blackascoal
The Force is With Me
I absolutely agree.
Obama's Dismal Record on Foreign Policy
- Thread starter blackascoal
- Start date
I absolutely agree.
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
US Claims Link Between Benghazi Attack and Mali ‘Powder Keg’
Sees Result of Last Year's Intervention as Excuse for More Interventions
Struggling to come to grips with the notion of cause and effect, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed in a recent speech that she believes the recent attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi was the result of the “powder keg” of terrorist activity in Mali.
There is no indication from any of the reports that the attack had anything to do with any Malian faction, and was blamed on a local militant faction called Ansar al-Sharia Benghazi (ASB).
Indeed, lost in all of this is that the Mali situation, with the northern half of Azawad now under the control of Ansar Dine, is itself a direct result of the 2011 US attack on Libya in the first place. The US attacks left massive weapons caches in Tripoli unguarded, looted by Tuareg mercenaries fighting in Libya. The Tuaregs returned to Mali to launch a secessionist war in Azawad, which eventually left Ansar Dine in charge.
Instead of correctly seeing Mali as a consequence of their ill-conceived intervention in Libya, the Obama Administration is trying to spin the effect as the cause, and use it as an excuse for military intervention in Mali
http://news.antiwar.com/2012/10/01/us-claims-link-between-benghazi-attack-and-mali-powder-keg/
Sees Result of Last Year's Intervention as Excuse for More Interventions
Struggling to come to grips with the notion of cause and effect, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed in a recent speech that she believes the recent attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi was the result of the “powder keg” of terrorist activity in Mali.
There is no indication from any of the reports that the attack had anything to do with any Malian faction, and was blamed on a local militant faction called Ansar al-Sharia Benghazi (ASB).
Indeed, lost in all of this is that the Mali situation, with the northern half of Azawad now under the control of Ansar Dine, is itself a direct result of the 2011 US attack on Libya in the first place. The US attacks left massive weapons caches in Tripoli unguarded, looted by Tuareg mercenaries fighting in Libya. The Tuaregs returned to Mali to launch a secessionist war in Azawad, which eventually left Ansar Dine in charge.
Instead of correctly seeing Mali as a consequence of their ill-conceived intervention in Libya, the Obama Administration is trying to spin the effect as the cause, and use it as an excuse for military intervention in Mali
http://news.antiwar.com/2012/10/01/us-claims-link-between-benghazi-attack-and-mali-powder-keg/
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
I called this election for Obama even before the campaigns began. Obama is the best politician the US war machine has EVER had .. and, Obama allows them to attack the world with impunity.
Where Will the US War Machine Strike Next? Africa is a Good Bet
http://blackagendareport.com/content/where-will-us-strike-next-africa
Where Will the US War Machine Strike Next? Africa is a Good Bet
http://blackagendareport.com/content/where-will-us-strike-next-africa
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
There are a lot of Obama supporters on this board and I recognize that they want no part of this discussion, no part of this truth.
But I'm going to tell it anyway ..
The closing of the US Consulate in Benghazi and the evacuation of all US personnel from there is quite telling.
Benghazi is not only the world's hotbed of terrorism .. a KNOWN fact .. it is not only where AL Queda had a home .. it is not only where most of the foreign fighters who fought against US forces in Iraq came from .. it is not only where the so-called 'rebels' who fought against Gaddafi came from .. it is also the only place where Ambassador Stevens felt safe. He could walk around in Benghazi, the hotbed of terrorism, unguarded. He wasn't killed in an embassy, wasn't killed in a consulate. He was killed in a group of rented villas.
Why would Stevens feel safer among terrorists than among the Libyan people?
Because the Libyan people wanted him dead ... and they got him.
The Rise of the Green Resistance
The protests in West Asia and Libya are less about sentiments of religious outrage than about resentments against the West’s political domination in the region.
