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Let's try Imran Khan

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He is the only person who talks about justice, humanity and self-esteem, the next best slogan after unity, faith, discipline and better than roti kapra aur makaan, don't you think? And then he is the only person who gives you unconditional hope for a better future..... let's try Imran Khan....... Read full...Click

    Turmoil in the Muslim world



    I WAS fortunate enough to participate in a meeting of experts organised by the West Asia-North Africa (Wana) forum in Jordan earlier this month to study the situation in this critical region.

    The initiative was begun in 2009 by Prince Hassan bin Talal, regarded as one of the foremost progressive thinkers of the region.

    The Wana region has large energy resources and remains constantly in the news. It stretches from Morocco to Pakistan and from Turkey to Sudan. It is a non-governmental, non-partisan civil society initiative that addresses pressing social, environmental and economic challenges whose solution is advocated as being based on peace, social cohesion, human security and human rights.

    Although the region contains different people with various religions and diverse backgrounds, it is also united by three factors. The first is its long-drawn-out transition to full independence that began after the First World War and continues.

    Next, most countries in the region contain either energy resources or have strategic geographic significance that is the focus of Great Power attention.

    Thirdly, the region has a large youth bulge where more than 60 per cent of the population is under 25 years with few employment opportunities. The region has been governed by dictatorial regimes for most of its existence. In almost all, power has been retained through the use of violence. Such an oppressive system of governance was usually supported by the West either to retain control over resources or to support a discriminatory foreign policy at the expense of the Palestinians.

    Mai Yamani, an astute commentator on the region, analyses the situation by defining the states in the Middle East in ‘F’ words: failed, frozen, flexible, flourishing or frightening.

    Yemen is now a failed state. Its political institutions have ceased to function. Frozen states include Saudi Arabia, where ‘democracy’ is omitted from the official discourse. Such states appear more stable in the short term, as oil revenues still buy the subservience and submission of most of the subjects, but stability coincides with the possibility of increasing violence and civil unrest, owing to widespread grievances over sectarian rule.

    ‘Flexible’ states like Lebanon and Iraq are frightened of war. Most have experienced it recently and are eager for stability and economic development. They hope to rebuild stability by holding elections. However, she says that the real change in the region will only occur with the democratisation of Saudi Arabia; this would also tame the fire of Wahabism that is fuelling so much violence in the region, including in Pakistan.The conference provided a glimpse into the minds of emerging leaders and youth who are collectively leading the transition. Both are promising. Prince Hassan called for developing a new mindset, “not one of intervention, but preventative, pre-emptive; one based on soft and not hard power; and able to create an institutional, legal, professional, cultural and educational cocoon for those who have fallen not so much between the cracks, but into the abyss”.

    Securing legitimacy requires a consolidation of shared values and institutional practices. “If a regime is disconnected from its people, it is no longer legitimate,” according to Guma el-Gamaty of the Libyan rebels’ Interim Transitional National Council, who spoke of the lack of any real state apparatus in Libya. This lack of connection between the rulers and the ruled has led to a massive inequality in the distribution of the region’s considerable natural wealth. These comments have relevance for Pakistan too.

    Sally Moore, the charismatic representative of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party and Youth Coalition of the Egyptian Revolution, made an emotional intervention and summarised the spirit of Tahrir Square where people spontaneously began providing municipal and public services such as cleaning, food and medical care more efficiently than their government ever did.

    “People cared for each other and their environment,” she said. “We built a hospital in a nearby mosque. We fed people bread and fuul. Christians and Muslims prayed together.” This showed a special sense of fraternity destroyed by rulers whose grip on power emanated from force and oppression.

    One also learnt of the impact that social media like Twitter, Facebook and the Internet generally has had on creating, leading and directing the transition from one of its exponents Omar Christidis of Arabnet. According to him, the cellphone had become an instrument of liberation. It was time that the West realised that it will be difficult to keep a lid on the region by installing and supporting pliant dictators.

    The conference concluded that a sea change in attitude was occurring in the region under scrutiny. Pakistan too is now in the eye of the storm after Osama bin Laden’s death. Moreover, if the recent attack on a naval facility in Karachi is any indicator then this may be a prelude to the start of a similar movement in Pakistan as we too have a striking youth bulge like other countries in Wana.

