming it is using Afghanistan “as a second front” against Pakistan.

“India for some time has always used Afghanistan as a second front, and India has over the years financed problems for Pakistan on that side of the border,” Hagel says in the speech. “And you can carry that into many dimensions, the point being [that] the tense, fragmented relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been there for many, many years.”

Hagel’s comments reflect a “paranoid” worldview, India expert Dhume said.

“This statement reflects the views of the more paranoid elements of the Pakistan establishment more than mainstream U.S. opinion,” he said. “It’s a dated way of looking at a part of the world important to U.S. interests in Asia.”

Hagel’s 2011 remarks at Cameron University were released to the Free Beacon under the Oklahoma Open Records Act. The university had initially stated that Hagel would have to personally authorize the speech’s release, though no authorization was ultimately granted.

Hagel also criticized NATO during his remarks, questioning whether the international treaty organization can continue to exist.

Divisions among NATO members over operations in Afghanistan and Libya have raised questions about the organization’s usefulness, Hagel said.

“We are seeing a shift everywhere, we’re seeing a shift in NATO—seven, eight, nine members of NATO out of 28 were the only members of NATO that participated in the Libya exercise,” Hagel said. “Some of the most significant members, Germany being one of them, said NATO has no business in Libya, absolutely none.”

“Many of the people in the countries [that are] represented with boots on the ground … don’t want to be there, never wanted to be there,” Hagel said of NATO allies.

“So can NATO continue to exist, should it exist” given these disputes, Hagel asked. “What then is the usefulness of NATO?”

Hagel again questioned NATO’s usefulness later in the speech.

“All these [international] institutions that were built after World War II throughout leadership … now 65 years later of course they cannot be the same institutions,” Hagel said.

“I just mentioned a couple minutes ago NATO as a good example. There is no Soviet threat and you all remember in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down and ‘89, ‘90, ‘91 the Soviet Union imploded, the great question in the Congress, in Europe, was, ‘Why do we need NATO? What was the point on NATO?’ ” Hagel said. “And we essentially parked that question. We never answered it, and instead we said, ‘Well lets enlarge NATO,’ so we enlarged it.”

Hagel also explained that the U.S. is increasingly relying on unmanned drones, comments that could renew Democratic criticism of the former Republican Nebraska senator’s stance on the use of such weapons.

“What’s evolving with the drones. That is shifting that’s changing, that’s going to change our military from what it is now in many, many ways,” Hagel said. “We probably here soon will see one of the last copies of a human pilot aircraft finally for the obvious reasons. All of these dimensions are shifting the world in ways no one is wise enough, smart enough to calculate or calibrate.”

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.), the Senate Armed Services Committee’s ranking member, warned Republican lawmakers last week against voting to confirm Hagel.

“Make no mistake; a vote for cloture is a vote to confirm Sen. Hagel as secretary of defense,” Inhofe wrote in a strongly worded letter to his Republican colleagues, several of whom have indicated that they would vote to end debate on Hagel’s nomination, paving the way for his confirmation.

Hagel is widely expected to be confirmed Tuesday by the Senate, more than a month after he was first nominated by Obama.

The anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan, threw his support behind Hagel on Monday.

[sooraj]

chuck hagel is american Katju

[arun]

Chuck Hagel’s Indian Problem

http://freebeacon.com/chuck-hagels-indian-problem/

(Videos available in the link) {Snipped} .......................

When it comes to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan it would appear that even a supposed “long-standing friend of India and a prominent votary of close India-U.S. relations” cannot be completely trusted.

The reaction of our embassy in the US on the comment of Chuck Hagel also in the Washington Free Beacon:

Indian Embassy Takes Aim at Hagel

Meanwhile the Indian Express is today carrying a story of a not longstanding friend of India going to bat for the Islamic Republic of Pakistan with the intent to harm India:

'Richard Nixon supported Pak in 1971 war because of animosity towards Indira Gandhi'

Going to bat for the Islamic Republic of Pakistan against Indian interests seems to come naturally across the spectrum of India's "Friends" and "Not Friends" in the US.

[shyamd]

Hopefully his name doesn't get passed through as DefSec. I hope indian americans can write to their representatives about this.

[arun]

^^^ That would still leave John Kerry who has an established track record of going to bat for the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and God knows who else for India to contend with.

[member_22872]

He will be confirmed alright. Ombaba has elected Kerry the terrorist financier and this terrorist pacifier will be confirmed shortly. Now talk about American global war against terrorism. All hogwash. US is the global financier of terrorism...it has no ball$ to fight anything, may be Somalia.

[SSridhar]

So, new Robin Raphael-like figures will be there as part of the second term of Obama like the first term of Clinton.

[ramana]

He will be confirmed alright. Ombaba has elected Kerry the terrorist financier and this terrorist pacifier will be confirmed shortly. Now talk about American global war against terrorism. All hogwash. US is the global financier of terrorism...it has no ball$ to fight anything, may be Somalia.

Its a tag team. The US wants to reassure the TSP pigs while the Afghan draw-down occurs by having pak-pasand figures in its national security administration to avoid Saigon redux.

But they don't understand the Muslim mind. They will want a repeat of the Fall of Acre. They see the US as the new crusaders.

[brihaspati]

WEll they will express their satisfaction at such Indian-bashing defence secy, no doubt, but will also demand satisfaction for the not yet delivered territories of India.

[Philip]

Simply hilarious-except for the countries at the receiving end like India! The Laurel and Hardy team of Chuck and Kerry are going to do the US proud with their great gaffes.