It is simplistic, to say the least, to attribute the wave of anti-American fury in West Asia and North Africa following the release of a tasteless anti-Islamic film to the stirrings of an aggrieved religious consciousness. Equally naive, if not mischievous, is the “clash of civilisations” interpretation of the protests that is being touted, which stereotypes the vast majority of Muslims as intolerant, incapable of coexisting with the liberal, democratic and dominantly Christian West.
It is clear that neither of the interpretations is correct. The protesters did not direct their anger against any religious community, and the “crusader” tit-for-tat hate mentality was simply not evident in the protests. Instead, the focus of the infuriated masses was political. It was the governments of the United States and some of its European allies, and not any religious community, that were the prime targets of their ire.
---
Resistance in Libya
The attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, which led to the killing of U.S. Ambassador John Christopher Stevens, may have even less to do with the provocation caused by the incendiary two-minute video. On the contrary, his killing exposes the emergence of a full-blown “resistance” of people loyal to the slain leader Muammar Qaddafi. It is becoming increasingly apparent that Qaddafi loyalists will not accept a puppet regime led by a combination of expatriates and fundamentalists infiltrated by Western intelligence networks.
It has been said that the killing of the ambassador was the handiwork of Al Qaeda. This assertion, peddled by Western news media in unison, does not stand up to scrutiny. It is well established that Islamist extremists and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) worked hand in glove to remove Qaddafi. The Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), led by Abdelhakim Belhaj, an established jehadi, was well cultivated by the Americans in the run-up to the toppling of the Qaddafi government. It was Belhaj’s “Tripoli brigade”—trained well by U.S. Special Forces—that formed the vanguard of a Berber militia that swooped down from the mountains and overran Qaddafi’s well-fortified Bab-al-Aziziyah compound.
Belhaj had sharpened his skills in the 1980s during the anti-Soviet jehad in Afghanistan. After 9/11, he headed for Pakistan and then Iraq, where he befriended the terror kingpin Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Writing in Asia Times, columnist Pepe Escobar said that in 2007, the LIFG merged with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and this marriage was officially announced by Ayman al-Zawahiri, then Al Qaeda’s number-two leader.
With NATO and the jehadists working together, and benefiting from this relationship, it is illogical to assume that extremists would go after the U.S. ambassador in Benghazi. After all, the late ambassador and the Islamic radicals had a cosy relationship that can be traced to Stevens’ early arrival in Benghazi in April 2011 to coordinate the anti-Qaddafi campaign with the jehadists.
So comfortable was this relationship that Stevens preferred to stay in Benghazi, the hotbed of extremists, for security reasons after Qaddafi loyalists tried to car-bomb him outside a Tripoli hotel where he had moved after the former leader’s fall. In a well-researched article titled “Benghazi attack. Libya’s resistance did it… And NATO powers are covering up”, posted on the alternative media website globalreasearch.ca, authors Mark Robertson and Finian Cunningham point out that so sanguine was Stevens about his security in Benghazi that he enjoyed jogging in public places inside the city. So the question arises: Who killed the ambassador on a day when protests against the American film were building up and the 11th anniversary of 9/11 had arrived?
Robertson and Cunningham, in their article, attribute the killing to the Green Resistance, called “Tahloob” in local parlance, comprising determined followers of Qaddafi. They point out that the “most obvious explanation is that cadre—the Green Resistance—loyal to Qaddafi and in opposition to the NATO-imposed regime carried out the attack. NATO and its Libyan quislings don’t want to admit this subversive reality. The fact of a resistance—a potent and growing resistance at that—has to be denied, erased from the record.”
The time of the killing may be unrelated to the 9/11 anniversary. There may have been other more compelling reasons, such as the extradition from Mauritania to Libya of Abdullah Al Senoussi, Qaddafi’s intelligence chief, that could have driven an incensed Green Resistance movement to strike.
Senoussi’s arrest is likely to have become the tipping point that drove the Green Resistance cadre’s attack. It is also likely that the incarceration of other high-profile Qaddafi-era officials may have reinforced the movement’s resolve to strike. A day before the Benghazi attack, the pro-U.S. Libyan government had put Abdul Ati Al Obeidi on trial. Obeidi had been a trusted Qaddafi loyalist, having served the former regime as Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and head of state. The other official who appeared in the courtroom was Mohammed Zwai, the former Secretary General of Qaddafi’s General People’s Congress.