    Though the US has removed Bin Laden, his message is still resonating through Saudi Wahabism and Salafism. After the attack on Makkah in 1979, Saudi Arabia spent $75bn on propagating Wahabism throughout the Wana region and beyond. It is this generator of instability that is causing chaos. If the region, including Pakistan, is to have peace and see human development, then the much-needed reforms and regional cooperation must be based on human security, democracy and non-violence. The youth of the region demand it.

    The writer is chairman of the Regional Institute of Policy Research in Peshawar. azizkhalid@gmail.com
    http://www.dawn.com/2011/05/27/turmoil-in-the-muslim-world.html

    Gulf states 'funded extremism' in Pakistan: Leaked cable:

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    Donors in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are estimated to have been sending up to $100 million annually to radical Islamic schools in Pakistan that back extremist groups, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable.
    [Video: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/05/2011522154717683995.html ]


    The cable alleged that financial aid for a "sophisticated jihadi recruitment network" was coming from "missionary" and "Islamic charitable" organisations in the Gulf, ostensibly with the direct support of the Saudi and UAE governments.


    The 2008 cable, purportedly sent by an officer at the US consulate in Lahore, was obtained by WikiLeaks and published by Pakistan's Dawn newspaper on Sunday.


    Asked to respond to the report, a Saudi foreign ministry spokesman, Osama Nugali, said: "Saudi Arabia issued a statement from day one that we are not going to comment on any WikiLeaks reports because Saudi Arabia is not responsible for these reports and we are not sure about their authenticity."


    Saudi Arabia, the US and Pakistan heavily supported the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.


    Armed groups subsequently mushroomed in the region, and extremists moved to Pakistan's northwest tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.


    Since then there has been a growing link between groups there and in Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province, where the recruitment network is alleged to have existed.


    In recent years, extremist groups have been carrying out suicide bombings seemingly at will in Pakistan, despite military offensives against their strongholds.


    The cable described how “families with multiple children” and “severe financial difficulties” were being exploited for recruitment purposes, Dawn reported.


    Families would be approached by "supposedly charitable" groups, and clerics would then offer to educate thier children and "find them employment in the service of Islam".


    Martyrdom was later discussed, the cable alleged, with parents offered a final cash payment estimated at $6,500 by local sources. Recruits "chosen for jihad" would then be taken to "indoctrination camps".


    The discovery that Osama bin Ladenwas living in a Pakistani town not far from Islamabad until he was killed in a raid by US forces earlier this month has severely damaged ties between Washington and Islamabad.


    US lawmakers and senior American officials have said before that Saudi donors and charities were still directing financial support to extremists in the region, including in Afghanistan.


    But the cable was notable because it indicated that financial support was now reaching a once moderate area of southern Pakistan that observers had been warning was becoming more radical.


    Dawn published other US cables on Saturday indicating that Pakistan's government had called for the US to step up drone strikes, and asked for US special forces troops to be embedded at Pakistani military bases in the country's tribal region. The Pakistani army denied those reports.
    Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/05/2011522154717683995.html
    Related Links:

    American Ethics and Human Values

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    Many of us who lived in the United States for some time admired ethics and human values of the American community, which prides itself on democracy, human dignity and rejection of racism. And we still do.
    We thought that values of the American people are a reflection of the American citizen's ethics that contribute to shaping US policies and governing its official decisions.
    We were not aware and never believed that the US administration is totally different from American ethics, and thus we thought for a period of time that the American citizen's will always reflects positively on the official US position. We were thinking that we can reassure ourselves that we are on the right path when we talk about the values, ethics and merits of US society.
    We have gone far in defending American values, and therefore we did not believe that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was carried out by the US in bad faith. We believed that the bombing was an act of self-defence and we further justified America's unforgivable crime under the pretext that the US was retaliating to the aggressive Japanese attack on the American naval base of Pearl Harbour in 1941.
    We believed strongly in Washington's right to prevent Japanese expansion into American coast, and excused the US for its humiliation of the Japanese Americans in detention camps after accusing them of aiding the Japanese army. When the US launched a large-scale military operation in Vietnam, it used helicopter gunships and B-52 bombers to drop coloured chemicals and nerve gas bombs on the heads of civilians, we repeated what the US administration said to justify its offensive.
    The administration said that time it was supporting the southern Vietnamese to obtain their freedom, dignity and get rid of the threat of communism.
    From Japan to Vietnam to Iraq, the US has a record of human rights violations — from the shocking scenes of daily killings in different parts of Iraq, Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, the Baquba mosque killing and the fierce bombardment of Fallujah, among many others. We were shocked and did not believe that such acts are a reflection of US ethics that we defend. At the same time, we did not believe the American version which echoed that such acts were committed by rogue elements, especially after the same scenario and scenes of killing were repeated.
    Evidence
    The pictures and footage of the crime scenes in Iraq provided evidence that the US strategy of war, initiated by the neo-conservatives, was based on terrorising, humiliating and taking revenge against the Iraqi people, just because they were under the rule of Saddam Hussain.
    Another evidence of America's violation of its own ethics and values is the unlimited support for Israel's brutal attacks on the Palestinians, the latest of which was the large-scale offensive in Gaza.
    For 22 days, Israel spared nothing from its war machine, using US weapons and internationally banned chemicals and nerve gas. The US did nothing to stop this barbaric war and protect the Palestinians from Israel's firepower.
    On the contrary, the US asked Israel to continue its crimes until the war achieved its targets, giving the Zionist entity more excuses to carry on with its massive military operation and the bombardment using toxic gases and chemicals on Palestinians in violation of human values.
    Obviously, the US administration viewed the war on Gaza as Israel's right to defend itself and that it was not in contradiction with American values. This is why American officials always reiterate that the US cannot be subject to UN laws because they are incompatible with American values.
    Some of us still believe and defend American ethics, while others expressed their confidence that America will one day regain its sense of justice and human values. This spirit of optimism prevailed after the election of Barack Obama as president, a man known for his human values since he was a student. They expected Obama would bring about changes in the US administration.
    With Obama's first presidential term coming to an end, there has been no change in the US approach. For example, Obama promised to close the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, but he has yet to fulfil his promise.
    The picture depicting Obama, his deputy Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton along with 10 other members of the security team watching live footage of the killing of Al Qaida chief Osama Bin Laden is another example. They were watching the special operations commandos who stormed a compound that was under surveillance for more than nine months and then stormed a room, killing an unarmed old man in a foreign land. They shot him dead although they could have captured him alive and brought him to justice.
    Joyful scenes
    Obama announced victory amid joyful scenes erupted in the US — the land of human values. Ironically, the Pentagon announced that it would have been difficult to find a country willing to accept his remains, and thus the body was dropped into the waters of the northern Arabian Sea.
    Apparently, Bin Laden's body was ‘eased' into the Arabian Sea so that no one can build a shrine on his grave, while the pictures of his body have not been released.
    These are snippets from a play featuring recorded footage of the history of American values, from Hiroshima to Pakistan, invasion of Afghanistan and the dubious charge of weapons of mass destruction that led to the invasion of Iraq. This is what we only know, but behind the scenes it could be worse.
    By Dr Khalifa Rashid Al Sha'ali is an Emirati writer who specialises in legal affairs. Special to Gulf News.
    Related Links:

    Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror from John Pilger on Vimeo. Tweet. FOR MORE ON ISLAM, CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM VISIT: http://faithforum.wordpress.com http:islamphobia.wordpress.com ...


    History of Morality in Power Politics. WebpageTranslator. There is a debate among scholars as to whether great individuals should be restricted by moral values while trying to accomplish their political agenda or be allowed to freely
    The hypocrisy reeks. How the public stands it, I do not know: The American president, whose drones and air force slaughter civilians every day of the year said Libya stands alone in presenting the world with “the prospect of violence on ..
    Ethics_in_America......

    Religion – Alawite, the overlooked motive behind Syrian uprising: "الدين علوي ، كان الدافع وراء التغاضي انتفاضة سورية

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    The Assad clique’s Alawite faith is so heterodox that most in the Islamic world deny they’re Muslims at all; for Israel, this could be a good thing.
    Throughout the Syrian uprising of the last two months, the dominant media narrative has followed the now-familiar arc of a freedom-seeking populace mustering the courage to finally confront an autocratic, anti-democratic regime responsible for decades of repression. Little mentioned is another element of the unrest, one readily apparent to most veteran Syria watchers: faith.
    ......................................................