While Chuck-the-F*ck cretin spouts forth his revisionist history of the subcontinent,Kerry in a speech has just invented a new country....Kyrzakhastan! Confusing Kyrgzstan and Kazakhastan! We'll soon have him inventing Iranistan,Tajbekistan,Afakistan,Uzghanistan,Turkistan,Pakghanistan (which is what the Pakis actually want,the assimilation of Afghanistan with their terrorist state).They'll be waging war and bombing Uzbekia,Armenistan,Georgistan,Turkmenia,Kashmiria,Hindia,Araqia (sounds delicious what?) etc.,etc.,doing enough damage to world affairs which could easily start WW3.Have you guys got your nuclear shelters ready? Get ready for the Chuck and Kerry show to hit the road!

[Lilo]

#HagelIsSoDumb

[nawabs]

US Senate confirms Hagel as next Secy of Defence

http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/us- ... um=twitter

After a two month battle by a group of Republican senators opposing his nomination, the US Senate on Tuesday confirmed former Republican senator Chuck Hagel to be the next Secretary of Defense by a vote of 58-41.

Hagel is set to be sworn into office later Wednesday, more than a month after he was first nominated by President Barack Obama.

Republicans opposed Hagel's nomination, citing concerns about his approach to Iran, his views on Israel and what many saw as a lackluster performance during his confirmation hearings.

A group of senators asked US President Barack Obama to withdraw Hagel from consideration, and then managed to delay the confirmation vote in an unprecedented filibuster against the nomination.

Hagel is a former Army infantryman who was awarded two Purple Hearts during the Vietnam War. He will be the first enlisted man to become Secretary of Defense.

Hagel takes the reins from outgoing Secretary Leon Panetta, who served as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for four years, before taking over as Secretary of Defense in 2011.

Hagel assumes the post just three days before massive, mandatory across-the-board budget cuts are scheduled to go into effect, which could force hundreds of thousands of defense layoffs and dangerously erode the US military according to Pentagon officials.

[Mort Walker]

Hagel Approved for Defense in Sharply Split Senate Vote

A tag team of Kerry and Hagel to undo years of Indo-American friendship. The word should go out, that India will think twice before placing orders with US defense contractors for its big ticket items should these two clowns suffer from verbal diarrhea. The heads of Boeing, NG, and Raytheon should be told very quietly, "We don't trust you because you will throw us under the bus for spares and logistics support based on statements you've made". Let's see when these guys actually sit down and discuss anything with India. Hillary to her credit was in India quite often for an SoS in recent history.

What is disturbing is that the pesky neighbors to the north-west may activate their terrorist networks again knowing they have their support in Dupli-city.

[disha]

Hopefully his name doesn't get passed through as DefSec. I hope indian americans can write to their representatives about this.

Why should "internet-hindus" support the GOI? What did the current GOI do for the Indian-Americans? What is going on with the pravasi-bharatiya divas? Why nobody turns up? What about the dual citizenship?

Indian-americans can write to their representatives about what concerns them., why are you advising them on what to do and not? Why do not you advise the current GOI to work on the citizenship issue for the Indian-americans? Why should they bother about India? Most of them are not citizens of India - Anyway?

[Philip]

Celebrations are going on in the ratholes of Pindi as the well put "Tag-team" of buffoons and confirmed anti-Indian hawks have taken over America's defence and foreign policies.Unfortunately unike the spastic "super-stars" of the WWE who entertain us with their physical antics,which we know have been well orchestrated,the antics to come from the "WHE" (White House Entertainment)
will be anything but benign.This cretinous and moronic duo are the ones who will be in charge of the world's most powerful military machine,which from its track record even when decisions were made by the most illustrious intellectual minds like that of Sec. of State Dr.Kissinger and "whiz kid" Robert McNamara,Sec. of Defence,who was famous at Ford Motor Co.,massive mistakes were made,later acknowledged by them.We've just seen Tony Blair also say that things in Iraq didn't turn out as he expected.

To have thus two confirmed anti-Indian individuals who by their utterances have displayed moronic ability of a very high order,should send alarm bells ringing in the corridors of power in Delhi.As a fellow poster has said,all defence deals with the US that are not in the pipeline,where deliveries have started,should be put on the backburner and reviewed .They should be scrapped unless we get a firm written commitment from the US on its relationship with the terrorist entity Pakistan that is waging a proxy war with India.A clear understanding on Afghanistan and Pak's perverse role in sponsoring the Taliban has to be established before Indo-US relations can be deemed friendly and "strategic" if at all.The continued propping up of the TSP by the US through aid and weapons and political machiavellian mischief is unacceptable to India.

[Sanku]

There is a reason why BJP is the only real credible alternative in India.

http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/ha ... 31820.html

Hagel's remarks against India 'bizarre': BJP

The statement given by Hagel that India has financed problems in Pakistan is "outlandish, bizarre and baseless," BJP spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy said.

He also expressed surprise over Hagel giving a clean to Pakistan, which has harboured in the backyard of its military base al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden, who was responsible for killing of more than 5000 Americans in the World Trade Centre attack.

"BJP is concerned at the indifference of the Indian government by not reacting to Hagel. BJP demands that Government of India uses its diplomatic pressure to see that Mr Chuck Hagel retracts his statement unconditionally," Rudy said.

But when you have a param pujya PM who himself goes and offers Pakis excuses to beat India up, it is to much to expect that GoI will stand up against the lies.