The trial resembles a witch-hunt, for the two have been accused of wasting public funds by paying the $2.7 billion compensation to the families of those who were killed on account of the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.
Though it is now acquiring a high profile, the pro-Qaddafi resistance, it appears in hindsight, has been active in Libya for quite a while. There have been a string of assassinations of some high-profile individuals who had turned against Qaddafi before his government collapsed, leading to speculation of the Green movement’s hand in their killings. Among those who died in mysterious circumstances was Shukri Ghanem. Ghanem, a former Oil Minister under Qaddafi, had struck a deal with NATO and was accorded residency first in London and then Vienna. On April 29 this year, his body was found floating in the Danube river.
The Green Resistance in May this year claimed responsibility for the assassination of General Albarrani Shkal. Shkal was apparently in the resistance’s crosshairs for the coup de grace that he had delivered against the Qaddafi government. In August 2011, Tripoli’s former military governor demobilised 38,000 troops under his command. Consequently, the gates of Tripoli were breached by foreign forces during Operation Mermaid Dawn, leading to the collapse of the regime. There have been a string of other attacks by the Green Resistance, which may have, perhaps deliberately, escaped detailed mainstream media attention.
The death of the unfortunate ambassador is leading to a surge of American troops in Libya. The stage is therefore set for a major round of confrontation between the U.S., supported by the puppet extremists, and the motivated cadre of the Green Resistance movement.
http://www.frontline.in/stories/20121019292001300.htm
But I'm going to tell it anyway ..
The closing of the US Consulate in Benghazi and the evacuation of all US personnel from there is quite telling.
Benghazi is not only the world's hotbed of terrorism .. a KNOWN fact .. it is not only where AL Queda had a home .. it is not only where most of the foreign fighters who fought against US forces in Iraq came from .. it is not only where the so-called 'rebels' who fought against Gaddafi came from .. it is also the only place where Ambassador Stevens felt safe. He could walk around in Benghazi, the hotbed of terrorism, unguarded. He wasn't killed in an embassy, wasn't killed in a consulate. He was killed in a group of rented villas.
Why would Stevens feel safer among terrorists than among the Libyan people?
Because the Libyan people wanted him dead ... and they got him.
The Rise of the Green Resistance
The protests in West Asia and Libya are less about sentiments of religious outrage than about resentments against the West’s political domination in the region.
It is simplistic, to say the least, to attribute the wave of anti-American fury in West Asia and North Africa following the release of a tasteless anti-Islamic film to the stirrings of an aggrieved religious consciousness. Equally naive, if not mischievous, is the “clash of civilisations” interpretation of the protests that is being touted, which stereotypes the vast majority of Muslims as intolerant, incapable of coexisting with the liberal, democratic and dominantly Christian West.
It is clear that neither of the interpretations is correct. The protesters did not direct their anger against any religious community, and the “crusader” tit-for-tat hate mentality was simply not evident in the protests. Instead, the focus of the infuriated masses was political. It was the governments of the United States and some of its European allies, and not any religious community, that were the prime targets of their ire.
---
Resistance in Libya
The attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, which led to the killing of U.S. Ambassador John Christopher Stevens, may have even less to do with the provocation caused by the incendiary two-minute video. On the contrary, his killing exposes the emergence of a full-blown “resistance” of people loyal to the slain leader Muammar Qaddafi. It is becoming increasingly apparent that Qaddafi loyalists will not accept a puppet regime led by a combination of expatriates and fundamentalists infiltrated by Western intelligence networks.