    Syrian security forces reportedly kill at least 34 pro-democracy protesters 
    New York Daily News - Corky Siemaszko - 
    Syrian citizens, who fled from violence from western Syria, receive bedding and other aid supplies from Lebanese civil society groups.

    ..........................................................................................................

    President Bashar Assad is an Alawite, a minority sect often described, in the convenient shorthand on which journalists rely, as an “offshoot of Shi’a Islam.” The Alawites’ creed, however, is so far removed from any mainstream Islamic orthodoxy that most Muslims worldwide – Sunni and Shi’ite alike – are apt to describe them either as heretics or as wholly outside the Islamic faith community, or ummah.


    The term Alawite derives from Ali, the martyred son-in-law of Muhammad [pbuh] venerated by Shi’ite Muslims as the first Imam, or successor to the prophet. In much of the Islamic world, however, Alawites are known pejoratively as Nusairis, after Muhammad ibn Nusair, the ninth-century religious renegade who seems to have been their spiritual forebear.

    For 1,000 years, the Alawites were the most despised and suppressed of Syria’s faith communities – an isolated, rural people practicing a secret, syncretic religion rumored to incorporate Christian, Shi’a and pre-Islamic rites. In 1963 Syria’s Alawite-led Ba’ath Party seized power, an event so religiously and politically implausible that half a century later, mainstream Arabs and Muslims still struggle to comprehend it.

    “An Alawi ruling Syria is like an untouchable becoming maharajah in India or a Jew becoming tsar in Russia,” the historian Daniel Pipes wrote in his book Greater Syria, “an unprecedented development shocking to the majority population which had monopolized power for so many centuries.”

    LIKE THE Druse, another heterodox sect with distant Islamic roots, the Alawites adhere to an esoteric creed known only to a small group of shaykhs, or religious authorities.
    In the late 19th century, however, an Alawite convert to Christianity published a book revealing a deeply syncretic creed that in every era adopted elements of the region’s dominant faith – Byzantine Eastern Orthodoxy, Sunni and later Shi’a Islam, Crusader Catholicism – while maintaining its own suspicious insularity.
    Ali is no doubt central to the community’s dogma, so much so that mainstream Shi’ites deride Alawites as ghulat – “those who exceed” all bounds in their deification of the imam. But the Alawites’ resemblance to the Shi’ites constitutes the least of their heresies to Syria’s majority Sunnis.

    Far worse is their doctrinal affinity with Christianity, and with pre-Islamic pagan rites like the Persian New Year, Nowruz.

    Alawites “believe in reincarnation, regard the Pillars of Islam as purely symbolic, do not fast during Ramadan or make pilgrimage to Mecca, have no mosques or indeed any public worship, celebrate Christmas, Easter and Epiphany, and traditionally wear crosses like Christians,” according to University of Haifa linguist John Myhill.

    The idea of God’s reincarnation in human form is central to Alawite belief, Myhill said, explaining that Alawites believe in “seven cycles,” or reincarnations of God in both revealed and hidden forms.

    For example, Adam (God’s revealed form) returned to Earth in the hidden guise of Abel, Moses returned as Joshua Ben-Nun, Jesus as Peter and Muhammad as Ali. Like Christians, Alawites also worship a “holy trinity” – in their case, Ali, Muhammad and Salman the Persian, a companion of Muhammad who helped lay siege to Medina during the Islamic Conquest.

    IN THE Ottoman era, Alawites were persecuted as infidels, forced to pay heavy taxes and mostly worked as indentured servants or tenant farmers for Sunni landowners.

    The advent of French rule after World War I ushered in a golden age for the oncedowntrodden sect, which was granted short-lived autonomy as the “Alawite State” on Syria’s coast in the 1920s and ’30s. Colonial authorities hoping to stem Sunni nationalism propped up the Alawites and other Syrian minorities, giving them preferential treatment in the army and laying the groundwork for today’s Alawite-dominated military.

    Hafez Assad – a former air force pilot and the father and predecessor of the current president – came to power in 1971, eight years after the coup by his own Ba’ath Party. The movement was putatively socialist and Arab nationalist, but dominated by young Alawites eager to end Syria’s centuries-long domination by an urban, Sunni elite. One of Assad’s first acts was to replace the constitutional requirement that Syria’s president be Muslim, with a law stipulating that the president’s religion is Islam – essentially certifying his own Muslim faith.

    In the four decades since, the new Alawite elite have considerably weakened the Sunnis’ once-inviolable commercial dominance, and turned Syria’s military and intelligence services into its own private domain. The one significant challenge to Assad the father’s rule – a 1982 Muslim Brotherhood revolt in the central city of Hama – was brutally quashed, with security forces killing an estimated 20,000-30,000 people.

    THE FACILE description of the Alawite faith as a branch of Shi’a Islam is encouraged by the Assad regime’s close ties with the Shi’a theocracy in Iran, and with Tehran’s Shi’ite proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah.

    In Shi’ism, Resistance and Revolution, Middle East scholar Martin Kramer wrote that the Syria-Iran partnership is purely a marriage of convenience.

    “Common hatreds and ambitions inspired this expedient alliance between two incongruous political orders. The Iraqi regime was hateful to both Iran and Syria.

    In Lebanon, Iran realized that it could not extend support to its clients there without Syrian cooperation,” Kramer wrote. “A sense of shared fate, not shared faith, bound these two regimes together.”

    Indeed, the Islamic Republic [Iran] has never recognized the Alawites as Muslims, much less of the Shi’ite variety. Instead, it was Musa al-Sadr, a Lebanese Shi’ite leader eager to expand his circle of influence, who in 1994 issued a fatwa certifying the Alawites as a branch of “Twelver” Shi’ism, the dominant Shi’ite branch and the one widely practiced in Iran. (“Twelver” refers to the 12th, or “hidden” imam, who disappeared 1,100 years ago and whose return is believed to augur the messianic age.) “When these Twelver clerics – [ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini’s closest students and disciples – visited Damascus, they spoke only the language of politics,” Kramer wrote. “They did not utter any opinion on the beliefs, doctrines, or rituals of the Alawis, about which they knew no more than any other outsider. Instead, they spoke of political solidarity, appealing to all Muslims to set aside their religious differences, to unite to meet the threats of imperialism, colonialism, and Zionism.”

    ACCORDING TO Myhill, Syrian officials’ decades-long anti-Israel rhetoric is mere bluster to compensate for their perceived heretical creed: “In order to legitimize their rule among the Sunni majority, they must publicly project an image of championing Arabism by unrelentingly rejecting Israel and flirting with Israel’s avowed enemies.”

    In practice, he noted, the Assads have little interest in a renewed confrontation with Israel. Other than the 1973 Yom Kippur War (a bid, he said to “keep up appearances” among Arab neighbors) and this week’s breach of the Golan border fence (an apparent attempt to distract the world’s attention from the bloody Syrian uprising), the Assads have generally kept their side of the border quiet.

     “The Alawites’ religious beliefs suggest that they are pro-Jewish and anti-Sunni,” Myhill wrote this month for the Begin- Sadat Center. “From Israel’s perspective, it is far better for the Alawites to maintain power in Syria than for a Sunni regime to take control there... If a Sunni regime were to rule Syria, any wide-scale Israeli-Palestinian clash, such as Operation Cast Lead, would likely trigger an emotional response, pulling Syria into an international war with Israel, regardless of the consequences.”

    Myhill wrote that Syria would not accept an official peace treaty with Israel under any circumstances, because such an agreement would spell the end of the regime’s legitimacy in the eyes of its own Sunnis, and those of the Arab and Islamic worlds.

    “While an open alliance between Israel and the Alawite regime is impossible, it is possible for the leaders of the two countries to develop tacit understandings, whereby they would essentially coordinate actions to support their countries’ common goal of combating Sunni hegemony and radicalism,” he wrote.