It has been said that the killing of the ambassador was the handiwork of Al Qaeda. This assertion, peddled by Western news media in unison, does not stand up to scrutiny. It is well established that Islamist extremists and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) worked hand in glove to remove Qaddafi. The Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), led by Abdelhakim Belhaj, an established jehadi, was well cultivated by the Americans in the run-up to the toppling of the Qaddafi government. It was Belhaj’s “Tripoli brigade”—trained well by U.S. Special Forces—that formed the vanguard of a Berber militia that swooped down from the mountains and overran Qaddafi’s well-fortified Bab-al-Aziziyah compound.
Belhaj had sharpened his skills in the 1980s during the anti-Soviet jehad in Afghanistan. After 9/11, he headed for Pakistan and then Iraq, where he befriended the terror kingpin Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Writing in Asia Times, columnist Pepe Escobar said that in 2007, the LIFG merged with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and this marriage was officially announced by Ayman al-Zawahiri, then Al Qaeda’s number-two leader.
With NATO and the jehadists working together, and benefiting from this relationship, it is illogical to assume that extremists would go after the U.S. ambassador in Benghazi. After all, the late ambassador and the Islamic radicals had a cosy relationship that can be traced to Stevens’ early arrival in Benghazi in April 2011 to coordinate the anti-Qaddafi campaign with the jehadists.
So comfortable was this relationship that Stevens preferred to stay in Benghazi, the hotbed of extremists, for security reasons after Qaddafi loyalists tried to car-bomb him outside a Tripoli hotel where he had moved after the former leader’s fall. In a well-researched article titled “Benghazi attack. Libya’s resistance did it… And NATO powers are covering up”, posted on the alternative media website globalreasearch.ca, authors Mark Robertson and Finian Cunningham point out that so sanguine was Stevens about his security in Benghazi that he enjoyed jogging in public places inside the city. So the question arises: Who killed the ambassador on a day when protests against the American film were building up and the 11th anniversary of 9/11 had arrived?
Robertson and Cunningham, in their article, attribute the killing to the Green Resistance, called “Tahloob” in local parlance, comprising determined followers of Qaddafi. They point out that the “most obvious explanation is that cadre—the Green Resistance—loyal to Qaddafi and in opposition to the NATO-imposed regime carried out the attack. NATO and its Libyan quislings don’t want to admit this subversive reality. The fact of a resistance—a potent and growing resistance at that—has to be denied, erased from the record.”
The time of the killing may be unrelated to the 9/11 anniversary. There may have been other more compelling reasons, such as the extradition from Mauritania to Libya of Abdullah Al Senoussi, Qaddafi’s intelligence chief, that could have driven an incensed Green Resistance movement to strike.
Senoussi’s arrest is likely to have become the tipping point that drove the Green Resistance cadre’s attack. It is also likely that the incarceration of other high-profile Qaddafi-era officials may have reinforced the movement’s resolve to strike. A day before the Benghazi attack, the pro-U.S. Libyan government had put Abdul Ati Al Obeidi on trial. Obeidi had been a trusted Qaddafi loyalist, having served the former regime as Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and head of state. The other official who appeared in the courtroom was Mohammed Zwai, the former Secretary General of Qaddafi’s General People’s Congress.
The trial resembles a witch-hunt, for the two have been accused of wasting public funds by paying the $2.7 billion compensation to the families of those who were killed on account of the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.
Though it is now acquiring a high profile, the pro-Qaddafi resistance, it appears in hindsight, has been active in Libya for quite a while. There have been a string of assassinations of some high-profile individuals who had turned against Qaddafi before his government collapsed, leading to speculation of the Green movement’s hand in their killings. Among those who died in mysterious circumstances was Shukri Ghanem. Ghanem, a former Oil Minister under Qaddafi, had struck a deal with NATO and was accorded residency first in London and then Vienna. On April 29 this year, his body was found floating in the Danube river.
The Green Resistance in May this year claimed responsibility for the assassination of General Albarrani Shkal. Shkal was apparently in the resistance’s crosshairs for the coup de grace that he had delivered against the Qaddafi government. In August 2011, Tripoli’s former military governor demobilised 38,000 troops under his command. Consequently, the gates of Tripoli were breached by foreign forces during Operation Mermaid Dawn, leading to the collapse of the regime. There have been a string of other attacks by the Green Resistance, which may have, perhaps deliberately, escaped detailed mainstream media attention.