    If Myhill is right – and should Assad survive the current unrest – then Syria, long a byword for anti-Israel bluster, could become one of the Jewish state’s most reliable partners, and all because of its leaders’ esoteric, eccentric and insular creed.

    Related Links:
    http://rejectionists.blogspot.com

    - Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

    At least 900 people killed in Syria since uprising began | Ya ...




    22 May 2011 ... This brings the total number of Syrians killed since the uprising began on March 15 to at least 900. Thousands of Syrians fled to Lebanon. ...
    www.yalibnan.com/.../at-least-900-people-killed-in-syria-since-uprising-began/ - United States - 

    Bin Laden Operation: A Bluff !

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    CIA HANDLERS GIVE BIN LADEN “THUMBS UP”…

    “BIN LADEN NEVER WENT ROGUE…”

    “Quite obviously, meetings go on 24 hours a day, deciding what “new evidence” to concoct to add to the video tapes, personal diary and pornography claimed to have been found already. Has no one ever heard the time honored adage, ‘less is more?’”

    by Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

    http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/05/15/gordon-duff-bin-laden-operation-discredits-u-s-armed-forces/

    The frozen body of Osama bin Laden, very real “currency,” would not have been spent on less.

    Nothing could be worse than the story released by the Obama administration. Their claim is that 25 Navy Seals were flown into Pakistan to murder an unarmed and unguarded man whose identity is now in doubt. Legal experts around the world universally characterize the operation, if it actually happened at all, as a criminal act and those involved as subject to prosecution. This issue is unlikely to gain much attention, however, as the majority of people who had not concluded that Osama bin Laden had died in 2001 as reported are now reconsidering their position.
    Is President Obama having it both ways, claiming revenge for 9/11 by ordering the murder of someone never named in connection with 9/11 in any way and putting the killing in question by, not only destroying all evidence, but by releasing contradictory and easily discredited versions of the event? Is Obama, as many have long suspected, “channeling” George “W” Bush, the master bungler of all time?
    Either way, there is one victim for certain and that is the members of the military services of the United States who will be judged, not by the real facts but rather the political mechanations of the increasingly bizarre stories released to the press on a daily basis. Each new story released shows signs of poor operational judgement where “salting” the “crime scene” with evidence has obviously gotten out of hand, an obvious problem when 46,000 “secret agents” were given 15 years to hunt down and capture a man believed dead for 10 of those 15 years.
    Worse yet, senior CIA officials from the Reagan/Bush I era claim bin Laden was and always continued to be “rock solid” as an American intelligence agent until his death, or at least one of his deaths.
    Even worse still, eyewitness accounts reported in Pakistan indicate that the bin Laden mission was scrapped after a helicopter crash.  The version given, but yet unconfirmed, has Americans leaving only with their dead, abandoning their wreckage and never having entered what is claimed to have been the bin Laden “compound.”
    Quite obviously, meetings go on 24 hours a day, deciding what “new evidence” to concoct to add to the video tapes, personal diary and pornography claimed to have been found already. Has no one ever heard the time honored adage, “less is more?”

    TORA BORA COMPLEX (US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE GRAPHIC) NEVER LOCATED
    This is a classic case of “too many cooks spoil the pot.”
    Wild stories about 40 minute firefights and “Osama bin Laden” standing on a bed with an AK 47 on full-auto while using his wife as a human shield made the SEAL team involved look like clowns. The SEALS are among the best trained and most effective elite fighting forces in the world. Last year, I met with Hershel Davis, known as “Father of the Seals,” to discuss his distinguished career and his experiences while operating inside Pakistan.
    One thing is clear. SEALS were chosen because of their history of secrecy. The entire “bin Laden/Abbottabad” operation is a fiction. The ploy was to use Navy SEALS to trade on their reputation and heroism in order to “sell” a cover story to serve a long series of agenda’s.
    The real end result for members of America’s armed forces is to have them cast as bullies, liars and murderers. What we have is a replay of the Delta Force’s operation at Tora Bora, a theatrical construct with a wild story intended on providing a rationale for a decade of war, begun, sustained and ultimately lost based on a fairy tale.
    The original “Tora Bora follies,” Osama bin Laden and his entourage leaving his massive luxurious underground complex in a fleet of white GMC Yukon XLs with the aid of local warlords while the Delta Force was “called back for consultation” is as believable as the mysterious funeral of the imaginary Osama bin Laden, an old man seen on video watching television whose biometric signature in no way remotely resembles the facial recognition patterns of the real Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden, the real bin Laden, worked for years with the CIA and was photographed many times.
    Veterans Today contributor and senior defense analyst, Brigadier General Asif Haroon Raja made the following observations:
    Hardly a week has lapsed since the shattering news of helicopter assault by US SEALs leading to Osama bin Laden’s death and already several branches have sprouted from the trunk of the original story.
    Too many doubts are being expressed about the authenticity of the claims made by rejoicing US leaders. As the clouds of skepticism are getting thicker, euphoria of US leadership is correspondingly getting deflated.
    Or it was a hoax to cash upon the ghost of Osama? Or was it to stir up uprising in Pakistan similar to the ones in Arab countries and then make it a pretext to take actions as in case of Libya?
    Even if we blindly accept the one-sided US story, how come Osama being a trained fighter with no dearth of chivalry chose to live in a house which had no protection? Like the minefield being of no value unless covered with fire, high walls of the house are of no consequence without inner protective shield.
    Since the house was devoid of arsenal and he had not put up token resistance even with his personal weapon, it means Osama had given up militancy and was leading a quiet and peaceful life with his family. Was it fair to kill an unarmed man?
    Pretext of his burial at sea is unconvincing since the Afghans are not inclined to the idea of shrines. Osama was wanted since 2001 dead or alive. How come, when the golden trophy was seized, it was disposed off in indecent haste rather than displaying it in all the 50 states of USA? The US has yet to furnish proofs that Osama was killed. No photograph of his dead body within the Abbottabad house or before and during his burial at sea has been displayed.

    SELLING THE WAR ON TERROR

    Since 9/11 with Rudy Giuliani’s tireless hounding of the limelight, “heroics by proxy,” honoring heroes has been a shameful form of exploitation of the sacrifice and honor of others for political and financial gain. No war in history has made so many billionaires while fighting an enemy that has proven to be 99% fabrication. As conspiracy theory gives way to hard evidence, the demolition of the towers at the World Trade Center has become fact.

    DUKAKIS PHOTO CATASTROPHE
    Years later when 345 New York firefighters have died of radiation sickness with thousands more sick or dying from illnesses purposefully misdiagnosed or attributed to spurious and unspecified “toxic” sources, the sinister hand of exploitation isn’t hard to see. 3000 died on 9/11, not from terror attacks but proven controlled demolition. 6000 more Americans have died to avenge their deaths while several hundred thousand, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan 85% civilians, 100% victims of an illegal war of aggression, have died so far with more each day.
    The sick from Ground Zero fight “tooth and nail” for medical care and compensation while tens of thousands of troops once considered heroes have been drummed out the military, wounded, sick, “used up,” many with no benefits or medical care. 18 kill themselves each day.
    Another memorable sight on 9/11 was Secretary Rumsfeld on the pristine Pentagon lawn, theoretical location of 100 tons of aircraft wreckage, seats, bodies, luggage, wings, tail section, all invisible to the naked eye. Soon after, Rumsfeld would mention the missile that hit the Pentagon. He would say it once and the press would forgive that mistaken moment of honesty.
    During the 1988 election, Democratic candidate Mike Dukakis was attacked continually for being photographed wearing wearing an Army helmet, riding in a tank. Similarly, President George “W” Bush, whose truncated military career, now classified a “national secret,” includes allegation of failed drug tests and desertion, appeared in another infamous photo, the famed “Mission Accomplished” fiasco claiming victory in a war that is still going on nearly a decade later. Bush’s photo in fighter pilot garb is considered a “Chickenhawk classic.
    Worse still were the carefully staged “terror alerts” and phony bin Laden tapes released at critical times to influence elections or the passage of questionable legislation.
    Between 2002 and 2008, Vice President Cheney, a man who shunned military service through numerous deferments was seen on television by the US Armed Forces an average of 35 times per day, primarily standing beside decorated soldiers. (AFN and Pentagon Channel)
    The clearest accomplishments of the War on Terror have been clearly defined:
    • $3 trillion has disappeared from the defense budget, funds missing and unaccounted for
    • $5 million a year in opium production in Afghanistan as of 2001 is now $80 billion in heroin production, 93% of the world’s supply
    • At least 25% of the crude oil pumped from Iraq between 2003 and 2008 was never paid for