The death of the unfortunate ambassador is leading to a surge of American troops in Libya. The stage is therefore set for a major round of confrontation between the U.S., supported by the puppet extremists, and the motivated cadre of the Green Resistance movement.
http://www.frontline.in/stories/20121019292001300.htm
Airstrip One
Completely Effed
As you may recall, the GOP used to be the antiwar party. Unfortunately, just as 9/11 "changed everything," WWII and the fall of Nationalist China changed everything for the GOP...
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
9/11 changed stupid into stupider.
We've gained nothing from the wars, chaos, and mass-murder that we've done since 9/11. It hasn't made us any safer, only far less prosperous and far less admired throughout the world.
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
America’s Scandalous Drone War Goes Unmentioned in the Campaign
A new study released this week by researchers at Stanford and NYU has found that American drone strikes in Pakistan are killing far more civilians than advertised, taking out few high value targets, and have become the primary recruiting tool for the terrorist groups the policy is aimed at combating. The report, “Living Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan,” is based on “more than 130 interviews with victims, witnesses, and experts, and review of thousands of pages of documentation and media reporting” conducted over nine months.
The research found that, over the last eight years, drone strikes have “killed 2,562-3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474-881 were civilians, including 176 children.” Meanwhile, only 2 percent of those killed were “high-level” targets. This means that the strikes have killed three times as many children as terrorist leaders. The report also shows that the impact of the drone war isn’t limited to those directly affected by strikes because the constant presence of drones overhead “terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities.” People in these regions have become afraid to render assistance to innocent victims or to attend funerals, as both rescuers and mourners have been targeted for secondary strikes.
The report’s findings are irrefutably stunning. Even more so is the fact that these revelations won’t play any role at all in the pending presidential campaign.
---
These findings reflect the increasing sense among expert analysts and practitioners that the policy is backfiring. New America Foundation national security studies program director Peter Bergen declared earlier this month that “If the price of the drone campaign that increasingly kills only low-level Taliban is alienating 180 million Pakistanis--that is too high a price to pay.” Retired Admiral Dennis Blair, former Director of National Intelligence, declared in an August 2011 New York Times op-ed that “Drone strikes are no longer the most effective strategy for eliminating Al Qaeda’s ability to attack us,” and that the drone campaign “is eroding our influence and damaging our ability to work with Pakistan to achieve other important security objectives like eliminating Taliban sanctuaries, encouraging Indian-Pakistani dialogue, and making Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal more secure."
Despite the increasing intensity with which this issue is being debated in foreign policy wonk circles, the discussion has been all but absent in the ongoing presidential campaign. Terrorism is not among the twenty-six “issues” discussed on Mitt Romney’s website and the treatment of “Afghanistan & Pakistan” doesn’t mention the drone policy. To the extent that the issue is getting any traction on the domestic political front, it’s coming from the likes of Glenn Greenwald and others on the president’s left. One suspects that’s just fine with Obama, whose ability to tout the fact that “we got bin Laden” has put him in the unique position among Democrats of having the edge on national security issues.
Indeed, Obama has shrewdly—some might say cynically—positioned himself to the right on foreign policy, thereby insulating himself from the “weak on defense” canard that has plagued his party going back to the days of George McGovern. He doubled down on Afghanistan, at the expense of more than a thousand dead American soldiers and marines, at a point when it was obvious the war was unwinnable on the timetable he set. He ignored the hectoring over damaged relations with Pakistan that would result from the bin Laden raid, betting that success would ensure his re-election. And his use of drone strikes makes George W. Bush look like a cautious man.
more at link
http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/10779...americas-most-important-foreign-policy-issue#
A new study released this week by researchers at Stanford and NYU has found that American drone strikes in Pakistan are killing far more civilians than advertised, taking out few high value targets, and have become the primary recruiting tool for the terrorist groups the policy is aimed at combating. The report, “Living Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan,” is based on “more than 130 interviews with victims, witnesses, and experts, and review of thousands of pages of documentation and media reporting” conducted over nine months.
The research found that, over the last eight years, drone strikes have “killed 2,562-3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474-881 were civilians, including 176 children.” Meanwhile, only 2 percent of those killed were “high-level” targets. This means that the strikes have killed three times as many children as terrorist leaders. The report also shows that the impact of the drone war isn’t limited to those directly affected by strikes because the constant presence of drones overhead “terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities.” People in these regions have become afraid to render assistance to innocent victims or to attend funerals, as both rescuers and mourners have been targeted for secondary strikes.
The report’s findings are irrefutably stunning. Even more so is the fact that these revelations won’t play any role at all in the pending presidential campaign.
---
These findings reflect the increasing sense among expert analysts and practitioners that the policy is backfiring. New America Foundation national security studies program director Peter Bergen declared earlier this month that “If the price of the drone campaign that increasingly kills only low-level Taliban is alienating 180 million Pakistanis--that is too high a price to pay.” Retired Admiral Dennis Blair, former Director of National Intelligence, declared in an August 2011 New York Times op-ed that “Drone strikes are no longer the most effective strategy for eliminating Al Qaeda’s ability to attack us,” and that the drone campaign “is eroding our influence and damaging our ability to work with Pakistan to achieve other important security objectives like eliminating Taliban sanctuaries, encouraging Indian-Pakistani dialogue, and making Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal more secure."
Despite the increasing intensity with which this issue is being debated in foreign policy wonk circles, the discussion has been all but absent in the ongoing presidential campaign. Terrorism is not among the twenty-six “issues” discussed on Mitt Romney’s website and the treatment of “Afghanistan & Pakistan” doesn’t mention the drone policy. To the extent that the issue is getting any traction on the domestic political front, it’s coming from the likes of Glenn Greenwald and others on the president’s left. One suspects that’s just fine with Obama, whose ability to tout the fact that “we got bin Laden” has put him in the unique position among Democrats of having the edge on national security issues.
Indeed, Obama has shrewdly—some might say cynically—positioned himself to the right on foreign policy, thereby insulating himself from the “weak on defense” canard that has plagued his party going back to the days of George McGovern. He doubled down on Afghanistan, at the expense of more than a thousand dead American soldiers and marines, at a point when it was obvious the war was unwinnable on the timetable he set. He ignored the hectoring over damaged relations with Pakistan that would result from the bin Laden raid, betting that success would ensure his re-election. And his use of drone strikes makes George W. Bush look like a cautious man.
more at link
http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/10779...americas-most-important-foreign-policy-issue#
canceled.2021.1
#AMERICAISDEAD
If the media weren't negligent and in the pocket for Obama his approval ratings would be in the 30s. Probably would never go lower than that because blacks are always going to support
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
The media was equally negligent in reporting the truth of Bush's wars. The difference being that democrats and the antiwar crowds took to alternative media to discover the truth.
Now that its Obama's wars, MSM will do just fine.
Reality and history itself already proves you're totally wrong....and I mean totally.
Bush was so throughly ridiculed for war policy for 7 FULL YEARS without a day of respite....
and today, you have to hunt to find out that under Obama more than 1500 US troops lie in their graves....we're giving billions of dollars to Egypt while they
kill Christians and run them out of their country, our dead Ambassador wasn't denied protection he REQUESTED from Obama, and the list goes on and on....
The MSM is deeply up Obama's ass watching the news has become a total waste of time...and the majority know and admit that fact.
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
I beg to disagree brother.
I was among many who had to hunt for the truth of the Iraq misadventure .. some of which is still not told by MSM. Truths got out through foreign press and alternative media .. in fact, so much so that it put A,erican print media in danger and the rest of MSM had to adjust .. but never tell the real truths.
War is a Racket.
Ain't nothing changed.