    STRANGE CIA TWISTS – INTERVIEW WITH EMIL LEE WANTA 5/15/2011

    Emil Lee Wanta, the White House official designated to repatriate Stinger missiles still in Afghanistan and Pakistan after the Soviet withdrawal, first met “Tim Osman,” the CIA code name for Osama bin Laden in 1989. Wanta, along with William Casey and Bill Colby (CIA Directors) made up the ISA (Intelligence Support Agency), a group tasked with eliminating rogue intelligence operations, CIA and other, that had sprung up resulting from operations in Central America and the Af-Pak theatre.
    Iran-Contra was one of those operations, there were others, many others. It is obvious that the ISA was less than successful. Many Reagan era insiders were convicted of crimes including, eventually, Emil Lee Wanta.

    REDACTED WANTA MEMO
    Wanta was originally named by Reagan as Inspector General of the Department of Defense, eventually slated to take over as Defense Secretary from Casper Weinberger (later convicted during Iran Contra and pardoned). That appointment was blocked by Secretary of State George Schultz.
    Wanta, then working out of Vienna, was approached by Osama bin Laden, the CIA’s prime intermediary with both Saudi Arabia and resupply operations in Afghanistan, with replacing Stinger missiles claimed to have been expended in combat with both Soviet forces and those of the Afghan government. Wanta describes his meeting with “Tim Osman,” Osama bin Laden’s “working identity,” along with James Chi, the then station chief in Islamabad.
    Stinger missiles had been found for sale in the Peshawar arms bazaar, offered to any and all takers. The first order of business was to recover these weapons before they fell into the hands of real terrorists, those not in the employ of the CIA.
    Wanta and Chi put out a “buy order” and repurchased several missiles for cash. They then met with bin Laden. They confronted bin Laden with the fact that some of the missiles they recovered bore the serial numbers of units listed by bin Laden as “expended.” Bin Laden then indicated that the remainder of the Stingers were stored in Peshawar.

    MISSION ACCOMPLISHED?
    Bin Laden was very specific on how he was to be paid and more specific on how unpleasant things would get if money wasn’t forthcoming.
    Payment was arranged directly to bin Laden who had the missiles loaded on trucks. Bin Laden is described as in traditional garb, shod in sandals and very unkempt. Meetings were held in English.
    The bin Laden Stinger inventory, 116 missiles, were flown into Frankfurt, Germany and turned over to Customs and Treasury there. Secretary of State Schultz complained that the use of Germany in this transaction violated the prerogative of Secretary of State and filed a formal complaint.
    Wanta reports that bin Laden was considered the CIA’s most trusted and reliable asset. That relationship continued, part of the complex interaction between the Bush family, the bin Laden family and their son, Osama bin Laden. At no time was Osama bin Laden ever considered “rogue.”
    At no time was Osama bin Laden considered out of favor with either his own family or the Bush family to which he was closely aligned.
    Osama bin Laden is confirmed to have received medical care, including kidney dialysis, on several occasions as late as 2000, at US military facilities in the Gulf.
    There had been reports of Osama bin Laden being involved in a CIA operation involving China as late as September 2001. I was told there were no active operations against China. The intelligence relationship with China was being managed, according to sources, directly by George H.W. Bush and the Chinese representative Henry Kok (Kok Howe Kwong). Slightly differing versions of meetings in Singapore including Bush, Kok, CIA Counsel Jan Morton Heger and others over disbursement of very substantial assets in Rubles make no mention of a Saudi financial interest in with the CIA in this area.
    Were the Saudi’s to have been involved, Osama bin Laden would have represented their government, according to reliable sources.
    CIA sources claim Osama bin Laden, “Tim Osman” to them, was no longer operational after late 2001. It is their understanding that he died of kidney failure and his body was recovered and put in freezer storage. When questioned about other possible diseases, they insist that he was under treatment for kidney disease only.

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